The link between GoldMine Premium and Microsoft Word has a minor change to the DDE command line which is inserted with GoldMine Merge fields.  This effects whether or not the prompt in MS Word will pop-up when you show a template with GoldMine merge code.

Prior to the change, if you had the “General Settings” in your MS Word checked to “Update Automate Links at Open” when you opened or previewed a document with GoldMine Merge Codes you’d be prompted with the question of “Do you want to update this document with the data from the linked files?”  That does not happen with the new link due to a slight change in the DDE link that the Word template inserts with merge fields.

Some users want this feature back so they can merge and print a document template from within the GoldMine Document Management Center without even having to open MS Word.  If you want that feature back, you simpy need to Toggle Field Codes->and put the word AUTO in after the text for DDE.

Example:
Before – {DDE ….}
After – {DDEAuto ….}

If you have no idea why this matters I encourage you to have a First Direct GoldMine expert show you a trick or two of the things you can do with documents and GoldMine.  We even do a webinar on this topic if your interested – Check out:

Document Management Tricks with GoldMine – How to work more effectively as an organization through better document management procedures
(Click on the name to see more information on this event.)

For years GoldMine users have wanted an “Undo” capability when editing GoldMine emails.  Finally … we have it!!  Just use the standard “windows hot key function” CTRL-Z to “step back” your edits.  You won’t find it on the local menu or the toolbar in email client, but rest assured that GMPE 9.x it works.  Prove it to yourself.

Did you know that GoldMine handles user-to-user email attachments differently than Internet email.

What are GoldMine user-to-user emails?

GoldMine user-to-user emails are emails that are sent directly from one GoldMine user to another GoldMine user without using an email address.  These inter-office emails
are sent from one GoldMine user and the email ends up directly in the recipients GoldMine inbox.

By default, GoldMine does not send a copy of the attached file when sending email to a GoldMine user, but rather simply creates a link in the email that points to the location of the originally attached file.  For users sending attachments from their local machines vs a networked location that all users can access, the attachment will not be accessible to the email recipient.

Here’s how you can change that:

We learned from the manufacturer of GoldMine that the NetUpdate for Premium Edition version 9 is working for some customers but not others, unfortunately, and it can be difficult to troubleshoot.

FrontRange suggests that you try to netupdate as follows:

Connect to netupdate (help, update GM) with your support username (email address) and password.  (Forgot password – you can look up on the support site).

http://www.frontrange.com/Support/Login.aspx

If you have any support site login issues, you can contact customer care at 1-800-755-2100, option 3 (Support), option 2 (Customer Care) or email to customer.support@frontrange.com

If you cannot netupdate:

Download product from the download center: http://www.frontrange.com/Support/Login.aspx and then email customer.support@frontrange.com and include HDA, request license code and media if needed or call Customer Care at 1-800-755-2100, option 3 (Support), option 2 (Customer Care),

You are welcome to work through it with technical support at FrontRange as this type of support is included with your maintenance contract and you can call the 800 number above to start.

A few of the common issues are listed below for your reference:

There are a lot of security issues when customers try to connect from servers as netupdate looks at their license file, so errors occur here.

Some customers have success by downloading the update from another machine and not the server, with lower security settings.

Sometimes there is a lot of traffic on the manufacturer’s server and users cannot connect or receive a “timeout”.

When you try to connect multiple times (over and over) you can receive a message that you are already on the most recent version.

Usually waiting a few hours resolves this problem.

Another thing to make sure of is that the you are using Internet Explorer- no other browser is supported by NetUpdate.

I hope this information has been helpful.  Please let me know if I can assist you further.

For customers of First Direct Corp. with a support account we are pleased to handle your upgrade for you or assist you.  If you’d like our assistance please call First Direct at 845-221-3800 or email support@1stdirect.com

To remove Acrobat Toolbar Buttons from Office 2003:

1. ChooseStart > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs.
2. Select Acrobat Professional and click Change/Remove.
3. Click Next.
4. Select Modify and click Next.
5. Expand the Create Adobe PDF menu, then select the Acrobat PDF Maker option, and change the status to “This feature will not be available”.
6. Click Next, and then click Finish to complete the process and allow Acrobat to remove the PDFMaker component.

To remove Acrobat menu items from Office 2003:

1. Open any Microsoft Office 2003 application, such as Word or Outlook.
2. Right-click on the toolbar area and select “Customize…”.
3. Click on the “Toolbars” tab.
4. Select “Menu Bar”.
5. Click Reset.
6. Repeat steps 1-5, as needed, for other Office applications.

This post is intended to offer some highlights about features I and others like about the way 9.x works.

With the release of GoldMine Premium 9.x there’s a a lot to like and some things not to like.  To read an announcement of the GoldMine Premium 9.x release click here.   A good place to find many of the improvements is on the release notes.  I’ve all posted a page on our GMS site where we’re starting to list some less attractive “findings” about 9.x to provide GoldMine administrators with a helpful head’s up.

This post of things I like is a work-in-progress and today is JUST the start of it.  I’m hoping you and others will add comments about what you LIKE!  (Please put your negative findings on the “head’s -up” page.)

[Note:  I do a webinar on "What's New with GoldMine Premium 9.x" - if you'd like to attend this free event - click here. ]

This list is not intended to be a detailed explanation of any feature.  These are simply tidbits to encourage you to check them out further in what ever way you choose.  So, here we go — Finish the following sentence:  In GoldMine Premium 9.x I LIKE ….

1. That I can view, edit, and print a merge form in the GoldMine Document Management Center Preview Pane without switching over to MS Word.  I suggest you add some print options to your MS Word 2007 Ribbon in the application header by the Orb to make this function more accessible in the Document Management Preview Pane.   In addition, you’ll have to have the “Update Merge Field Links” checked on within Microsoft Words General section under Advanced Option in order to tell word to update the GoldMine Merge fields in your GoldMine Merge Template.

2. I like that I can use dashboards to see leads created during filtered time frames, such as the last 30 days, and then click to go to any particular lead on the list

3. I like that GoldMine works with Windows 7 and Office 2007 applications on my desktop

4. I like that I can see information on a GoldMine record from an Outlook email or Calendar

5. I like that a GoldMine administrator can edit the Outlook set-up for all users on the network without having to log into their machine

6. Because I do a lot of configuration of custom fields for my clients I like that fact that GoldMine now provides a master list of all field label names and database names,   Go to Tools > Configure > Record Types and click All Fields in the left panel.  A list of all contact database fields and labels will be shown, for view or export to Excel.

7. I user the Activity List feature in GoldMine all the time, and love it, I like that the Preview Pane now offers a hyperlink to the contact record.

8. As a GoldMine Administrator I like all the fixes to little but annoying details and further security enhancements. (There are so many to list that I just say see the GoldMine 9.x release notes.)

9. For years GoldMine users have wanted an “Undo” capability when editing GoldMine emails.  Finally … we have it!!  Just use the standard “windows hot key function” CTRL-Z to “step back” your edits.  You won’t find it on the local menu or the toolbar in email client, but rest assured that GMPE 9.x it works.  Prove it to yourself.

There’s more to follow but let’s here from others.  Please add your comments below!

Here’s a list of helpful documentation that is handy for you:

GoldMine 9.0 Release Notes

GoldMine 9.0 API Integration Guide

GoldMine 9.0 User Guide

GoldMine 9.0 Install Guide

GoldMine 9.0 Administrators Guide

GoldMine 9.0 Compatability Matrix

Would you like First Direct’s assistance?  Call us at 845-221-3800 or email info@1stdirect.com

With any major release it’s a story of the “good, bad, and the ugly.”  GoldMine 9.x is out of the gate and now we’ll all start to find things that may be intended or otherwise, but which might be helpful to be aware of either going into the upgrade or after the fact.  This post is intended to provide First Direct customers and GMS subscribers alike, an opportunity to post their findings of things to watch out for.

To begin with, it goes without saying that MANY of the details you’ll find are already listed in the “Read Me” and “Release Notes,“  but I don’t have any problem with redundancy – so feel free to comment on any points that may be listed in those documents if you feel that warrant reinforcement.

By the way, First Direct upgraded our 15 plus year old legacy GoldMine and for the most part things went very smoothly – an extremely encouraging sign.  Surely there will be issues, an no doubt the FrontRange Support desk is hopping with maintenance calls!  For First Direct support customers we are happy to do your upgrade for you or with you, so please don’t hesitate to ask!

Here’s the start of the “Upgrade Heads-up List”  in the order they are posted:

1. The first thing you may notice after the upgrade is that your screens (primary and custom views) have fields with labels which are cut off.  That’s because in the last versions of Premium if the “Label Size” in the “Properties” of a field was less that the actual label length older versions of Premium would still display the whole label so long as an adjacent field did not overlap it.  Now, in PE 9. the view respects the layout length.  The result is some of your existing field labels maybe be cropped.  The fix is simple, albeit a little time consuming.  Just edit the properties and adjust the length of the Label.

2. The stock “Dashboards” that come with PE are based on assumptions of where you’ve stored certain data, such as the Account Manager, the Source, etc.  Since many firms have modified their fields and stored data differently, the stock dashboards may appear to be functioning improperly.   In fact they are functioning the way they were designed.  So, the answer is that you may need to edit or even redo several of the dashboards.  Going into the designer is NOT something “users” should do without the necessary knowledge and experience, nor may most non-master rights users even have the permission rights to do so.  By the same token, this represents a very good chance for the GoldMine Administrator to get practical experience.  I suggest you clone (copy) any dashboard before you do any editing to play it safe and maintain an original to go back to.

3. You can not edit the contact associated with an existing scheduled activity.  I believe this must be a bug.  But at this time, if you schedule an activity with a Primary contact and you want to change it to one of the additional contacts you have to pretty much have to kill the activity and do it over again.

4. In the old “Outlook Link” (aka. GISMO) one could “Link All Emails from a Sender” at once to the respective GoldMine Record.  That feature appears to be lost/dropped in the new GoldMine Integration.  Please give it back!

5. There’s quite a few issues with the new Microsoft Outlook integration.  I’m not going to list them all, nor do I even know them all.  FrontRange is giving us the impression when we call about a problem that they’re aware of it so it’s our sense that FRS is dealing with it and is going to have to put some things back to development.  We are expecting an update to address the OL  integration but we don’t know when or what it will fix yet.  (Rumor has it that there’s a “hot fix” that is just about to become available that is going to address some performance issues.  Stay tuned … I hope to be testing it soon.)

Some may have fixes you can apply now, for example:

• Some have had a problem with linking emails.  Turns out the solution to search the user’s Windows\System32 folder for the “gm7s32.dll” file and delete it. We did that and now it’s linking emails properly.
• I was getting a “Data Error” when I opened my calendar that was synced over from my GoldMine calendar.  The problem turned out to have to do with a data conversion of sales forecast dollar amounts in order to display them in Outlook.  Easy work around (for now) – just go into the Link Set-up turn off the “option” to display “forecasted sales” on the calendar pane.

6. In Case Management the look-up list we had for the “Offering” field was lost with the upgrade.  Not a big deal … just retyped the choices.

7. You may already know upgrading to GMPE v9 requires a re-licensing of the product. But be aware not only will your GoldMine server need a new GoldMine license issued, but any synchronizing remotes would also need new undocked licenses. The new license for your main server is issued to you automatically during the NetUpdate process. We have found some case where the new licenses generated for remotes didn’t “stick” and had to be re-entered several times until they finally “took.” We have a case where a remote is consistently getting transfer set retrieval errors after upgrading to GMPE v9.

NOTE:  Trying to update using NetUpdate – click here for a word about that!

(While you’re considering the negatives don’t overlook the positives!  Click the link here to see what I LIKE too.)

8. Little Peeves – I’m going to start to list in this paragraph trivia issues that are nuisances or maybe bad design/programming, but not necessarily bugs:  a) To close the windows/tabs you practically need to be a surgeon to click on the “x” – come on FRS let’s make the target a bit more forgiving.  b) Don’t display the “Actual Close Date” when creating a new opportunity.  It’s confusing to users!

What’s your experience?  This post is a work in progress.  More to come …

Here’s a list of helpful documentation that is handy for you:

GoldMine 9.0 Release Notes

GoldMine 9.0 API Integration Guide

GoldMine 9.0 User Guide

GoldMine 9.0 Install Guide

GoldMine 9.0 Administrators Guide

GoldMine 9.0 Compatability Matrix

Would you like First Direct’s assistance?  Call us at 845-221-3800 or email info@1stdirect.com

FrontRange Solutions announced the release of the latest update of GoldMine Premium Edition – GMPE 9.x. This update includes many significant enhancements.

Product Features include:

• Configurable CRM Dashboards
• Compatible with the latest Microsoft® technologies, including in-depth integration with Microsoft® Outlook®
• Modern look and feel makes GoldMine Premium Edition easier to learn and use
• New Customer Service and Support module improves customer satisfaction
• Universal Search and Contact Search centers enable users to find GoldMine information easily
• Additional business process support to manage your CRM needs more effectively
• Complete CRM customer lifecycle management!

GoldMine Premium Edition 9.0 helps improve product stability and performance with hundreds of product enhancements, as well as administrative, security and installation improvements.

The upgrade to GoldMine Premium Edition includes Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 for better performance as your client information, users and database grows. Plus, since it is native SQL, it is more reliable than ever, and GMPE is Windows VISTA® and Windows® 7 compatible!

To learn more:

• Read the manufacturer’s Release Notes
• View “What’s New”
• Find out about special promotional offers
• Sign up for a personal demonstration or online webinar
• What I Like – comments about what people like in GMPE 9.x

Note to Existing GoldMine Users:

If you are already on the Premium Edition and current on annual maintenance you are entitled to receive the update at NO CHARGE. You may wish to consider holding off just a bit to give First Direct and others a chance to “test the waters” so you can better plan for a smooth update experience.  Click here to see a post about findings on the upgrade.

If you are on an older edition of GoldMine speak to First Direct Corp. about special pricing offers and other details involved with an upgrade. If you would like to have a salesperson contact you click here.

Considering GoldMine for the First Time?

Whether you need 3 users, 5 users, 10 users, or a hundred users, First Direct Corp. is a great source for your system. And, now is a great time to introduce GoldMine CRM to you organization! Speak to us today!

Here’s a list of helpful documentation that is handy for you:

GoldMine 9.0 Release Notes

GoldMine 9.0 API Integration Guide

GoldMine 9.0 User Guide

GoldMine 9.0 Install Guide

GoldMine 9.0 Administrators Guide

GoldMine 9.0 Compatability Matrix

Would you like First Direct’s assistance?  Call us at 845-221-3800 or email info@1stdirect.com



On May 20th the GoldMine Product Team announced that in testing the latest GMPE 9.0 build FrontRange found issues that require additional investigation.   As a result they’ve decided to postpone the release of9.x, which was previously anticipated in May.   A target release date was not offered, and First Direct will announce the 9.x product release once it happens.  While we all are disappointed about this delay, frankly it is better they push back the release to address any serious issues they are aware of.

There’s more to a successful QuoteWerks implementation than just taking the CD out of the box and installing the software. Here is a list of things to consider when planning your QuoteWerks roll-out. We at First Direct are here to help you with your QuoteWerks project. We can assist you with the following tasks and help you get up to speed efficiently and as quickly as possible. The items in GREEN are items that we consider your “homework”. Having these items ready, or at least giving them some thought, really lets us hit the ground running.

Consider Technical Aspects of the Installation

• Make sure all systems meet the QuoteWerks system requirements.
• Determine if users will be QW “nodes” on the LAN, or QW remote sync users.
• QW install wizard needs to be run under a Windows account with administrator rights to the local machine.
• If you have QW Corporate Edition and plan to host to MS SQL Server backend note the SQL software/licensing is NOT included with QuoteWerks.
• If on QW Professional or Corporate Editions and plan on remote sync users, make sure those users have LAN or VPN connection to the QW server.

User Accounts and Permissions

• Have a list of all users’: Full names, contact info, and email account settings.
• Determine what users should have full admin access to QW.
• Decide what features/functions should be taken away from “regular” users.

Products/Services Price Lists

• Determine if you want a single product price list with products from all vendors, or a separate price list for each vendor.
• Gather any current price lists you have in electronic form (Excel files, Access Database, QuickBooks, etc…) in preparation for import into QuoteWerks.
• Decide on Pricing Method(s) to use. (i.e. – Discount from list, markup from cost, fixed, volume based, etc…)
• If you plan on using QW’s link to online vendors (Synnex, Ingram Micro, TechData, etc…) make sure you establish the account information and enroll in the required services offered by those vendors.

Quote/Order Layouts

• When it comes to the design of your Quote and Order layouts think about what information, logos, and verbiage you want to appear on these documents.
• Gather existing sample quotes/order forms that you currently use if you feel these would provide a good starting point or illustration of what you need.
• Any logos/images you would like to use should be of print quality and in an image file format (jpeg, gif, bmp, etc…)