Continuing GoldMine Education

Presented by Justin Hill for The Marks Group June 2011 Note: The version used is GoldMine 9.01. All versions 8.x and above are applicable for this training.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 1 of 20

Creating and Identifying Contacts

Discovering Fire One day, boom. Fire is Discovered. Maybe a bolt of lightning hits a tree; perhaps a wildfire starts in some arid brush. In our case, we might inherit some contact manager software from a sales rep. Or stumble upon the ability to create custom fields in Outlook. In any event, it is a Eureka moment of the highest caliber. The prehistoric night is now alight with a cheery warm flame, and our businesses and relationships benefit from the same illumination, the ability to scrutinize and contemplate. When the dangerous animals stay away at night, and you get to sleep in a warm dry cave, youre in better shape to hunt and gather breakfast the next morning. Most of you have already had this cathartic moment, or have been thrust into it by professional circumstance. But let us never forget that any CRM system must fulfill the most basic of needs. And much like learning that making a fire in a cave fills it with smoke, or that letting it die out forced you to wait for the next lightning strike, so must we be mindful of certain basic fundamentals when wielding such a powerful tool.

Creating Contact Records Like with everything else in GoldMine, there are a few different ways to get to the same place. In this case, to create a new Contact Record, simply click on the New Record button from the toolbar, or select File | New | New Record from the top level menu. -

Either selection will get you to the New Record Window, shown here.
Simply click into a field and type in the desired values. Hitting TAB will navigate you to the next field.

ProTip: When entering phone numbers, leave off the first digit of Long Distance numbers (the 1), else GoldMine wont know how to correctly format it.

Pro Tip: Use Copy to create a duplicate of the current contact record. Useful for when creating a new contact that belongs Continuing GoldMine to an existing Company. Education

GoldMine will automatically check for potential duplicate records based on these criteria.

Page 2 of 20

Editing Contact Records Editing field values in GoldMine is easy; simply click into a field to activate it, then just type in the desired value. Hitting TAB will navigate you to the next field.
You can always hit the gray arrow to bring up the Picklist for that field.

Deleting Contact Records In GoldMine, deletions are forever. There is no undo, no second chance, absolutely no way (other than restoring from a backup) a deleted record is coming back. To Delete a contact record, simply click on the Red X toolbar button or select Edit | Delete Contact from the top level menu.

In any case, GoldMine will warn you of the severity with which it is considering your proposed Deletion;

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 3 of 20

Youll notice that not only is the contact deleted, but also all other tertiary data that is associated with it. ProTip: The ability to delete contact records can be taken away from Users by editing the Access tab of their User Properties (Tools | Users Settings).

Record Ownership and Curtaining Record Curtaining restricts what information can be seen on a particular Contact Record. It restricts everyone other than the Record Owner. The Record Owner can be a GoldMine User or a GoldMine User Group. You may access the Ownership/Curtaining tab from the Record Related Settings window (Edit | Record Properties | Ownership Tab).

Curtaining Choices Semi Partial: Users who are not record owners can view the upper four panes, but cannot view the Tabs. Partial: Users who are not record owners can view only the contact name, and phone number areas. Complete: Users who are not owners cannot access any of the contact information.

ProTip: Users with Master rights can see any record, regardless of how it is curtained.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 4 of 20

Use the Owned By drop down to select the desired GoldMine User or User Group.

Contact Record Alerts Record Alerts are a way to uniquely and visibly identify a contact as requiring attention. Alerts are set through the Record Related Settings window, on the Alerts tab. The main idea here is that when you set an Alert for a contact record, that Alert will pop up for anyone viewing the record for five seconds or longer. Then the Alert must be acknowleged.
Check Enable Alerts to open the Alerts list.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 5 of 20

Then you may mix and match a selection of applicable alerts.

For the set Alerts, you may also force a History item to be written to the contact record when an Alert is acknowledged.

You may create a new Alert by clicking on the New button.

An Alert consists of a Code, Description and Message. All these values are displayed to the Alerted user.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 6 of 20

When any user views the contact record for more than five seconds, they will be prompted with the Alert window as shown here.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 7 of 20

Searching for Contacts Without question, the most frequently accessed part of GoldMine is the Contact Search Center. This is because virtually every toolbar button or menu item affects the Current Contact Record. To search, simply click on the Search button from the toolbar.

Pro Tip: A nice shortcut to searching is to double-click directly on the field you want to search on. For instance, to search by Contact, click directly on the word contact within the Contact record.

Simply type in the value you are looking for. GoldMine will begin to list out what it thinks are the closest matches.

By dropping down the Search by list, you can search by any number of GoldMine field values.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 8 of 20

Pro Tip: Use the percent sign (%) as a wildcard when searching. For instance, searching for %Hill% will return every record with the string Hill, whether it be Hillenbrand, Hillys or Hill. Merging Duplicate Records It is often that in the practice of accumulating thousands of records, duplicates are often found. Fortunately, GoldMine has a mechanism for merging these duplicate records. The method outlined here is the Merge Tagged method. We must first search for and then Tag (i.e. check the box next to) the records we desire to merge.

Once our records are checked, we can access the Merge functionality by going to Tools | Data Management | Merge/Purge Records | Merge Tagged Records.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 9 of 20

You will then get the following prompt. This bears some reading, however. Keep in mind that GoldMine will merge the tagged records using the FIRST tagged record as the Survivor, and the SECOND tagged record as the Non-Survivor.

The Merge Purge process then copies all the Tab information (history, pending, etc) from the Non Survivor into the Survivor.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 10 of 20

Customizing Data Points and Input

Using Fire to Cook Creating User Defined Fields One of the nicest things about GoldMine is the ability to create User Defined fields on the Contact Record object. And like virtually everything else about GoldMine, this is accessed by right-clicking on the record itself. Right-click, then select New Field.

Pro Tip : Creating User Defined fields requires exclusive use of the database. All GoldMine users must be logged out before performing this action.
When prompted by the Place Field window, simply click on the New Field button.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 11 of 20

We are now prompted to enter in the particulars regarding our new field.
Your Field Name is the backend name of the field. This MUST begin with the letter U and contain no spaces. Feel free to make the description as verbose as desired. When selecting a Data Type and length, take care you use the appropriate option. Character : Text data only. (Most frequently used) Numeric : Numerical data only. (Used when you intend to perform math on the field values) Date : Date information only. (Used when tracking dates; the picklist will prompt the user with a calendar control)

You may now place the field anywhere on the Contact Record. Notice that your new field appears as a little white box that can be freely moved around the record. To place the field, simply doubleclick on the white box.

This will bring up our Field Properties window as shown below.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 12 of 20

On the Profile Tab, you may change the Field Label (what is shown on the Contact Record).

However, the Security tab is where we really want to go;

You may Require this field to have data. In this case, the User will be required to put something in it.

You may restrict access to the field on a Read or Update basis to a particular GoldMine User or GoldMine Group.

Another nice function is to track field changes in History. This makes it easy to answer the age old question Who changed my clients information??

Pro Tip : Any user with Master rights will be able to view and update any fields, regardless of their security.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 13 of 20

After setting up your Field Properties, GoldMine will prompt you to Rebuild the database. All GoldMine users MUST be logged out before this occurs.

Setting up Field Picklists Part of our Data Entry system is the ability to create Picklist values. To display the picklist for any given field, simply click on the little gray arrow on the right of the field, or hit the F2 key while in a field.
To create a new picklist item, simply click on the New button.

Keep in mind the picklist value must be shorter in length than the field size.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 14 of 20

To access advanced options, click on the Setup button.

In our Field Setup window, we can control how our Field and Picklist behave.

You can allow (or disallow) Blank Input, or Force a Valid (Picklist) Input.

You can also control whether or not Users have the ability to add, delete or modify new Picklist items.

When adding new Fields, you can easily import the Picklist values from another Picklist by using the Import lookup entries from another field drop down.

Power users may wish to investigate the Context Dependent functionality of the Picklist object. This allows you to constrain the values within the Picklist based upon the value of another field.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 15 of 20

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 16 of 20

Using Extended Data Points

Using Fire to Cook Dinner Using GoldMine to track Extended contact information The tabs in GoldMine are many; we do not have the time to cover them all here. I will however, outline some handy uses for a few of the more useful tabs. The Details Tab Tabs typically fall into the following Data Hierarchy; Many to One. That is, we can track many details for any one Contact Record. This is an excellent place to track, for instance, Customer Equipment or Customer Serial Numbers. For our example, we will be creating a Equipment Detail record. To create a new Detail, right-click within the Details Tab and click New.

To create a new Detail type, we must use the Picklist within the Detail Properties window.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 17 of 20

The Reference is the Main Idea of the Detail record. In this case, it could be our Equipment Model Number.

The Setup tab allows you to define additional Detail fields. Simply type in the desired field name here.

To omit or blank out a fieldname, use a double asterisk as shown.

You can also give your Detail its own Tab on the Contact Record.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 18 of 20

The Referrals Tab The Referrals Tab is a nice way to relate Contact Records to one another. The idea is that, once related, it is easy to navigate between the related Contacts. Just like your Detail record, right-click within the Referrals tab and select New. GoldMine will then prompt you to find the record you wish to associate.

After finding and selecting the Referred record, GoldMine now allow you to place a reference on either side of the Referral link.
Feel free to identify each side of the Referral link.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 19 of 20

Now you have your Referral link in the Referrals tab. Simply double click on the referral record to navigate to the referred record.

Continuing GoldMine Education

Page 20 of 20