SugarCRM 6.5 more search driven

SugarCRM 6.5 will be more driven by search, according to the company's CTO, Clint Oram. A reworking of navigation in version 6.5 has drawn inspiration from search engines so that "Instead of using wizards or clunky database queries, users can simply type in what they are looking for", says Oram, who thinks this is ideal "for a generation of business people who grew up using Google".

The new version was announced at last week's SugarCon conference, despite it still being a release candidate. Other new features include a generally refreshed user interface, a drag and drop calendaring UI, and iCal integration. Under the hood, the performance of SugarCRM has been worked on, with a newly abstracted database layer that allows more optimal access of the underlying database, and improved client-side caching for quicker UI refreshes.

SugarCRM 6.5 is also able to simply import LinkedIn contacts and there are improvements to its Microsoft Outlook integration as well. SugarCRM's relationship with IBM has resulted in SugarCRM 6.5 support for IBM DB2 and IBM PureSystems and also a number of new integrations with the social and "smartcommerce" systems: IBM Connections and IBM SmartCloud for Social Business.

The open source community edition of SugarCRM 6.5 is currently available as a release candidate from the SugarCRM Community download page where release notes can also be viewed; this lists only the calendar enhancements as improvements in 6.5. The community edition is licensed under the Affero GPL3. The commercial SugarCRM Enterprise, Corporate and Professional versions are also available as release candidates, and their release notes list UI, Calendar, SugarLogic, email archiving and Sugar Mobile enhancements.

(djwm)