Sage CRM 2023 R1 will be released to the regions today, Wednesday 5th April 2023. Each of the Sage OpCo teams will determine when this new version will be released in their countries but you can start planning for upgrades now.
You can use the Sage CRM 2023 R1 installation package to upgrade from versions 2022 R2, 2022 R1, 2021 R2, 2021 R1, 2020 R2, and 2020 R1.
Only upgrade directly from versions on the list. Other upgrade paths are not tested and are NOT supported.
Customers on earlier versions of Sage CRM must therefore first upgrade to one of the versions listed above.
It is important to note and understand the support cycle for each version. https://help.sagecrm.com/support/support-lifecycle/
Note: Support for Sage CRM 2020 R1 & R2 is due to end on 30th September 2023.
Please note there may be local agreements in place that modify this for certain instances where Sage CRM is integrated with particular accounting solutions.
We strongly advise that Sage colleagues and partners should engage with customers on older versions of the product that are now out of support to encourage them to upgrade.
Where Sage CRM is integrated with a Sage accounting solution (e.g. Sage 100, Sage 300, Sage 1000) then please refer to the integration guides to check requirements specific for that integration. If you are using a third-party integration (Sage 50, Sage 200, Sage Intacct, Sage X3) then please refer to the documentation provided by the ISV.
Long Tail Upgrades
Although long-tail upgrade paths can be off-putting it is not as bad as it looks.
Moving a customer from a historic version such as Sage CRM 7.1 to Sage CRM 2023 R1 will open new features for the customer and give them a much better experience and so should be a highly desirable object for the customer - but it should not represent too difficult a journey.
A customer using Sage CRM 7.1 would need to upgrade to 7.2 via 7.1 SP1 or SP2. But once on 7.2, you can upgrade to Sage CRM 7.3 SP3 without any patch being applied and from there you can jump to Sage CRM 2017 and then to 2020 R1 and then to Sage CRM 2023 R1.
Changes to Supported Software
You will need to consider the changes in supported software. There were a limited number of significant changes. Please note Sage can only confirm support for Sage CRM in environments that are included in our QA process.
As new versions of different software are included in our QA process we need to stop testing older versions. This means that our list of supported environments inevitably changes over time.
This affects not just the servers but also the devices that are used to access integrated Sage CRM.
We have added support for
- Microsoft SQL Server 2022.
- Microsoft SQL Server 2022 Express has been added to the installation package.
We have made the following other changes
- MS SQL Server 2017 – This version of SQL Server is out of support.
- Microsoft SQL Server 2019 Express was removed from the installation package.
Impact on Customized Systems
Client-Side API - There have been changes to the client-side API as a consequence of the UI changes. Code that addresses buttons will need to be checked and potentially some editing of scripts will be needed.
Custom Entities - ASP Pages created by the Advanced Customization Wizard will need to be edited to allow an existing custom entity in an upgraded system to use the Import Email Feature.