Its nearly 2 months since the release of vtiger CRM 5.0.4. We appreciate the positive response from the vtiger community, which has been very encouraging to the team.
We are glad to see the product downloads growing, with over 1000 downloads every day on average.

Some users faced initial hiccups with installation and migration of vtiger CRM 5.0.4. Most of these issues were caused due to incorrect MySQL configuration (specially, sql-mode=’STRICT_TRANS_TABLE..’) or wrong PHP configuration. Relatively few serious issues have been reported since the release.

The forum discussions have been more often on missing product features, rather than issues in the product.

We recognize the need to keep moving forward aggressively with new features. Development is already underway on the next release.
Our development team is making good progress towards the next milestone. We will keep you posted on the next release shortly.

Today a new episode of the vtiger video podcast was published.

In the new episode you get a quick Tour through the project management modul Version 3.0 for vtiger CRM 5.0.4 .

Here you can download the video or subscribe to the podcast. podcast

The new version 3.0 of the Projectmangement Modul for vtiger 5.0.4 was published. The new version includes bugfixing of known problems and few new features. Have a look at the documentation. Please post questions, problems, suggestions etc. in the appropriate Thread in the German user forum forum.vtiger.de.

Here you can download the extension:
http://www.vtiger.de/vtiger-crm/downloads/different-solutions-add-on.html
http://forge.vtiger.com/projects/dsproject/

Integration with QuickBooks Accounting software has been requested often by the community. We have made a small step forward in this regard with the first version of a vquickbooks plugin.

The first version allows one to synchronize the Contacts from vtigerCRM and Customer List from QuickBooks via the QuickBooks - WebConnector.

vtiger QuickBook Addon is now available on forge: http://forge.vtiger.com/projects/vquickbooks/

Version 1.0 download:
http://forge.vtiger.com/frs/?group_id=155&release_id=385

The documentation is available at:
http://forge.vtiger.com/frs/download.php/518/vquickbooks-v1.0.pdf

We welcome your feedback and contributions to help take this forward.

-Sreenivas  Kanumuru (vtiger Team)

One of the feature enhancements introduced in 5.0.4 is role based pick lists. Pick list fields are used in various forms in vtiger CRM. For example, the Sales Stage field in Potential form is a pick list allowing user to select one of the pre-configured stages (such as Prospecting, Qualification, Proposal, ..) based on the status of the potential. Until 5.0.3 release, the pick list values were the same for all roles (and hence all users). In 5.0.4, Picklist values can be configured for a Role. For a given Role, the values associated with Sub-Role (i.,e roles that are below in the Org tree) are also accessible.

For example, consider the following Role hierarchy, which shows Inside Sales and Field Sales roles under the Sales Manager role.

The pick list for the Lead Status can be configured so that the Inside Sales role can only view a set of choices, and Field Sales Person a different set of choices while the Sales Manager sees the combination of these choices.

As shown below, this can be configured from the Picklist Editor (in Settings page). First the role should be selected, and then the CRM Module.

The next step is to edit the pick list values for the selected field as shown below.

To replace all the values for all roles in one shot, you can use the option Global Delete.

We welcome your feedback on this feature.

Those of you with GMail accounts will be happy to see that you can now both receive and send emails using your GMail account. vtiger CRM 5.0.4 supports SSL enabled SMTP and IMAP access which is required to use GMail for sending and receiving emails.

For fetching mails from your GMail account, incoming mail settings should be configured as explained in the 5.0.4 release notes (see Page 16).

One of the benefits of using IMAP instead of POP for fetching emails is that your GMail folders (in Gmail these are referred to as labels) will be automatically created in vtiger CRM Webmail client and then kept in sync when changes are made. More details about IMAP can be found here . Please note that the incoming mail only works with PHP 5.2 on Windows.

For sending emails using your GMail account, Outgoing mail server settings should be configured. Please refer to Page 15 in the release notes for more details.

We hope you will find this new feature useful. In case you have any issues/suggestions, please let us know in the comments.

-Sreenivas (for vtiger Team)

Recently we expanded our office in Bangalore (new floor in the same building). We celebrated this occasion with a small party, including the formal ribbon cutting to mark the inauguration!.

Check out the photos taken at this occasion here: http://flickr.com/photos/22749998@N06/

New manuals for the vtiger CRM version 5.0.4 have been published both in English and German. This manual revision includes:

- the description of the new functions introduced with v5.0.4
- changes to the function description in many chapters to make it more clear to the average user and to include more detailed information as requested by community feedbacks
- hints for handling of UTF8 issues are given

Look for it at: http://www.vtiger-hilfe.de/vtigerdocu.html

Do not expect any developers guidiance from these manuals.

I encourage everyone to continue to provide feedbacks to the email address mentioned in the manual. Please report any inaccuracies, misleading statements or typos you may find.

The “old” manuals for v5.0.1., v5.0.2, and v5.0.3 will not be longer supported. The manual for version 4.2.x is still available.