SuiteCRM, recording and viewing notes

fanpilot · 12 January 2023 10:26

Maybe I am using this wrong, as I have never really used a CRM before, but I thought the aim of a CRM was to make things easy, and to reduce clicks to get information.

I am using a fresh installation of SuiteCRM 8. It is a bit on the slow side, even when I upgraded the memory on the server.

My first issue, is when I click on a lead, I would expect to view basic details of the lead (such as name, phone, email) and then all the notes and call logs, in time order, so that I can quickly scan to see what we have spoken about.

As it is, I have to click on a lead, I am presented with all the information, then I have the History button clicked to see the history list, but that only shows the subject, and I have to click the subject to see the history item, and if I want to see another history item, it appears I have to go back and select another one.

I tried to use the Timeline insight and I have even been in the studio to try and modify it… to show me what we discussed, but it only shows the subject and not the body of the note.

Someone that was using another CRM yesterday showed me what they are using, and that appeared to be what I expected a CRM to be. All the notes, in chronological order, along with emails all under just one click from the name.

I don’t think the leads list on my home page are in any particular order either… and when a lead is converted, technically… are they still a lead, and should they still be there? The list only shows “Converted”, not whether they are an opportunity, or a customer having purchased.

Am I using it wrong? How do I set up to easily add notes, and view all the notes in one view?

As a side note, I did view the guide on the SuiteCRM website to learn as much about the CRM as I could.

BrozTechnologies · 27 January 2023 22:04

Here some information on how notes work:

pgr · 28 January 2023 11:05

@BrozTechnologies that is for SuiteCRM 7, he’s on SuiteCRM 8. And he wrote that he had already looked at the guide.

@fanpilot the subpanel you want is called “History”. When you open it, you should see a button on the right of the subpanel header saying “Actions” where you can add a Note (if it’s not there, upgrade SuiteCRM to the latest v8.x).

The list will show the notes subject alongside other things like emails. What many people do is just use only the note’s subject (not the description), make it short and sweet so they can see them from the History subpanel without having to go into the notes records.

You can also try to figure out a way to make the Description field show in the History subpanel. But I wouldn’t recommend it for now, since the customization of v8 is still not documented enough, and History and activities subpanels are especially complex since they aggregate severa kinds of modules.