Overview
In an effort to continuously evolve and improve usability and data accuracy, Sugar introduces a change in functionality for the Active Subscriptions dashlet in the 10.1 (Q3 2020) release. Upon upgrading your instance, users will find their Active Subscriptions dashlet is no longer populated with data. This article explains what has changed and how to populate data into your Active Subscriptions dashlet after upgrading to 10.1.
Prerequisites
- You are an admin of an instance that has users with a Sugar Sell license type
- Your Sugar Sell users utilize:
- Opportunities with Revenue Line Items
- The Service checkbox on revenue line item or product catalog records
- The Active Subscriptions dashlet
- You are upgrading to 10.1
Features
Because of the new features, functionality, and processes introduced in 10.1 and outlined in the sections below, the Active Subscriptions dashlet will not be populated upon upgrade.
New Modules
10.1 introduces two new modules, Purchases and Purchased Line Items. The Purchases and Purchased Line Items modules contain the list of goods and services your customers have purchased and the number of times those goods and services have been purchased, respectively. For more information please refer to the Purchases and Purchased Line Items page in the Application Guide.
New Fields
10.1 introduces a new dropdown field to the Revenue Line Items module, Generate Purchase. On upgrade, it will be blank for all existing revenue line item records. Records created after upgrade will receive the default value, “Yes”. In order for existing revenue line items to be queued for purchase generation, they need Generate Purchase set to “Yes”. The field is available for mass update via the Revenue Line Items list view or can be updated via import. By default, the Generate Purchase field will not appear on any layouts but can be added by an admin user.
New Process
Purchase and purchased line item records are automatically created from revenue line items that meet the following criteria:
- The revenue line item’s Sales Stage is “Closed Won”
- The revenue line item’s Generate Purchase dropdown is “Yes”
- The parent opportunity’s Sales Stage is “Closed Won”
New Functionality
In Sugar 9.3 the Active Subscriptions dashlet is available for use in the Accounts record view dashboard, which references the current account's revenue line items that are marked as a “Service”, in a "Closed Won" status, have a start date in the past, an end date in the future, and are related to a “Closed Won” parent opportunity. In Sugar 10.1, the Active Subscriptions dashlet switches to referencing purchased line items that are marked as a “Service”, have a start date in the past, and an end date in the future.
Application
After upgrading to 10.1, the Active Subscriptions dashlet will begin to be populated with purchase data that is generated automatically from revenue line item records based on the New Process outlined above. As an admin user, you will need to consider which approach to take for existing vs newly created revenue line item records:
- Existing records : Revenue line item records created prior to upgrade require user action to generate purchase and purchased line item records.
- Newly created records : Revenue line item records created after upgrade will automatically generate purchase and purchased line item records.
Things to consider
The changes and capabilities introduced in 10.1 allow you to have control over which revenue line items should generate purchases and therefore show in the Active Subscriptions dashlet. Before taking the steps outlined in the sections below to generate new purchase and purchased line item records you may want to consider the following:
- Does your business utilize the Service field on product catalog or revenue line item records?
- Do your Sugar Sell users take advantage of the Active Subscriptions dashlet?
- Does the data from existing revenue line items accurately reflect the purchase information between you and your accounts, which could potentially impact future integration with your ERP?
- Do you want individual users or only admin users to have the ability to choose which historical records should be converted into purchases and purchased line items?
- Would you prefer to mass update your revenue line item records in order to generate purchase data, which would also update the date modified and modified by user information of your revenue line items?
- Would you like to update revenue line item records via import, which will in turn generate purchase data while keeping the date modified and modified by user information on your revenue line items historically accurate?
- Moving forward, do you want your users to have the ability to choose which revenue line item records should or shouldn't be converted into purchases and purchased line items?
- Moving forward, do you want purchases and purchased line items to be automatically generated without giving access to the "Generate Purchase" field to your users?
- Do you have any internal processes in place you would like to incorporate into SugarBPM to get started?
Existing Revenue Line Items
By default, revenue line items that were created prior to upgrade will not generate purchase data as the Generate Purchase field will be blank. You have several options on how to handle the existing records. Please refer to the list below and follow the links to each section for additional information and recommendations.
- No action : Existing revenue line items will not generate purchase data to populate the Active Subscriptions dashlet
- Mass update : Existing revenue line items updated via mass update that meet the criteria outlined above will generate purchase data and populate the Active Subscriptions dashlet
- Import : Existing revenue line items updated via record import that meet the criteria will generate purchase data and populate the Active Subscriptions dashlet
- Allow users to update via record view : Existing revenue line items updated by users that meet the criteria will generate purchase data and populate the Active Subscriptions dashlet
No Action
Taking no action for existing revenue line items requires no steps from you as an admin user. You will only need to consider how to handle newly created revenue line items.
Mass Update
The ability to mass update the Generate Purchase field in revenue line items is available to all users by default. When considering populating the Active Subscriptions dashlet with automatically generated purchase data, we recommend an admin user add the Sales Stage, Service, and Service Start Date fields to the Search layout by navigating to Admin > Studio > Revenue Line Items > Layouts > Search. When used as a filter set and selecting the values which are appropriate for your business use case (e.g. this year, this month, last 7 days, etc), these fields will help you identify the records you want to mass update. For more information on Mass Update, please refer to the User Interface page in the Application Guide.
The picture below shows these filters applied to revenue line items, the Mass Actions menu, and the ability to mass update the Generate Purchase field to "Yes". Performing the mass update on the filtered records in this example will generate purchase data from these revenue line items, which in turn will populate the Active Subscriptions dashlet for the associated accounts. Once the purchase data has been generated, the value for the Generate Purchase field will automatically update to "Completed".
Note: Mass updating records will also update the modified by user and date information for each record.
Import
The ability to import revenue line items is available to all users by default. When considering populating the Active Subscriptions dashlet with automatically generated purchase data, we recommend taking the following steps:
- Create a report for revenue line items with the filters and display columns shown below
- Export the results
- Enter "Yes" to the Generate Purchase column for appropriate records
- Save as a CSV file
- Import and select "Create new records and update existing records"
Updating the revenue line item records with the Generate Purchase field to "Yes" will generate purchase data from these records, which in turn will populate the Active Subscriptions dashlet for the associated accounts. Once the purchase data has been generated, the value for the Generate Purchase field will automatically update to "Completed". For more information, refer to the Importing Records section of the User Interface page in the Application Guide.
Note: Updating via import will retain historical modified by user and date information for each record.
Allow Users to Update via Record View
The Generate Purchase field is hidden by default on the Revenue Line Items record view. If you would like to give users access to this field, an admin user will need to add it to the view via Admin > Studio > Revenue Line Items > Layouts > Record View. The picture below represents what a user will see in edit mode on the record view when the Generate Purchase field is available. The default value for newly created records is "Yes". However, records existing prior to update will have a blank value which the users can choose to update as appropriate. Once the purchase data has been generated, the value will automatically update to "Completed". For more information, refer to the Studio page in the Administration Guide.
Newly Created Revenue Line Items
Revenue line items that are created after upgrade will generate purchase data as the Generate Purchase field will default to "Yes". You have several options on how to handle the new records. Please refer to the list below and follow the links to each section for additional information and recommendations.
- Leave default functionality : Newly created revenue line items will automatically generate purchase data and populate the Active Subscriptions dashlet
- Give users access : Users have the ability to set revenue line items to automatically generate purchase data and populate the Active Subscriptions dashlet
- Configure SugarBPM : Purchase data can be generated based on the internal processes you have created and implemented with the SugarBPM tools available to you.
Leave Default Functionality
The Generate Purchase field will remain hidden on the layout and defaulted to "Yes". Purchases and purchased line item records will be automatically generated, and the Active Subscriptions dashlet will begin to be populated by the purchase data marked as a "service".
Note: Users will have access to mass update the field by default. An admin can disable mass update for the field from within Admin > Studio.
Give Users Access
The Generate Purchase field is hidden by default on the Revenue Line Items record view. If you would like to give users access to this field, an admin user will need to add it to the view via Admin > Studio > Revenue Line Items > Layouts > Record View. The picture above represents what a user will see in edit mode on the record view when the Generate Purchase field is available. The default value for newly created records is "Yes". Once the purchase data has been generated, the value will automatically update to "Completed".
Note: Records existing prior to the update will have a blank value that the users can choose to update as appropriate.
Configure SugarBPM
As an admin user, you can choose to modify the Generate Purchase field's default behavior via Admin > Studio > Revenue Line Items > Fields > Generate Purchase. Additionally, you can incorporate the field into SugarBPM by utilizing Process Business Rules and Process Definitions to leverage internal processes you have established or would like to create prior to moving forward. For additional information, refer to the SugarBPM page in the Administration Guide. The following steps illustrate and example of utilizing those capabilities together:
- Remove the default value of Generate Purchase field so that it is blank
- Create a process business rule that changes the assigned to user to a sales manager when the revenue line item's Sales Stage is "Closed Won"
- Create a process definition for the sales manager to approve or deny the sale and make the Generate Purchase field required in order to approve
Summary
The addition of the Purchases and Purchased Line Item modules is an exciting feature for our Sugar Sell users that supports the customer life cycle after the "Closed Won" sales stage. For users to take advantage of the features and incorporate historical sales data, an admin user will need to take steps to capture that data. After you have analyzed your data, use cases, and decided on how to move forward with both historical and newly created records, you and your users can begin to fully realize the capabilities of how the modules can work together to give a full picture of your accounts' historical sales data and a time-aware picture of their current status and worth in terms of products and services they have purchased.