The GoldMine Blog - Tips, Tricks & More

One enhancement in GoldMine 7.0 is the 'Quick Action' buttons in the Contact Search Center (Where you go to find a contact records).  With these buttons, you can schedule, perform a mail or email merge, or add a contact(s) to a group or distribution list.  Simply select the contact to perform the action for, or use Control-Click on several contacts to perform these actions.

Latest is that GoldMine 7.0.4 will be available mid-October for Corporate Edition only.  The next upgrade for Standard Edition customers will be GoldMine 8.0 in the 2nd Quarter of 2007 although I'll guess that it'll be more like 3rd Quarter or mid-Summer.

Within GoldMine Filters, Groups, and SQL Queries are our ways of segmenting the database to pull specific records for emailing, calling, or simply viewing in list form.

Here is a 'cheat sheet' on which to use to get the desired data.

For 'On What': This is relatively self-explanitory.  Each has different criteria on which you can select data and criteria from.

For 'Statis vs. Dynamic': This refers to how 'fresh' the data is.  For Filters & SQL Queries whenever they are executed they return the database as how it exists currently.  For Groups, they exist as they are built at the point in time they are built, they are a snapshot of the datbase at a specific point in time.

For 'Speed': Groups are the fastest.  If you are using GoldMine Standard Edition Filters & SQL Queries can be slow to access because they have to scan the entire database when they are run.  Groups will be faster because they are prebuilt.  If you are using GoldMine Corporate Edition they will almost always be incredibly fast becauase Microsoft SQL Sever is very efficient at performing these operations.

For 'Difficulty': Filters are the easiest as they provide the last number of options.  As one might expect, as your options increase so does the difficulty.

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Wild card searching is allowing some mix of characters, any characters, to occur within the field you are searching. 

For example, you are searching for 'City of Midland' in your database as a company name, what if it was entered "Midland, City Of" or just "Midland".  Or, if you are searching by Additional Contacts, and you don't remember the person's first name so you want to search by last name.  It'd be nice to just type Midland and any contact with Midland anywhere in the company name would show up.

If you are using GoldMine 4.0, 5.x, or 6.x with a Microsoft SQL Server database (Corporate Edition) or 7.0 with either the Microsoft SQL or FireBird database you can!

Simply type a '%' (without the quotes) before the string of character you are searching for.  Here's an example from the Contact Search Center.

Since the renaming of GoldMine Software Corporation to FrontRange Solutions in the Summer of 2000, following Bendata's acquisition of GoldMine, we've been going to www.frontrange.com for the official GoldMine web site. 

Well heralding back to the past and to showcase GoldMine by itself FrontRange has introduced us to www.goldmine.com again.  Content isn't much different than the FrontRange web site but since it focuses solely on GoldMine it's a bit easier to find content like webinars, white papers, etc.

P.S. Get notified of the newest Blog postings as they happen!

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In GoldMine 6.0 and above, you have the ability to customize the columns you see in the Contact Search Center.  The Contact Search Center is simply the formal name of the window that pops up when you are trying to find a contact....  Here it is:

It should look familiar.  By default, you will see the Company, Contact, City and Phone1 fields.  However, this can be changed!  In the Contact Search Center toolbar (The icons just above "Lookup") all the way to the right you'll see an icon that looks almost like an Excel spreadsheet.  I've put a red box around it in the screen shot above to draw your attention to it. 

That's the "Select Browser Columns" button.  Click it, and a window like this will pop up:

Too add a column simply find the column on the left, they are in alphabetical order, and double-click on it, or single click on it and use the right-arrow button.  It'll then move to the right-side of the screen.  The order of the columns can be changed by clicking on a field on the right and using the up or down buttons. 

Click "OK" and you'll see your Contact Search Center with your customized fields.  Any field from the top half of the screen (except for email or website), the summary tab, or the fields tab can be added.  Also, the column widths can be adjusted in the Contract Search Center by dragging the dividers between the column headers, just like in Excel.

When you change the columns you see or their widths this is a 'Sticky' setting.  So once it's set it does not change when you Exit GoldMine, close the Search Center, etc.  Also, it affects only you, no one else.

Happy GoldMining!

Chad

From the FrontRange Solutions Field Service Engineer (FSE) Webinar Today:

GoldMine 7.0.4, which should make GoldMine 7 a very stable release for new customers and upgrades, is expected to be available the first week of November.

GoldMine Plus Accounting for QuickBooks 4.0 is expected to be released the week following this post, in other words, any time now!  Please see the following post for what should be in this release:

http://goldmineblog.typepad.com/the_goldmine_blog/2006/08/goldmine_plus_a.html

Also, pricing will change to a server format of $399. 

Over the next few weeks I'll be going more in depth on upgrade best practices and the benefits of upgrading to GoldMine 7.0.  My opinion at this time is that GoldMine 7.0.4 will be a great releae for both new and upgrading CE customers.  As there are still sync issues with GoldMIne 7.0.3, I still recommend that you do not upgrade if your environment requires sync.

Because of some new security features in Windows, when you launch GoldMine you may receive this error message:

Not a big deal you can just click "Run" and GoldMine will operate normally, however, if you want to eliminate this message, here's how:

1) Choose Start | Run in Windows then type gpedit.msc and press OK.

2) Go to User Configuration | Administrative Templates | Windows Components | Attachment Manager

3) Double-click on "Inclusion list for low file types" and change the settings to the following:

Note: Where it reads, "K:\goldmine\gmw6.exe", should be changed to where your GoldMine is currently installed.

4) Close the Group Policy Editor then try to run GoldMine again.

PS Get notified of the newest Blog postings as they happen!

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The GoldMine Guide to SQL Queries has now been released!

If you are interested in learning how to write SQL Queries for GoldMine or enhance what you already know, this is the book for you!

More information and an opportunity to receive three sample chapters is available at:

http://thegmblog.com/sql4gm/

Special introductory pricing now through November 15th.