SugarCRM 6 includes many changes including the much heralded 6.0 theme. In this article I am going to look past the theme and take a look at the User Preferences area in order highlight changes that have been applied.

The first thing that you will notice is that the user preferences area has changed from one very long page to a tabbed layout. This keeps you from having to scroll through a long list of settings before being able to locate the field that you need to change. The other thing that I noticed while comparing the 5.5 layout to the new 6.0 layout is that the settings seem to stand out more. With the tabbed interface you immediately notice settings that you don’t remember seeing in 5.5 even though they have always been there.

On the first tab that you are brought to, there is a new addition which is the Picture field. This allows a user to upload a photo so that other users of the system that may work remote can identify the user.

Once an image is uploaded it will be visible when someone looks at the detail view of an Employee record.

In previous versions of SugarCRM users had the ability to choose their theme in the top right corner of the page. Since themes usually don’t get changed very often, moving it off of the main view was a good idea and provides less clutter.

In the User Preferences - Themes tab the user can now quickly get a snapshot view of what the theme looks like before picking it instead of have to manually switch through all of them and wait for a page refresh like in previous versions.

Perhaps one of the best changes to the User Preferences table is the new Downloads tab. I have been on very few SugarCRM consulting engagements where I wasn’t asked to download all of the plugins and add them to the SugarCRM Documents module. This area makes accessing the plugins easy for every user and contains multiple versions in case different versions of Microsoft Office are installed in the company.

As you can see, there have been multiple enhancements made to the User Preferences table which will make life easier for users of SugarCRM. Go try them out and enjoy all of the new enhancements throughout Sugar 6.0.