It is safe to say without the constant work from the SuiteCRM Team and Community, I would not have had the drive and commitment to sit down and write this user guide. New functionality and improvements to the core product are constantly added to make SuiteCRM the best Open Source CRM product in the world, and to compete with proprietary CRM vendors such as SugarCRM, Salesforce and Microsoft.
As for The SuiteCRM Community - they provide bug reports, bug fixes and bug testing. The Community is at the heart of any Open Source project and this is no different with SuiteCRM. With each new release the community grows and with it grow the benefits of the Open Source ecosystem.
SuiteCRM is a software fork of the popular Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system SugarCRM, developed and maintained by SalesAgility. It is a free and open source alternative application. It was released on October 21, 2013 as version 7.0. The latest production version at the time of publishing this User Guide is SuiteCRM 7.6.3.
SuiteCRM has been downloaded more than 500,000 times since the original release. It has been adopted by NHS (National Health Service) England’s Code for Health programme which seeks to foster open source in the NHS in England.
The SuiteCRM project has stated that the every line of code released by the project will be open source. SuiteCRM project is intended to be an enterprise-class open source alternative to proprietary products.
A project Roadmap is available that details planned enhancements.
An active public support forum with more than 25,000 members is available for free support and is regularly monitored and updated by the Project team.
A directory of extensions is available where both free and paid-for enhancements are available.
The project maintains SuiteCRM:OnDemand, a Software As A Service facility for users who seek a rapid deployment and maintenance free service.
There will be no licensed software as part of the project managed by SalesAgility. All the code is free. All the code is available for free download. There is no hidden agenda to charge for access to the code. It is and always will be free and open source. There will be no paid-for versions.
SalesAgility is an ISO-accredited open source consultancy focused on Customer Relationship Management (CRM). An early adopter of SugarCRM Community Edition, SalesAgility are the creators and maintainers behind the SugarCRM fork – SuiteCRM.
SalesAgility have delivered more than 300 SuiteCRM and SugarCRM projects, and are known as a world class knowledge and expertise resource for open source CRM. Customers include governments, enterprises and small and medium sized business globally.
SalesAgility has a clear mission statement:
Our goal is to innovate and provide advanced SuiteCRM solutions along with the industry’s leading customer service and support.
We believe that open source is in the best interest of our clients and we will continue to build, innovate, evangelise and provide best practice working models for the open source community.
The SuiteCRM User Guide has been written for the end user. This guide covers the SuiteCRM User Journey from end-to-end. We will explore all areas from the basics of logging into the system to creating complex automated workflows and reports.
The SuiteCRM User Guide is split into various chapters. These chapters are ordered so that you progress through you guide as you would logically in day to day CRM use. The chapters contain sub-sections which break down barriers for you, explaining how to optimise the use of the customer relationship management system to effectively manage sales data.
Readers of the SuiteCRM User Guide do not need to have development knowledge or prior knowledge of SuiteCRM. It is advised that you are computer literate, that you are familiar with using your chosen web browser and that SuiteCRM has already been installed and configured.
Content is available under GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 or later unless otherwise noted.