GoldMine software allows users to store information in many places.  Where you should put it depends on the nature of what you want to store and track, as well as how you want to search for and report on the data.  The purpose of this post is not to address that decision, rather to provide an answer to a question I am often called about.   And that is, "How do you search for information stored in GoldMine's Details tab"? 

Unlike  the flat fields in GoldMine Contact1 and Contact2 tables, the GoldMine Details tab have a "one-to-many relationship" which offers great flexibility and advantages.  Below, I've listed all the fields associated with a "Detail."  To help with clarity, I will follow one example all the way through - storing and searching for "Serial Numbers" - but this could be anything!

GoldMine Detail Information:

• Detail Name - the category or type of information you are storing (e.g. Serial Numbers)
• Details Reference - the primary look-up (e.g. Product Name)
• Note - a memo field that would allow you to describe and journal the entry
• Custom Fields - GoldMine Premium allocates 12 fields that can be custom labeled, however the field lengths and formats are predefined (eg. Product Version, Purchase Date, Number of User Licenses, etc.)
• Audit Information - GoldMine automatically enters the date the Detail was entered and updated including the user who did so
• Custom Tab - there is the ability to create a custom tab specially for this information

How to Search for a GoldMine Detail:

1. GoldMine Search Center - drop down the "Search By" and select Details
2. GoldMine Details Tab - right click on the specific category of Details and select "Lookup" from the local menu
3. GoldMine Lookup Wizard - to create custom SQL queries
4. GoldMine Universal Search - will pickup data stored in any of the Details fields
5. Report Writers - SQL Reporting Services, Crystal Report Writer, MasterMine, Stonefield, etc.
6. GoldMine Premium Dashboards- in GoldMine 9.x
7. Details Plus- offers filter capabilties and expanded integration with GoldMine Details including but not limited to Email and Letter merge

Have an idea for how you want to use Details and need a second opinion or some professional assistance, or any questions?  Let us know!

You may already know there are two different kinds of emails you can send in GoldMine: Internet email and GoldMine user-to-user email. User-to-user email can be used when one GoldMine user wants to send an email to another GoldMine user who is on the same company GoldMine system.  An advantage of GoldMine "user-to-user" email is the way it stores your communications back & forth in the GoldMine record you're writing to one another about. 

This post is intended to focus on one aspect of GoldMine's email client that users need to be aware of.  When using GoldMine's "user-to-user" email it handles attachments differently than Internet email.

By default, GoldMine sets users' preferences to NOT send a copy of the attached file when sending email to a GoldMine user, but rather is simply creates a link in the email that "points" to the location of the originally attached file.  This is designed to help save space on your server but cutting down on the creation of duplicate copies of a the attachment.  This is an attractive feature, but it can cause two problems: 1) If the receiving user does not have access to that file location (like the sender's desktop or My Documents folder) the receiving users will not be able to see or open the attachment. 2) Often the sender does not realise when they open the attachment they are opening and editing the sender's original file, NOT a copy of the file. To avoid these two problems, simply change GoldMine users' email preferences as follows:

In GoldMine go to Tools->Options... Email Tab... More Options button... and on the "Composing" tab uncheck the box "Send attachments as links for GM users."

The GoldMine Knowledge Base

The GoldMine Knowledge Base provides a resource for maintaining any type of information useful to an organization or an individual. It can provide easy accessible storage for graphics, multimedia files, and/or program applications. This information can then be linked to a contact record (displays the record whenever you access that topic).

The Knowledge Base consists of the Knowledge Base, and the Personal Base. Configure them to present newly added information to the GoldMine user, control user reading and updating privileges, and search for specific entries based on user-defined criteria.

If your organization is not using the GoldMine Knowledge Base now is a great time to start.

GoldMine Knowledge Base Toolbar

Knowledge Base Topic Text Local Menu

HTML means HyperText Markup Language. The authoring language used to define the structure and layout of a Web document by using a variety of tags and attributes.

To add an attachment to a Knowledge Base document

GoldMine's Universal Search is set to be the "default" search in the search box of the new "Left Navigation" area in GoldMine Premium.  I do NOT recommend that!

First of all, the new GoldMine Universal Search capability is great when you need to find a needle in a haystack. So if you're looking for an obscure piece of information (e.g  part or serial number)  that could have been stored anywhere in GoldMine and you don't want to hunt & peck around for it GoldMine's Universal Search is great.

Universal Search in GoldMine will return a long list of ranked search results based on all the places where it finds what you're looking for stored in GoldMine history, notes, emails, etc.   Therefore, if you're looking for a name and you use universal search that name will come up on pending and history activites, emails and a lot more places than you need to sift through when you just want to pull up a contact who's just called in for you.  That's what the "Contact Search Center" is better for.  And, that's what you want the quick GoldMine Navigation look-up window to use when you type your search value and press go!

Last but not least, if you haven't implemented GoldMine Universal Search properly and you are not regularly indexing the data and you haven't optimized the configuration in SQL and GoldMine for Universal Search to work well it is ineffective anyway.  That's one more reason to change the default.

Changing the Default Search to the Contact Search Center is not hard, but it is little tricky.

Here's all you need to do:

1. Open up the Universal Search

2. Click "Advanced"

3. Select Options

4. Uncheck the Default setting.

You will see that there are many other settings to consider - way more than I cover here.  And, there are all sorts of great search tools in GoldMine Premium!  Universal Search,  SQL Queries,  Lookup Wizard, as well there is a lot that you can do with the Contact Search Center.  An expert can show and explain these functions.

If you're going to encourage users to capture data in GoldMine you ought to know how to find it, report it, analyze it, and use it!

Your Mailbox/Attach folder is where all the attachments you receive from GoldMine e-mails ends up. Over time this folder can get cluttered with unwanted attachments from SPAM emails, forwards, and chain mails.

When you delete an email in GoldMine, the attachments WILL NOT be removed, by default. If you want to delete the attachments also along with the email, then you will have to customize GoldMine by following the steps given below.

Note: If you do not want the attachments to be deleted for all emails then you may want to toggle this option.

GoldMine  4.x -6.7

1. Click 'Edit' >> 'Preferences'.
2. Click 'Internet' tab.
3. Click 'More Options' to open 'Internet Preferences' dialog box.
4. Click 'Advanced' tab.
5. In 'Message' area select 'Delete attachments when deleting the mail' option.

GoldMine Premium Edition 8.x

1. Click on 'Tools' >> ' Options'
2. Click 'E-mail' tab
3. Click 'More Options' to open 'Internet Preferences' dialog box.
4. Click 'Advanced' tab.
5. In 'Message' area select 'Delete attachments when deleting the mail' option.

 The GoldMine taskbar is great for GoldMine users to have quick, one-click access to common things like:

• all of the menus in GoldMine
• external files
•  external applications
•  web resources (like Multimap, Dun and Bradstreet, etc...) 
• GoldMine Macros (and Macros once created, can be shared with other GoldMine Users)

Taskbars can be 'Global' (for all Users) or 'Local',  for the current logged in user.

To display your Taskbar, go to the Window menu option and select Taskbar.  Once displayed, right-click over the Taskbar to display options like creating new items/buttons.

We’ve all said it! ...  “’I'll follow-up with you next week.”  Then we go into GoldMine and schedule ourselves a call for the next week so we actually remember to call the person back.

Here’s a GoldMine tip/trick to make that process a little bit easier.

In the Date field when scheduling a call, appointment, next action, etc. etc.  instead of typing in a date, or using the lookup to bring up a calendar, type in 1W.

Then, magically, when you tab or click, to the next field the date will be set for 1week from today.

Assume, then, that you want to schedule the activity 2 days from now, well, just type in 2D, for 3 days 3D.

D works for Days, W for Weeks, and M for Months.  So to schedule something 2 months from now, Just type in 2M!

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.

If you attempt to run a workstation installation (GMSetup.exe) for GoldMine Premium Edition and for some reason decide to cancel it before it finishes, the next time you try to run the installation you might get the following error message:

Another GoldMine installation is running.

What you need to do is:

Run regedit (Start> Run> regedit).

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE >> SOFTWARE >> FRONTRANGE SOLUTIONS.
Delete the folder GMinProgress.
Exit regedit.

Retry the installation.

Note: If you can't find the FRONTRANGE SOLUTIONS Registry Key, search for it by clicking on Edit >> Find, in the Registry Editor.