According to SugarForge contributor Lyle Arnot, SugarBird 0.9.0.3, the former Asertiva Thunderbird Extension for Sugar, has been released.

"Please check the changelog for fixes and new features information," Arnot says, adding that it's "now with SugarCRM (News - Alert) 5 support, and a new soap engine that fixes many connection problems."

From now "we will focus on Lightning (Calendar) Support," Arnot explained. "Features like Send and Archive are now not possible without hacking Thunderbird."

 

He said Sugar would try to contact Mozilla developers to find a solution.

Earlier this month Intelestream, a SugarCRM consulting firm, and Serence, developers of KlipFolio dashboards, announced the formation of a partnership to work together to offer KlipFolio for SugarCRM.

 

Jason Green, Founder and CEO of Intelestream, said his firm would use KlipFolio for SugarCRM internally "and recommend it to all of our clients. In our experience, we have found managers are able to make informed decisions by a quick glance at KlipFolio for SugarCRM when they do not have time to log into their CRM."

 

Green said he thinks KlipFolio for SugarCRM promotes user adoption by engaging new users of SugarCRM "with their instance as a sidebar to all applications."

 

In January Intelestream announced the release of SugarMaps, a plug-in integrating the Sugar Suite line of CRM applications with Google (News - Alert) Maps technology. It provides a module where maps and place marks are displayed according to user-determined criteria.

 

"This is unlike anything that has been developed for the Sugar Suite," states Jason Green, founder and CEO of Intelestream. There have been mapping functions available with Sugar for a long time, Green says, but this app has "the ability to draw maps from reporting results and geographical radiuses."

 

In other words, a user can generate a custom report displaying all prospective accounts in the hospitality industry employing 100-500 people within a 25 mile geographical radius of, say, Indianapolis. The module will display the results with each account indicated by a place mark whose color and/or size vary according to preselected criteria. Driving directions can next be printed using each account as a waypoint.

 

"I am unaware of any other technology capable of doing these sorts of things with Sugar," Green says.