Back in GoldMine 6.x, GoldMine administrators were introduced to a new feature called User Override Controls that allows administrators to centrally control/override what the users set for their preferences. This is done from the GM.ini under the [GoldMine] section via the [User-Override:<user.ini section>] header.

Through the GM.ini, the GoldMine Administrator, can set a global setting presence for your GoldMine.

For example, to disable all users access to the GoldMine taskbar the GM.ini would read as follows:

[GoldMine]
[User-OverRide:gmbar]
show_gmbar=0

This next one sets the GoldMine default tabs that are to be displayed for all users. You are defining a
global setting for the default GoldMine tabs, overriding any user selected tab order.

[User-OverRide:GoldMine]
RoTabItems1 = 1;2;4;5;6;7;8;9;10;11;12;13;14;

These overrides are a great way for the GoldMine Administrator to enforce company wide standards for their GoldMine.

NOTE: Any override settings configured by the Administrator in the GM.ini will ALWAYS override a user’s settings, even if they attempt to change their local preferences – GoldMine will never apply the username.ini settings if a corresponding user-override exists in the GM.ini.

Here’s  how to rename your GoldMine tabs to something more meaningful to your organization. For example, if you use the GM+Views tab, you might want to rename it to Intranet, or Web – this makes the tab name look more appropriate, as the GM+Views tab is a built in web browser for GoldMine.

You can add the following string to each USERNAME.ini file and it will override the default tab names on a user by user basis:

ROTabs1=Summary,Fields,INTRANET,Notes,Contacts,Details,Referrals,Pending,History,Links,Members,Tracks,Opptys,Projects,Tickets,Events,Licenses,Products,Renewal,Sales,Sent

Or, alternatively, you can change every users tab names by adding the following to the GM.ini file:

[User-OverRide:GoldMine]
ROTabs1=Summary,Fields,INTRANET,Notes,Contacts,Details,Referrals,Pending,History,Links,Members,Tracks,Opptys,Projects,Tickets,Events,Licenses,Products,Renewal,Sales,Sent

As you can see, you need to just change the tab name to the required text. Simple as that!

NOTE:  Adding the ROTabs1 field to the .ini file won’t affect the ROTabItems1 values. The ROTabItems1 option holds the order in which each users tabs are displayed – and fickle users will get angry if you change it! All we are doing here is changing the default name mappings, NOT the order of the tabs.

With the release of GoldMine Premium 9.x there will be a signficant improvement in the integration between GoldMine and Outlook.  And, FrontRange expects more users to use Outlook clients in conjunction with their GoldMine CRM.  As part of this progression, FrontRange Solutions has new licensing requirements for users of this integration.

In previous versions of GoldMine, O licenses were used to extend minimal GoldMine functionality (known as “GISMO”) to Outlook users without using a GoldMine E license. In version 9.0, FrontRange Solutions is greatly increasing the GoldMine functionality inside Outlook, with additional linking options and ability to display GoldMine data in the context of Outlook e-mail messages, contacts, and calendar items. This functionality will consume an E license when used within Outlook.

In version 9.0, users will have the option of using Outlook without consuming a GoldMine license, by unchecking the “Enable GoldMine integration” box that is shown within GoldMine Plus for Microsoft Outlook.

Because of this new approach FrontRange will no longer be selling GISMO unlimited user licenses effective immediately.  In addition, they  will no longer be renewing the maintenance on the product upon expiration of the current maintenance period.  There will be no refunds issued as they will continue to support the product.

GoldMine Premium still ships with licenses for the Outlook Link.  And, you can install the GISMO link on users workstations even if they are not going to be logged into GoldMine in order for those users to link incoming and outgoing emails to records in the GoldMine database.  Previously, users would not use up a GoldMine license unless they actually logged into GoldMine.  FrontRange has changed the licensing with GISMO and now all users of GISMO will take up a GoldMine license.

FRS released build 8.5.2.9 on 1/25/10.  This fixes addresses a few important issues. 
WHAT’S FIXED IN GOLDMINE PREMIUM EDITION 8.5.2 HOTFIX 1

Note:  GoldMine Premium Edition 8.5.2 Hotfix 1 also provides the fixes and enhancements included with GoldMine Premium Edition 8.5.0, 8.5.1, and 8.5.2, listed below.

ID # Issue Description
112858  Link to opportunity or project is broken when sending an e-mail message
112855  E-mail created from Opportunity or Project Manager’s Influencer/Contacts tab has empty Regarding field

Skimping on hardware makes no sense today.  The cost of virtually any piece of computer hardware from laptops to servers to switches & hubs has dropped so much over the last several years that you can make a case for replacing any piece of equipment that is slowing your users down and limiting their productivity.  People should be able to work as fast as they can go and when the reason they are going slower than they want to or are able to is because of your computer equipment then something should be done about it.  People and their time are expensive – hardware is cheap!  

With many of the new Windows applications today the demands have never been greater on your computer and network resources.  If you want to enjoy the robust functionality of GoldMine Premium, let alone your new Microsoft Office and other Windows applications give them adequate resources.  Just meeting the minimum system requirements of one application is self-defeating if you plan to run multiple applications simultaneously like everyone does.   More computing horsepower will give users the high-performance they need to perform more highly for you!

It is seemingly inevitable with computers that when things can go wrong, they will go wrong.  It is also seemingly inevitable that this will happen at the worst possible moment.  You’ve been trying to get that important quote sent out to your customer or you’ve won an all-expenses paid trip to Mars and you haven’t received the driving directions the travel agency is saying they sent you. 

Regardless of which situation you find yourself in, it is possible that your E-mail has stopped working, but how can you tell what is wrong?  Let’s look at some possible causes when using GoldMine as your E-mail client.  The latest versions of GoldMine support something called IMAP, but the majority of us still use GoldMine as a POP E-mail client so we’ll focus on this.

Typical POP E-mail clients support two protocols – POP and SMTP.  The POP protocol is used for retrieving E-mail and SMTP is used for sending E-mail.  If GoldMine has stopped retrieving E-mail, the first thing you need to check is whether or not you can connect to the POP server that holds your E-mail account.  One way to do this is to click the “Online” folder in GoldMine’s E-mail center and watch the middle bar between the E-mail list window and the preview window.  If GoldMine cannot connect to your POP server, you will see an error message in this bar.  If it does connect you will see it requesting message sizes and, if you have E-mails waiting to be picked up, you will see it counting and see E-mails in the listing window.  If it returns back to idle without displaying any E-mails you do not have messages waiting to be retrieved.

If you see an error message, the cause is generally one of three things or a combination.  One of the three is that GoldMine cannot connect to your E-mail server because the authentication information you have entered in your E-Mail options is incorrect.  Second, you could be using the wrong POP server name and, lastly, you could be using an incorrect port.  The default POP port is 110, but some providers will require the use of an alternate.  In all cases you need to verify with your E-mail administrator or Internet Service Provider that you are using the correct POP server name, the correct username/password for your E-mail account and the correct port.  (Perhaps they changed settings on the server but you have not updated your GoldMine Internet preferences.)

Sending E-mail uses the SMTP protocol.  GoldMine will almost always pop up an error message if there is a problem sending an E-mail, rather than you having to look some place special to monitor the process.  Many of the things that hamper the retrieval of E-mail can apply to the sending of E-mail.  Things to check would be the correct SMTP server name and the correct username/password if your E-mail administrator or Internet Service Provider requires you to authenticate to send E-mail.  Many now do.  SMTP also uses a specific port (25 by default).  You may need to change to a different SMTP port depending on your provider’s requirements.

The last common SMTP problem is not using an encrypted connection (SSL) when it is required by your provider.  Some providers and E-mail administrators are now requiring the use of SSL connections.  The latest versions of GoldMine support SSL connections and this should be used if your provider supports it. Older versions of GoldMine do not support SSL, however there is a program called STUNNEL which can be used to enable an SSL connection.

As database administrators struggle to keep email addresses in databases clean and accurate, web site form validation becomes key. At this point, the state of email address validation is poor. Feel free to prove it to yourself: go to your favorite site that requires registration, and enter dlkjfdklj@djflkjdlkj.com as your email address. More often than not, it will let you through no problem. Keep in mind that not only is it letting you through, but it is also storing that email address in an internal database. These databases get littered with bad addresses, which companies usually handle in one of two ways:

1. Ignore the problem and send emails anyway. This results in many bounced emails, and possibly getting blacklisted as a SPAMMER.

2. Hire temps to painstakingly pick out individual bad email addresses, or designate the duty to internal staff, this is a costly and time-consuming endeavor. Additionally, this is a reactive, not proactive, solution.

What you should be thinking at this point is “Why not stop the bad email address before it gets into your database?” It is essential to remove undeliverable email addresses and keep a clean mailing list. List hygiene will help you avoid sending out newsletters, broadcasts, and promotions to invalid addresses. Otherwise you’ll get tons of bounced messages. It’s not a secret that ISP mail servers can block senders’ IP for recurring sending to invalid email addresses.

As you might guess, there are different approaches to validating email addresses on web site forms. Generally, there is an inverse relationship between ease of implementation and quality of validation.

The following is an overview of the various levels of email address validation.

1. Base Level Validation – This is the type of email validation that most current web sites use. Code will generally be in-line and simply look for a @ and a . in the email address. This is extremely inadequate and needs to be upgraded. The reason that most sites use this method is that it is easy to code.

2. Base Domain Level Validation – This email validation is a step up from Base Level Validation, but still extremely inadequate. This level of validation only requires that the domain name of the email address be a valid registered domain. Many domain names are registered but cannot receive email. Additionally, the majority of registered domain names are not currently active mail servers. This is usually implemented as code or a component that does domain name registration lookups or possibly even standard DNS lookups.

3. MX Domain Level Validation – This email validation is currently the highest practical level. It is not 100% foolproof, but is a marked improvement over any lower form of validation. This level guarantees that the domain name of the email address is not only registered, but also that it is a live Internet host that can actually receive email. This is generally considered as the base practical level of email validation.

These days data is heaping around us at an alarming rate. We must strive to keep it clean and scrubbed if we expect it to be a productive and useful asset.

The following is a FREE Email Address Verification tool that uses all three of the above mentioned validation/verification methods. Enter the email address you would like to check and it will tell you if it is valid or not. If you would like to have your own website setup to validate email addresses before they are imported into your GoldMine database, or online database, contact First Direct Corp. today – Submit A Request

Finally, below is a SQL Query that you can paste into your GoldMine SQL Query tab and it will return all of the malformed email addresses in your system. This will help clean up the email addresses already in your GoldMine system. For instance it will return all email address missing the @ symbol or the .com or that have characters that are not allowed.

Note: Works with SQL based GoldMine systems only.
Because this query is looking for special characters it doesn’t display properly in a web page – please cut and paste the text of the query from here: Find Malformed Email Addresses

SELECT
accountno, cs.contsupref AS ‘E-Mail Address’
FROM
contsupp cs
WHERE
(cs.CONTACT = ‘E-mail Address’)
AND (SELECT
CASE
WHEN cs.contsupref IS NULL
OR CHARINDEX(‘@.’,cs.contsupref) > 0
OR CHARINDEX(‘.@’,cs.contsupref) > 0
OR CHARINDEX(‘..’,cs.contsupref) > 0
OR CHARINDEX(‘”‘, cs.contsupref) <> 0
OR CHARINDEX(’(‘, cs.contsupref) <> 0
OR CHARINDEX(’)’, cs.contsupref) <> 0
OR CHARINDEX(’,’, cs.contsupref) <> 0
OR CHARINDEX(’< ‘, cs.contsupref) <> 0
OR CHARINDEX(’>’, cs.contsupref) <> 0
OR CHARINDEX(’;’, cs.contsupref) <> 0
OR CHARINDEX(’:’, cs.contsupref) <> 0
OR CHARINDEX(’[', cs.contsupref) <> 0
OR CHARINDEX(’]‘, cs.contsupref) <> 0
OR RIGHT(RTRIM(cs.contsupref),1) = ‘.’
OR CHARINDEX(’ ‘,LTRIM(RTRIM(cs.contsupref))) > 0
OR LEN(cs.contsupref)-1 < = CHARINDEX(‘.’, cs.contsupref)
OR cs.contsupref LIKE ‘%@%@%’
OR cs.contsupref NOT LIKE ‘%@%.%’ THEN 0
ELSE 1
END) = 0

First Direct can offer other email validation strategies. If you’d like to work with us – send us an email.

If the GoldMine Administrator doesn’t take responsibility for helping the firm to deploy SQL queries this feature in GoldMine will probably not get done; Which would be a real shame because this is one of the most valuable features in GoldMine Corporate and Premium Editions!

I’ve written about SQL queries in previous issues of the GM-Success.com newsletter.  Here’s a link to a “Managing Smarter” article on SQL queries that appeared in GM-Success as well. In the last issue I even published a case study about a firm that transformed their business with GoldMine Premium and SQL queries (Read case).  

Because SQL Queries can search any of the tables in GoldMine (history, calendar, fields, opportunities, etc.) at once, you can get to information that is not available through the ‘out-of-the-box’ views GoldMine gives you otherwise. 

Here’s an example of an SQL query:

The query below returns completed activities in the past 30 days with an activity code of “DEM.”

Select conthist.ondate, conthist.userid, conthist.actvcode, contact1.company, contact1.contact, conthist.ref
from conthist
join Contact1 on contact1.accountno=conthist.accountno
where (conthist.ondate <= getdate() and conthist.ondate > getdate() – 30) and conthist.actvcode=’DEM’
order by conthist.ondate

The query below returns pending calls older than the today with an activity code of “SI.”

select convert(varchar(10), cal.OnDate, 101 )as Date, cal.userid, cal.ref,
contact1.Company, contact1.key1 as ‘Record Type’, contact1.key5 as ‘Classification’,
contact1.key1 as ‘Source’
from contact1
inner join cal on cal.accountno=contact1.accountno
where cal.actvcode=’SI’ and cal.rectype=’C’ and datediff(day, cal.ondate,
getdate()) > 0
Order by cal.ondate

With SQL queries you can select records you want and specify the information you want displayed.  There’s much more that’s possible with SQL queries – so it really calls for a combination of technical skills and your imagination to achieve what is most useful to your business.  

If your organization is not using SQL queries – why not?!  “We don’t need them” is not valid — there are just too many good reasons to be using SQL queries with GoldMine!  By the same token, if the answer is “we don’t understand how to implement them,” then please contact First Direct Corp. and let us give you a hand.  Email us at info@1stdirect.com or call (800)935-4386.

When is it time to backup?  BEFORE it’s too late! 

If suddenly there was a power surge and the hard drive(s) on your server crashed, what would you do?  Would you reach for your most recent backup and restore it with confidence? 

What can I say, if you do not have a backup plan in place and haven’t tested its validity, you are an accident waiting to happen.  Trust me, I know.  If you get bitten, you will not ever let your backups lag again.

Consultants have many tools and tricks to use, but if these fail us, the ultimate fall back is your backup.  A few weeks ago, I received a phone call from a client whose GoldMine was not working.  It was GoldMine 3.2… it came to me because I’m the only one who remembers the 10 year old product!  I asked if they had a backup.  The answer was, “No, if I did, why would I need you?”  We then talked about magic and miracles and why not to take the chance of not having a backup of a customized, no-longer-supported product.  They could have easily restored from a backup and saved the expense of calling me.  Needless to say, I was able to recover their GoldMine – but I made my point about backing up.  I also have a new client that trusts me.

Within some of the GoldMine dBase products, there exists a backup function that I do not recommend.  While it does do a backup, it is not consistent and doesn’t give the flexibility of restoring an individual file if that is all that’s necessary.  My recommendations for backing up are listed below.

There are many parts of Goldmine that should be backed up.  Backing up doesn’t have to be complicated.  Making a copy of a few folders and putting them in another place like another machine, an external hard drive, etc. can be very effective.  Here’s how to handle a dBase installation of GoldMine:

1.  
   1. GoldMine’s root folder – wherever the software has been installed.  For a typical single user, that may be at c:\program files\goldmine.  But for a networked user, it resides in a shared folder on the server.  A backup of this will take all of the “exe’s” and “dll’s” necessary to recover the program side of GoldMine.
   2. In a dBase environment, the files in the GMBase folder and also the contact set folders being used should be backed up.  This folder can be found in the root of GoldMine – ie c:\program files\goldmine\GMBase.  In a typical install of this type, a common folder is added and contains all of the database files used in the Common Contact Set.  If you’ve created others on their own, include these in your backup.  Using the same example, the Common Contact Set can be found at c:\program files\goldmine\common. 

For Microsoft SQL installations, it can be a little more complicated.  While the first step listed above will also copy the necessary program files and should be done, the database backup is quite different.  You may be lucky enough to own a piece of expensive backup software that has a SQL component and it will handle your data backup for you.  It’s not the end of the world if it is not.  Either way, we recommend using the internal backup functions of Microsoft SQL.  The backup, however it is invoked, will create a file and place it somewhere on a device that is accessible.  This will greatly decrease the time necessary to recover the backup because the file is at hand.  There are other reasons to use the SQL functions and I’ll discuss a few below. 

1.  
   1. In both SQL 2000 and SQL 2005, you can use the instructions at the following link to do a simple backup.  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/930615/en-us
   2. The other method is to set up a Database Maintenance Plan within SQL.  Not only will this handle the database backup, it can also perform other common maintenance functions such as re-index the data, check for database integrity, shrink the database to eliminate unused space, etc. 

You can find the Database Maintenance Plan wizards:

1.  
   1. For Microsoft SQL 2000  – Within the Enterprise Manager, click on the Management folder and right click on the Database Maintenance Plan.  Choose New Maintenance Plan and follow the prompts.
   2. For Microsoft SQL 2005 – Within the Management Studio, click on the Management folder, right click on Maintenance Plan.  Choose Maintenance Plan Wizard and follow the prompts.

(The specifics of each option are too lengthy to discuss here.  Contact your service provider for more detail.)

Scheduling a backup to run during the night and you will be sure to have something to fall back on in the morning.  You won’t have to think about when the right time to backup is… it will automatically be ready for you when you need it.  I hope you NEVER need it!

As you know, in GoldMine Premium some pull down menus have changed. And, some new features have been added. So for all of you GoldMine Administrators out there, it’s time to revisit your “User Properties” and “Security Profiles” in order to update their available “Menus.” 

When you do, the User Properties dialogue window may confuse you because you’ll see the old menu layout. FrontRange is due to change this, and hopefully they do before the next issue of this newsletter. Nonetheless it is still worthwhile for you to revisit the settings you’ve applied to your users. Chances are if you haven’t done this in some time, or if you are running either the default settings or those your Solution Partner may have done for you when the software was first installed, you are bound to find appropriate changes to improve security as well as to cut down on the unnecessary and confusing choices your users face of features which they do not need, and should not be given!

Making intelligent decisions about what your “GoldMine User Properties” should be is a lot more difficult than doing the changes themselves. These choices require a full understanding and appreciation of the implications that will affect your users.  In other words, checking or un-checking a box doesn’t require any technical skills … but knowing the effect when you do takes considerable familiarity with the GoldMine application itself and CRM acumen.  If you want an expert input, contact First Direct Corporation.