Dashboards and Activity Stream have received major enhancements in version 7 of SugarCRM. Similar to dashboards, activity streams are now available at the system-wide level (home page), module level, and record level.

Activity stream has been enhanced to enable it to serve as a social collaboration tool among users. By creating custom posts, users can have conversations around data in the system. The activity stream will continue to auto-generate posts about system activity, such as creation of records and linking of records. Changes to audited fields will also be displayed in the activity stream.

SugarCRM has made it easy for users to create posts at any level where activity streams are available. Users can tag other users or records in their posts, as well as drag and drop files and web links. SugarCRM has integrated functionality already familiar to users of social tools, by using the @ symbol to tag other users and the # (hashtag) symbol to reference relevant records in the database. Activity stream also makes it easy to have conversations with the Reply button functionality.

When viewing your activity stream, a variety of tools and features will help you sort through the data and identify the information that is most relevant to you. System-generated posts will be marked with a color-coded module icon, and tagged records will be color-coded using the same color scheme. These icons, color-coded boxes with a two-letter abbreviation for the module name, are used throughout the 7.x user interface, making it easy to visually scan and identify contextual information. User-generated posts will display the user’s picture/avatar.

When viewing a higher-level (system or module) activity stream, content is automatically filtered based on items in which you have indicated interest. You do this by “following” records whose updates you want to see.

Don’t forget to check out other posts from our series “What’s New in SugarCRM Version 7.”