{"id":5945,"date":"2017-05-23T03:40:46","date_gmt":"2017-05-23T10:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vtiger.com\/blog\/?p=5945"},"modified":"2017-05-23T03:40:46","modified_gmt":"2017-05-23T10:40:46","slug":"vtiger-7-open-source-has-launched","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vtiger.com\/blog\/vtiger-7-open-source-has-launched\/","title":{"rendered":"Vtiger 7 Open Source has Launched"},"content":{"rendered":"

When we launched Vtiger 6 a few years ago, it was designed to address the high level needs of businesses – to capture, organize, and making available a business\u2019s customer related information. With such a function-centric perspective, user-centric design took a secondary role.<\/p>\n

Since then, improving Vtiger\u2019s user experience has become True North for the ship that is Vtiger. Guided by conversations with managers and employees across sales, marketing, and customer support, Vtiger\u2019s navigation and interface have been redesigned from the ground up to be more intuitive and useful. That design, accompanied by a range of new features went live today in the newest major revision of the community edition of Vtiger, Vtiger CRM 7.<\/p>\n

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In Vtiger 7 you\u2019ll notice a lot that’s familiar to the CRM experience. Logging in takes you to a dashboard that displays record lists, metrics, and charts of interest. Modules and automations continue to capture much of Vtiger\u2019s functionality. Beyond that, however, the app experience diverges from the database-navigator-style look and feel of Vtiger 6. In the interest of helping you navigate through that new experience, here are some of the major changes:<\/p>\n

Modernized interface<\/h3>\n

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Navigating to Vtiger 7 in your browser, you\u2019re greeted by a brand new login screen which shows you news and updates straight from the mothership. Upon login, this gives way to a UI experience that employs modern design principles that are much easier on the eyes than Vtiger 6. Colors borrow from Google\u2019s Material Design palette, UI lines and guides are lighter and help focus your attention on the most important information, which is also emphasized from the mounds of other data that typically make up a CRM record.<\/p>\n

Multiple dashboards<\/h3>\n

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Logging in to Vtiger, among the first things you\u2019ll see is the tabbed dashboard<\/a>. For many users, the \u201cMy Dashboard\u201d tab is all they\u2019ll need – supporting any widgets and charts they need to get a snapshot of what\u2019s important to them. For users that work across different areas and need to monitor progress in each individually, splitting pinned charts<\/a> and widgets<\/a> by their operational area can help spot insights and areas that require attention. For this purpose, Vtiger 7 includes the ability to add new dashboard tabs from under the \u201cMore\u201d menu. A CEO using Vtiger may, for example, want to keep separate dashboards for sales metrics and customer support metrics.<\/p>\n

A new main menu<\/h3>\n

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Navigating through Vtiger starts by accessing the menu through a click on the menu icon in the upper left hand corner to reveal the main menu, which is split into two sections – one housing the sub-menus for sales, marketing, support, projects, and inventory, and another for common tools and settings. Hovering over a sub-menu reveals a list of related modules. These can be customized<\/a> to add, remove, or rearrange any functionally related modules.<\/p>\n

Related module sidebar<\/h3>\n

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Depending on what sub-menu you used to access a module, a sidebar containing shortcuts to other relevant modules from that app will be visible on the left side of the page. This helps people navigate more rapidly to related modules. For example, salespeople that access contacts through the sales sub-menu can navigate to opportunities, and quotes with just a click from the sidebar shortcuts.<\/p>\n

More useful record views<\/h3>\n

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Records in Vtiger 6 were little more than organized and related stores of information. Vtiger 7 takes record utility a step further by augmenting how you work with them. In Vtiger 7, every record now has access to the following features (all visible in the above screenshot):<\/p>\n