2.0.0

In this release of OroCRM we focused primarily on improvements of our Sales pipeline. We improved multi-channel versatility of Opportunities as a general sales tracking tool by making them available for all types of customers. We also made possible to record sales in multiple currencies by adding multi-currency support to Enterprise Edition.

On the more down-to-earth level we introduced a portfolio of safety minded features that will allow administrators to secure access to the system with the variety of tools. Workflow capabilities got a major expansion—multiple parallel workflows are now a reality.

Finally, in the anticipation of upcoming growth of Oro product family, we have prepared OroCRM to seamlessly integrate with OroCommerce when it is released later in January.

Sales pipeline management

Enable Leads and Opportunities as features

Leads and Opportunities became the first application of the new OroPlatform feature management capability. Enabling or disabling them in your instance no longer requires manipulations with the Sales channel—from now on it is as easy as checking a box in the system configuration. When enabled, each feature will bring in not just the menu item with the grid of records, but also all the necessary paraphernalia: workflows, reports, dashboard widgets, etc.

Note that Sales channel remains available in the system, but now its functions are reduced to enabling Business Customers and controlling their grouping at the Account view. Also, Channel relation is no longer considered necessary for both Leads and Opportunities and will not appear in new 2.0 installations. If you migrate from 1.10/1.12 EE, the field and relation will remain but will be converted into extended relation, so you can easily remove it in entity management.

Create Opportunities for any customers, or for Accounts directly

We have made Opportunities truly universal sales tracking tool by removing the restriction of a mandatory Business customer relation. From now on, Opportunities can be related to any customer type—Magento customers, Commerce customers, or any other type of customers that might be introduced by third-party extensions.

Opportunities can also be related directly to Accounts. This is the most basic and most natural setup of OroCRM if you don’t need to track multi-channel sales, or just want to keep things simple. And you can always enable the additional complexity of multiple customer channels later when the need arises.

The functionality of Account lookup control at Opportunity create/edit form has changed accordingly:

• You can search for an existing account not just by its name, but also by names, emails, and phones of its contacts and customers, so you can find the account quicker and more conveniently
• Customers can also be searched for by emails and phones in addition to the name
• Customers that belong to the same account will be grouped together in the lookup, and the account will be displayed on top. All records feature entity or integration icons for better clarity
• “Type-in” feature now allows to create Accounts only, and the action is correspondingly labeled
• New customer records should be created via the Plus button, that gets a dropdown selector if you have more than one customer type

Note to developers: Please read the Sales Customer Relations section in our documentation to learn how to introduce your own customer types that will properly work with Opportunities.

Known issues:

• Account field has been temporarily removed from Opportunity grid. We will re-introduce it as soon as possible in the future maintenance releases.
• Data template for import & export of both Opportunities and Leads will contain all fields of all customer types that are enabled in the organization so if you have many different customer types, it might become hard to manipulate. Again, we will do our best to improve this experience asap.

Opportunity lists at customer views, 360° view at Account

You can relate your sales opportunities to any customer now, so it is only natural that you will be able to see the full history of deals with the particular customer at their view. And, staying true to our 360° Account view promise, we’ve added the complete list of all related Opportunities to the Account view as well.

Create Opportunity from Account and customer views

The final point in growing ubiquity and convenience of Opportunity management is the ability to create it from any customer view, or from Account view. The action is available under More Actions dropdown, and the Account field will be prefilled with the Account or customer you’re creating it from.

See relevant Opportunities at Opportunity view

This feature allows the sales reps to check the history of the deals with the particular account directly on the Opportunity view, so the crucial pieces of past wisdom and experience that might make the difference between a successful sale and the failed one become more readily available.

This feature is optional and can be turned on or off in the Opportunity section of CRM configuration. It’s enabled by default.

Other activities

Recurring calendar events

Recurring calendar events are no longer read-only—now you can create and edit them straight in the OroCRM calendar. Multiple recurrence patterns are supported; all events in the series can be managed on their own, creating exceptions when necessary; Outlook integration has full support for events created and edited in OroCRM.

Non-OroCRM invitees to events

We have also expanded functionality of invitations—now you can invite everyone to your events, not just OroCRM users. Invitation is done by email address, and an external invitee will also receive a RSVP notification—obviously, without the link to OroCRM’s calendar.

Close tasks directly from the activity list

Task status is now clearly displayed on its row in the activity list, letting you to know what’s going on at a glance. And you can start or stop the task progress, or mark it as complete straight from the row actions—all task workflow transitions are just one click away, so you no longer have to navigate back and forth between the task and its context record.

Task contexts are shown in the grid

Task contexts are now displayed in the Tasks grid, allowing you to quickly identify what this particular task was about. All contexts are clickable, so you can easily navigate to them.

Call duration now supports decimal points

Tags

Tag taxonomies and colors

Tags can now be grouped in taxonomies, and every taxonomy can be assigned with a distinctive color, to let you clearly identify different group of tags that might serve different purposes.

This feature has been contributed by our community member Samuel Denis-D'Ortun (@sadortun) – thank you!

Marketing

Enable or disable marketing features

Marketing-related features, such as Marketing lists, Campaigns, and Web Tracking can now be turned on and off in system configuration.

Marketing as a separate package

Marketing-related OroCRM bundles: MarketingListBundle, CampaignBundle, and TrackingBundle have been combined in a separate package that was moved to its own repository. The package is included into OroCRM by default, but can be removed if necessary. Note that our marketing extensions—MailChimp and dotmailer integrations, and Abandoned Cart Campaign extension are dependent on this package, so they won’t work if it’s been removed from the application.