Sugar Community Edition
Version 5.5.1 – Release Candidate 2

The second Release Candidate (RC) of Sugar CE 5.5.1 is now available to test.

Preview Sugar 5.5.1 RC 2 Now!

Download the Sugar CE 5.5.1 RC 2

Upgrade files are available! We recommend running a test upgrade from your version of Sugar to 5.5.1 RC 2 on a copy of your production instance (example: a development instance). Upgrade files from the 5.5.1 RC 2 to the final Generally Available (GA) release will be provided at the time of release of the GA.

While testing Sugar 5.5.1 RC 2, if you encounter any issues, please let us know through submitting a bug in the Bug Tracker. Be sure to designate “5.5.1-RC2″ as for the “Found in Release” field. You can also use the Sugar 5.5.1 forums to discuss your experience.

To date, we have addressed nearly 300 bugs related to Emails, Email Templates and Inbound Emails in Sugar 5.5.1. A full listing of the bugs and features addressed in Sugar 5.5.1 RC 2 can be found in the Bug Tracker. Search using “5.5.1-RC2″ in the “Found in Release” field, and “Fixed” in the “Resolution” field.

Details about the new and enhanced features can be found in this forum thread and in the Release Notes and Application Guides, are posted in the Documentation area on sugarcrm.com.

We plan to release the next GA-candidate in the upcoming weeks. Please check for release schedule updates in this forum thread.

Just came across an interesting post by Ibuildings CTO Ivo Jansch, talking about the use of Smarty as a templating language over PHP itself. His argument comes down to the the cleanliness of the code; he considers Smarty code much easier to read and follow when used inside a PHP script as compared to PHP itself.

SugarCRM uses Smarty extensively as a part of our metadata, themes, and MVC frameworks to help separate the markup from our PHP code, and have built in several optimizations to our use of Smarty to avoid some of the speed penalties from using it. What does everyone else think about using Smarty as a templating language? Sound off in the comments with your thoughts.

My second SugarCRM article just went live today on IBM Developerworks entitled “Connect your data to the outside world with SugarCRM connectors“. This article talks about the connectors framework introduced in Sugar 5.2, and shows to how to build your own connector using the example of building a Google News connector that leverages the Google AJAX Search API. The source code is also included with the article, which is ready to drop into your custom/ directory to use on your SugarCRM instance.