The GoldMine Blog - Tips, Tricks & More

There are a few different ways to bring up the Contact Search Center (CSS) in GoldMine in order to find a record.  The CSS, by the way, is the ‘correct’ way of referring to this:

It is what we all use dozens of times a day to find a contact or company in GoldMine.  My favorite way of bringing this up is to simply double-left-click on the field that I want to search by.  So, if I want to find someone by their company name, I’d double-click on the company field.

After double-clicking on the company field the CSS is displayed with the lookup set to company.  (Just like the first graphic). 

You can double-click on any of GoldMine’s indexed fields including: Company, contact, last name, city, state, zip, phone1, and any of the Key fields.  (The key fields are those located in the lower-right quadrant of GoldMine).
 

Today, FrontRange Solutions has announced the acquisition of Enteo, a German software company specializing in PC Life Cycle Management and Citrix Management solutions.  This will augment their HEAT and ITSM product lines.  Probably won't have much affect on the GoldMine world. 

More information is available from FrontRange at http://www.frontrange.com/micro.aspx?id=4540

… not a pleasant thought, eh?

Fortunately, though, if you use GoldMine forgetting about, and then loosing, an important customer because you ‘forgot’ about them is easy to avoid. 

Here’s a SQL Query that will show us all clients that have no history this year:

select contact1.company, contact1.contact, contact1.phone1, contact2.lastconton
from contact1, contact2
where contact1.accountno = contact2.accountno and
contact1.accountno not in (select accountno from conthist where ondate >= '1/1/2007') and
contact1.key1 = 'Client' and
contact1.key4 = 'Chad'
order by company

To use this, from GoldMine’s main menu choose Lookup | SQL Queries then Copy & Paste the above in the top section then click Query. 

There are a couple of tweaks that you may want to make so this work optimally on your system.

First, the contact1.key1 = ‘Client’.  My GoldMine is configured so the Key1 field, normally located at the top of the lower-right quadrant, denotes client, prospect, etc.  You may want to change that to the field you use and/or the correct nomenclature, e.g. client, customer, etc.

(Here's a screen shot so you know what I mean by lower-right quadrant).

Second, the contact1.key4 = ‘Chad’.  My GoldMine is configured so the Key4 field, normally located in the 4^th position in the lower-right quadrant, denotes the account manager.  You may want to change that to the field you use and/or correct nomenclature.

Also, you may want to change the date, you can use any date in there that makes sense.

For more information on saving queries, using queries to make groups, etc. check out The GoldMine Guide to SQL Queries at http://www.thegmblog.com/sql4gm

To promote upgrades from GoldMine Standard Edition to GoldMine Corporate Edition, an existing GoldMine Standard Edition customer who is current on their UPP subscription may upgrade to Corporate Edition for $399 per seat, representing a $50 saving.  In addition, an existing GoldMine Standard Edition customer who upgrades and adds additional licenses of GoldMine Corporate Edition can do so at the same price of $399. 

Offer expires on April 30, 2007.   

Maintenance is based on list price and is required and payable on all licenses.

GoldMine 6.70.61214 brought Internet Explorer 7.0 compatibility to GoldMine.  It also brought a nasty bug.  If you complete an unscheduled activity, e.g. select Complete | Unscheduled Call or Complete | Pending Activity from the main menu you’ll find that the activity will often simply ‘disappear’.

Not Good.

Thework-around is to schedule a ‘dummy’ activity for every contact record.  A contact with an activity pending will not be subject to the above problem.  We can do this by scheduling any sort of an activity to the entire database.

I’ve scheduled an activity to the ‘Master’ user to overcome the bug for clients.  After an update to GoldMine 6.70.61214 is released, we can use the Auto-Update feature in the Activity List to delete all ‘dummy’ activities. 

Rolling back to GoldMine 6.70.50123 is also an option, however, since the new build of GoldMine, probably, 6.70.70226, will be released soon that will fix the problem, this is probably a good work-around at this time unless you're seeing additional problems.

PS - Since most of you are probably not using this release of GoldMine this is a non-notify post.

This isn't really GoldMine related, but it seems like a very nice, and, free service so I'm passing it on.  Very similar to Gotomypc, but without the monthly charge for the basic package...

Visit them at:

http://www.logmein.com

I've only been trying them out for a few days so if anyone has any comments, let us know!

Happy GoldMining,

Chad 

First, my apologies to readers in Africa, Oceania, and South America, for the “Northern Hemisphere-Centric” nature of the title!  But the tip will help you, whether you’re entering spring or fall!

… And it’s definitely March here in Detroit.  Yesterday, I was greeted with 1 ½ inches of snow on the car as I left in the morning, by the time I arrived home, the snow had melted, and I noticed the first tulip starting to make its way out of the ground!

I love Garrison Keillor’s quote, “God designed the month of March ‘to show people who don’t drink what a hangover feels like.’”  

So, the spring season has now begun and, it’s time for some Spring cleaning on our GoldMine database!  Or, for our friends in the Southern Hemisphere, you can do some fall cleaning as well.

Today’s tip is how to do a ‘Merge Purge on Tagged Records’.  When a merge/purge is done we combine two records into one.  Information on the contacts, details, referrals, history, links, opportunity, and project tabs will be combined into a single record.  For fields like contact, company, etc. the record we tag first will win.  If the first record tagged is missing information, say a fax number, but the second tagged record isn’t, the fax number will be populated in the surviving record.  This is my favorite method for removing duplicate records from my GoldMine!

First, we need to Tag two records.  This is done in the Contact Search Center by holding down the Control key and doing a Single-Left Click on the two records you want to merge together.

After tagging two records you’ll notice the title bar of your contact record will tell you that you have two tagged records.

There is no undo after a merge/purge so be sure you have the correct two records tagged.  Check and Double-Check!

If you want to un-tag the records simply close the Contact Search Center. 

With the two records tagged choose Tools | Merge/Purge Records | Merge Tagged Records from the main menu.

GoldMine will warn you…  

Click Yes to complete the Merge/Purge.

Happy GoldMining!

Hot off the presses!  GoldMine 6.70.70226 has been released.  This should fix the problem with disapearing history and provide Internet Explorer 7.0 compatibility.

I haven't seen an announcement from FRS but it's now available on the Partner Site, which, usually, means that it will be in General Availibility and available via Net Update very soon... 

I have not had a chance to test.  I'd let this sit for a week so someone else can find any new bugs and if the coast is clear and you're entitled to the update then upgrade.

One change that came up in testing was that Web Import now requires a password.  If you're using GoldMine's Web Import be sure you change your web import setup before upgrading! 

Ever find yourself wanting to email a large file and either you can't send or the recipient can't receive?  Here's a great, and free, way to get around that.

Just point your browser to:  http://www.transferbigfiles.com

If you need to quickly copy a contact’s basic information such as name, address, phone number, email address, etc. here’s how to do it.

From the Edit menu select Copy Contact Details.

From there you will be prompted to specify what contact information to copy.

Note that the first three options are exclusive… You can’t copy “Name, Address” and “Name, Title, Address”… Which makes sense, why would you want the contact’s name copied twice?

Once you’ve determined what information to copy simply click the Copy button.  From there you can Paste the information into just about any other application, such as, Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.