Author: Nikolay Bulava, CEO
The comfort of work with historical data and planned actions in CRM system significantly influence common efficiency of CRM users day-to-day work and User Adoption overall.
In this short article, we compare capabilities of Salesforce Lightning Activity Timeline with Event Management Suite for SugarCRM and their features for processing history and planned actions.
Capabilities on the Level of a Particular CRM Entity
We’ll start with the level of a CRM record because its functions define the efficiency of work of each and any CRM user who needs to investigate the current state of affairs in order to prepare to communicate with a particular customer or collaborate with teammates on a specific question.
| Salesforce Lightning Activity Timeline | Sugar Event Management Suite | |
| Historical Timeline | ||
| Activities review (tasks, meetings, calls, email) | Yes | Yes |
| Creating of custom elements of timeline (e.g. status changes; changes of amount or potential; move to new company; etc.) | No | Yes |
| Customisation of timeline event description (e.g. to show assigned manager or current task status, etc.) | No | Yes |
| Filtering of timeline by time period | Yes | Yes |
| Filtering of timeline by type of event | Yes | Yes |
| Filtering of timeline by user name | Yes | Yes |
| Review of event details directly from timeline feed | Yes | Yes |
| Quick moving to the target CRM entity from timeline | Yes | Yes |
| Quick moving to the related data record from timeline (e.g. account, contact, opportunity, etc.) | Yes | Yes |
| TimeLine collaboration | No | Yes |
| Quick reply to e-mail directly from timeline | Yes | No |
| Displaying events from external systems on timeline | No | Yes |
| Displaying events from related entities (e.g. cases events on account level) | No | Yes |
| Access to historical timeline on mobile | No | Yes |
| Upcoming Timeline | ||
| Review of planned activities (task, meeting, call) | Yes | Yes |
| Review of other control dates (e.g. postponed until; next step date; expected close date; etc.) | No | Yes |
| Customisation of timeline event description (e.g. to show manager or status of task, amount of opportunity or lead’s scoring etc.) | No | Yes |
| Collaboration of upcoming event | No | Yes |
| Filtering of timeline by time period | Yes | Yes |
| Filtering of timeline by type of event | Yes | Yes |
| Filtering of timeline by user name | Yes | Yes |
| Quick filtering of overdue events | No | Yes |
| Quick filtering of current events | No | Yes |
| Quick filtering of future events | No | Yes |
| Displaying events from related entities (e.g. opportunity expected close date on account level) | No | Yes |
| Quick editing of task/meeting/call directly from timeline feed | Yes | No |
| Quick editing of task/meeting/call directly | Yes | Yes[1] |
| Access to upcoming timeline on mobile | No | No |
Capabilities on the List View (Portfolio) Level
Salesforce doesn’t provide capabilities to work with a timeline (both for historical and upcoming events) on the list view (portfolio) level, even though these capabilities significantly save time and help to review what important things were changed or planned by teammates or automated processes.
Similar to review timeline on the level of record, Sugar CRM provides capabilities to review on the level of portfolio both historical and upcoming events not only by activities but also by any other type of events, including custom ones. Besides, SugarCRM provides some additional features to make work of users more efficient and comfortable.
| Salesforce Lightning Activity Timeline | Sugar Event Management Suite | |
| Historical Timeline (TimeLine Viewer) | ||
| Configuring a set of different filtered timeline feeds in the context of portfolio | No | Yes |
| Automatical refresh of timeline when list view filter changed | Yes | |
| Displaying events from external systems on timeline | Yes | |
| Access on mobile | No | |
| Upcoming timeline (Need ToDo Viewer) | ||
| Review and filtering by particular type of upcoming events | No | Yes |
| Review and filtering by user or team | Yes | |
| Configuring a set of different filtered timeline feeds in the context of portfolio | Yes | |
| Access on mobile | No | |
Capabilities on the Main Dashboard Level
The capability to see a timeline on the main dashboard significantly impacts managers’ work of all levels whose activity is tightly related to the work of the whole team and who have to see a comprehensive picture of changes that were made.
Sugar CRM provides a range of additional features to manage historical and upcoming timeline on the main dashboard.
| Salesforce Lightning Activity Timeline | Sugar Event Management Suite | |
| Historical Timeline (TimeLine Viewer) | ||
| Filtering of timeline by particular set of CRM entities (accounts, leads, opportunities, cases, etc. including custom modules) | No | Yes |
| Configuring a set of different filtered timeline feeds | Yes | |
| Review and analyse statistic of timeline events | Yes | |
| Access on mobile | Yes | |
| Upcoming timeline (Need ToDo Viewer) | ||
| Configuring a set of different filtered timeline feeds | No | Yes |
| Review and filtering by particular type of upcoming events | Yes | |
| Review and filtering by user or team | Yes | |
| Review and analyse statistic of timeline events | Yes | |
| Access on mobile | No | |
In the nutshell
As you can see, Sugar CRM provides much more comprehensive capabilities on the level of a particular CRM record and unique capabilities on the level of the whole system (main dashboards) and portfolios (list views). In combination with flexible configuring of custom events, the possibility to collect historical CRM events from external information systems and mobile access to historical timeline turns Sugar CRM in the 360° sonar of significant CRM events, which saves time for each CRM user on day-to-day activities.
Here you can find more about add-ons TimeLine Viewer and Need ToDo Viewer from Event Management Suite for Sugar:
[1]By using global «Quick create» menu («+» icon in the right upper corner)