Welcome to our 2022 release of Accelerator for Sage CRM

Available for download from Wednesday, 23rd March 2022 from our portal here

Officially this is version 5.1

One of the big changes here is that you will now use a version of the web application from your own CRM server.

Historically what has been used is our hosted version at “https://aclive1.crmtogether.com” but with the latest version of the Outlook add in, users will be asked to put in their CRM URL which will then point the user to the hosted app. The reason for this is technical and practical.

• The technical reason is due to a change within Chrome that blocks public IPs from accessing private IP’s, this can happen when someone is on their own local network.
• The practical reason is that customers and partners need to feel they control the process of upgrades, and this now puts all aspects back into their hands

To follow is video highlights of UI changes or keep on reading to review all changes including customisation enhanced capabilities 

Changes will be tagged with either

• (UI) for user interface changes,
• (UX) for user experience changes
• (CU) for customisations changes

Or a combination of these

1. (UI) Number type fields display in colour.
The aim here is to make numeric values more obvious to the user

 

2. (UI/UX) Large text fields are not downloaded in full when part of an entity view or list view 
The goal here is to enable a speedy response in the app, so a “Read More…” for additional text or a “Load” option (for emails).  Large text fields can slow down performance, so they must be downloaded in complete by clicking the link.

Multiline Text fields 

When clicked it displays as:

Email Fields (in communications lists)

When clicked it displays as:

Lists also support this, as the effect of large fields on lists is even greater.

3.  (UI/UX) Default filters added for company person list and communications.
Default filters are provided

but each entity filter can be controlled by creating a screen
EG
“ENTITYofficeintfilter”
and adding in fields to that.

4.  (UI) Display record count on search icon.
The number shows you the number of records that came from the match (be it on the email address or a manual search). The goal here is to provide users with the information that there are other results for the last search. Clicking on the search icon will show those full results of the search.

Over 99 results will show (99+)

5. (UI)  Show workflow state (section) if there is one.
This is to show what state an entity is at (Current State) and what workflow it is in.

6. (UI)  Dates display difference between the value and now.
This is to help users read dates and give them more relevance.

7. (UX/UI) Mail merge/Email link buttons updatedPlease note that you must manually remove the old version from CRM.
To remove these OLD button delete the “ct_browserx.*” files from “C:\Program Files (x86)\Sage\CRM\CRM\WWWRoot\js\custom”

Clicking on the CRM Together  logo icon pops up the 2 options.

You can extend this menu by creating a tabgroup in crm called “ctCustomFABActions” and adding in your own options.

1. Not seen in the UI
2. Must be set to “customdotnetdll”
3. Tool tip the user sees on hover over the button
4. The method to call. Must point to a method that is on the client and this can be included from a js file in the “CRM\WWWRoot\js\custom” folder.

Example

The user sees

and when clicked the method is run

You could use this, to link to another system or present a quick action for a user e.g. opening a custom page to create a quote, log a communication or run a report.

8. (UI) Save Email Screen
A. Colours in context. This is to help the user understand the data context/entity.

B. All matches. There is a new tab that has all matches for the given context. By clicking on an item in the list the context that the email will be saved against will change. So, a user can change the context that and email is saved against from the dialog.

9. (UI) New Task Screen
Tasks can be created for multiple users.

10. (UX/UI) External links (links that open the record in full CRM) will not show now if we do not detect a normal browser session. Previously it would just use the current SID if no browser one was found.
Links not showing

versus links showing (1 and 2)

11.  (UI/UX/CU) Sales and Cases lists changed and filter added (using the whereclause)

This screen has been redone in 2 areas.
A. The home screen

B. When you click “View Opportunity List”

You also now have a filter option to allow you filter your “My CRM” opportunity list.

12. (CU)  Added Custom content support in screens

Example here of custom content in screen “OpportunityOfficeInt”

Example of script

shows as

13. (CU) Conditional tabs support added.
This allows you to hide tabs if a condition is not hit. You might not want to show an ERP tab for companies not linked to the ERP for example.

Example of a filter on tabgroup “companyint”

14. (CU)  Server side validation
Example script

an example result

15. (CU)  New option to have the company email match search use the full email(ideal if lots of customers use Gmail for example) add in option to the web.config <add key=”companyfullmatch” value=”Y” />Normally the system will try match on full email to a person and “domain” only for a company but this open, allows you to have the system try to match a company on the full email address and not just the domain.

16. (CU) Add in Entity list. Note that all testing has been done on primary entities created with the entity wizard.
In the PARENTENTITYInt tab group you add in an item as follows

1. Caption
2. Action=customfile
3. Custom File: list_CHILDENTITY
4. SQL: CHILDENTITY_PREFIX_PARENTENTITY
Item 4 is the field that links the child entity to the parent

The system will show default fields in the list but if you create a screen called “ENTITY_OfficeIntSmall” then you can control what is shown.

17. (CU) Add in Company Notes
You can optionally add in Notes in a list

To do this add in a tab to the “CompanyInt”

18. (CU) Ability to extend the entity options menu added in.
This allows you to add in menu options to send emails, open web pages/app, run some javascript or open a crm asp page in a new window.
create a file called
_custom.json
in the “custompages/sagecrmws/ac2020” folder and add in json in the format below customising as you require.
Fields like

{

"getscreensetup": {

"options": [{

"name": "mailto",

"caption": "mail to",

"color": "red",

"icon": "mdi-calendar",

"enabledContext": "explorer",

"enabled": true,

"action": "mailto:#emailaddress#?subject=Mail from Our Site #entitytag#&body=#entityName#_#entityName2#_#entityName3#"

}, {

"name": "newwindow",

"caption": "window",

"color": "blue",

"icon": "mdi-calendar",

"enabledContext": "explorer",

"enabled": true,

"action": "https://crmtogether.com",

"options": "toolbar=yes,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,top=500,left=500,width=400,height=400"

}, {

"name": "custom",

"caption": "custom",

"color": "green",

"icon": "mdi-calendar",

"enabledContext": "explorer",

"enabled": true,

"action": "alert(\"#entityName#\");"

}, {

"name": "crmurl",

"caption": "Orders",

"color": "brown",

"icon": "mdi-calendar",

"enabledContext": "explorer",

"enabled": true,

"crmurl":"northwind/orders.asp",

"action": "entity=#entity#&entityid=#entityid#",

"options": "toolbar=yes,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,top=500,left=700,width=800,height=500"

}]

}

}

Fields like

#emailaddress#

#entitytag#

#entityName#

#entityName2#

#entityName3#

#entity#

#entityid#

are replaced with the current context data.

The example above looks like the following:
1. is the options button menu
2,3,4,5 are the example options shown above.

 

19. (CU)Advanced Customisations
We provide an example of how to create an advanced screen. Assistance in this area is billable and not covered by regular support.
To add in our example add in a tab

The custom file value is “SageCRMWS/ac2020/graphsample_js.asp”

The key here is the “_js.asp” in the file name as the system will treat this ASP page differently to others (which are shown in an iframe).

This new “format” will allow you create graphs and sections and lists that have that modern look and feel that the rest of the application has.

The code in the  “SageCRMWS/ac2020/graphsample_js.asp” contains examples on how to build your own screen.

Server side, one big change is that the SageChangesNoTLS api replaced with SageChanges so that table scripts are triggered.

We originally used the SageChangesNoTLS api as sometimes, we found there were custom table scripts that broke our save. That may now be the case again, there is a trade-off, but it seems in most scenarios that the table scripts being triggered is important.