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Recent posts by our CRM Experts
Nov 02

GoldMine : Create your own LOOKUP.INI

By Uncategorized

One of the most powerful yet under-leveraged functions in GoldMine is the LOOKUP.INI, which has been available since the good old days of GoldMine for Windows. Think of it as a script file that GoldMine uses to update fields automatically. A “poor-mans” SQL trigger, if you will. It can also be used to “default” values on new contact records.

Let us suppose we want to make every newly entered record a “Prospect” by putting that value in our Key1 field.

If you have no LOOKUP.INI, then we must create one. Open Notepad and paste in the following text:

[AutoUpdate] NewRecord=Key1

[Key1] Otherwise=Prospect

The NewRecord entry under the [AutoUpdate] header specifies what fields should be evaluated when a new record is created.

Then the process skips to [Key1], the first item in our list.

When evaluating Key1, GoldMine then uses the Otherwise value, as no other instructions exist under [Key1].

As Otherwise=Prospect, the value of “Prospect” is autofilled into the Key1 field upon record creation.

You can add more default fields/values to your Lookup.Ini thusly;

[AutoUpdate] NewRecord=Key1, Key2

[Key1] Otherwise=Prospect

[Key2] Otherwise=House Account

When you are finished creating your Lookup.Ini, save it into your GoldMine folder with the specific name “Lookup.Ini”, then restart GoldMine to affect the changes.

ProTip: Lookup.INI instructions are also processed when importing contact records.

Nov 02

GoldMine : Display View Summaries

By Uncategorized

This is something I wish was turned on by default; the ability to see the “count” of records in virtually any window.

For example, within the Search Center, right click and select “Summary”. This will provide a simple count at the bottom left hand corner of the Search Center.

You can also right-click and select “Summary” from;

– The History Tab
– The Pending Tab
– The Activity List
– The Details Tab

…and almost any window in GoldMine that displays “rows” of data. Try it!

Nov 02

GoldMine : Accessing Filters from the Search Center

By Uncategorized

This is one of the most under-used parts of GoldMine. That is, the ability to preview a Filter directly from the Search Center.

To do this;

1. Open up your Search Center by clicking on “Search” from the top Toolbar.

2. Click on the Filters/Groups button on the top “strip” of the Search Center.

3. This will open up a Filters and Groups pane along the left hand side, in a tree format.

filterstree
4. To Preview any Filter or Group, simply double-click on it.

5. GoldMine will prompt you whether or not to apply a “limit” on the Previewed Filter or Group. This is not required. If you’d like to see the entire contents of the Filter / Group, simply click “No”.

filtersoptimization

Your Search Center should now be showing you all the Contacts within the Filter / Group.

Keep in mind that your Previewed Filter is “activated” within the Search Center at this point, and to Release it, you must eventually right-click within the Filters and Groups pane on the left hand side and select “Release Preview”.

Nov 01

Salesforce.com – App Launcher with Lightning Experience

By CRM, Salesforce CRM

As part of the Winter ’16 release all users get App Launcher with Lightning Experience. As an individual choice, each user can select whether they use the lightning experience or the classic experience.  However, the app launcher is intended to gain more users on the lightning experience, making it easier and easier to use.

To access App Launcher, go to upper right corner of the SalesForce page and click on the colored square blocks (you need to be in the Lightning Experience – get there under your name drop down if in the classic view).

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You will be displayed with in-lay screen with access to all Apps, all items (SalesForce objects) and link to AppExchange as well.

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If you have built custom applications, they will be in here as well.  You can also access various records as well within this screen such as opportunities and accounts, but you would most likely use the tabs at the top for this.

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Written by Corey Babka and Prabha Krishnamurthy

Nov 01

Salesforce.com – Opportunity Board with Lightning Experience

By CRM, Salesforce CRM, Uncategorized

The opportunity view in lightning has come a long way, allowing for different viewing of the opportunities (by stage).  Like a live dashboard, this view or “board” will help look all opportunities in a single board like format.  Note: This is not supported for “Recently Viewed” List view.

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Open an opportunity view like you would normally, but then change the list view to a different one (for example – all opportunities) and click on “Kanban” option in “Display As” icon on left.

You can get a view like this to view opportunities with their sales path. The records on the board though are reflective of the existing view chosen – just keep that in mind if you don’t see all the records that you would expect to see.

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Once in the view, you can click the opportunity name to edit or view more information, even assign a task or event to keep the opportunity moving.  As you can see here, each “warning symbol” actually represents an opportunity WITHOUT a next task.  Click that warning item to create a next action.

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Written by Corey Babka and Prabha Krishnamurthy

Nov 01

Salesforce.com – Manage activities and emails directly from Records with Lightning experience

By CRM, Salesforce CRM

With the Winter ’16 SalesForce release, email integration and activity logging is much easier for users, providing more sales productivity.

For example, on the account record you can directly log a call or create an email from the main screen.  To do so, use the right hand side of the screen where the activities and chatter are now located (unlike the older version where many of us used to hide the feed for more real estate).  Now, all pending and historical activities are shown on the right hand side:

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However, using those tabs (new task, log a call, email), you can then create an activity for history, send an email or set up a new task without going to a new screen (clicking the button like classic).

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Unfortunately the pop up screen views are no longer there in classic, something that I loved using, but this new format does allow for an easier use of SalesForce if on a laptop, tablet, or you need something quicker without navigating to a lot of screens.

Explore the lighting experience when you get a chance if you haven’t already.  You’ll find it quicker in some ways, more of a supplement in others but to get back to classic if you would rather, just click on your image on the upper right corner to travel back to safety.

Written by Corey Babka and Prabha Krishnamurthy

Oct 25

MSCRM – Use JavaScript to Show/Hide Sensitive Data

By CRM

In this post, I’ll show you how to use JavaScript to show fields for a set amount of time then hide them again. My scenario involves a client that needs sensitive customer data stored in their CRM but it doesn’t need to be visible on the screen at all times. I created a checkbox and some simple JavaScript so that they can choose when to see the data. The data will automatically switch back to hidden again after 5 seconds. The purpose of this is to ensure that the data isn’t inadvertently left visible on the screen. In most cases, they only need to use the data for identification purposes so 5 seconds is long enough.

First, create a checkbox (data type of Two Options) for your form and name it something like “Show Sensitive Data.” Add the new field to your form near the field containing the sensitive data and make sure the default visibility setting for your hidden field is unchecked.

visibility

Create and/or add a JavaScript library to your form and paste the following functions into it. Anything in quotations needs to be updated based on the names of your fields. For example, “new_showhidesensitivedata” is the schema name for my checkbox and “new_sensitive” is the schema name for the field containing sensitive info.

//used with showSensData
function checkSensData() {
    var check = Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“new_showhidesensitivedata”).getValue();
    var option = Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get(“new_showhidesensitivedata”);
    if (check) {
        option.setValue(false);
        Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“new_showhidesensitivedata”).fireOnChange();
    }
}

//show or hide sensitive data fields based on checkbox value. waits 5 secs before auto-hiding
function showSensData(){
    var check = Xrm.Page.getAttribute(“new_showhidesensitivedata”).getValue();
    var option = Xrm.Page.data.entity.attributes.get(“new_showhidesensitivedata”);
    var controlSens = Xrm.Page.getControl(“new_sensitive”);
    if(check){
        controlSens.setVisible(true);
        setTimeout(checkSensData, 5000);
    }
    else{
        controlSens.setVisible(false);
    }
}

The function “checkSensData” will only be called by the main function to uncheck the box automatically for us. The main function “showSensData” should be set up to trigger on change of the checkbox field. Register for next month’s Dynamics CRM webinar to see it in action!

trigger

 

Oct 25

MSCRM – Shorten that Social Pane!

By CRM

This tip is for the Dynamics CRM newbies. When you’re customizing the out-of-the-box forms, almost all of them have the Social Pane section where you can see Posts, Activities, and Notes. By default, this area tends to take up a lot of space on the form and can therefore lead to a lot of unwanted white space. If you open the properties and go to the Formatting tab, you’ll see there is no option to specify the number of rows that it should occupy.

activitiestab

Another bug that I notice sometimes is that when I change the default tab through the properties, nothing changes on the form. The original default tab remains.

defaulttab

The solution is to completely remove the original Activities section that appears on the form. Don’t worry, we can get it back. Once you remove it, go to the Insert tab at the top of the form editor window and click the item that says “Notes.”

notes

This will get the activities area back on your form. Modify the properties as you like and you’ll see that on the Formatting tab, we can now specify the number of rows. Woohoo!

rowlayout

Oct 25

MSCRM – Real-Time Workflow Alerts

By CRM

In Microsoft Dynamics CRM, there are two types of timing for executing workflows: background and real-time. You can read about the details of each online but the main difference is that the steps of real-time workflows are executed as part of a single transaction whereas background workflows are scheduled by the asynchronous process server. Don’t worry, the rest of the post is not this technical 🙂 A real-time workflow can be used to alert the user when a specific condition is met. The workflow will also stop as a result.

In my example, we have a very strict sales process dictating that the opportunity must be at least 30 days old before it can be closed. Your real-time workflow could run anytime the status of your opportunity changes to closed. If the age of the opportunity is less than 30 days, an alert will appear with a message of your choice. Now the appearance of the alert is not very friendly since it says “Business Process Error” but the mechanism can still be useful once you get past that.

alert

Oct 25

ZOHO CRM – New Template Features

By CRM, Software No Comments

Template organization just got a whole lot better!  Here are four convenient new features in the template screen to help manage your templates…

  1. Favoriting Templates – click the star icon next to a template to make it a favorite.  It will automatically be placed in the favorite folder – a great way to collect the templates you use most often so that you can quickly get to the ones you need.
  2. Re-ordering Template Folders – Click the folder icon at the bottom left of the template screen to re-order your template folders, moving more frequently accessed folders towards the top.
  3. Filter Templates by Module – use this to quickly find the template you’re looking for by seeing just the templates in one module.
  4. View Associated Items – see the list of other items (e.g., Alerts) that are associated with the template

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