Castell Computers

A question came up today in the Frontrange Support forums where a user was trying to filter a GoldMine report to show only contacts with a range of values in a field. He was stuck on how to format the expression in his GoldMine 5.5 installation to accommodate 28 different values and not exceed the 255 character expression limitation (in later versions, this expression limitation is increased to 1024 in some areas of the program and removed entirely in others.)

The question reminded me of a knowledgebase article we used to hand out routinely when I worked for GoldMine software Corporation’s Tech support department:

There is a limit of 255 characters for a filter expression. Often when doing a large OR comparison this limit can be reached. For example, you may want to filter based on a certain group of individual states by gathering up contact records whose state is CA, MA, NY, KY, OH, and so on.

A filter expression for this COULD look like the following, but the more states you add to the criteria, the closer the expression gets to exceeding the 255-character limit…

contact1->state=”CA”.or.contact1->state=”MA”.or.contact1->state=”NY”.or. contact1->state=”KY”.or.contact1->state=”OH”

A better way to do this in a shorter expression and without the added concern of exceeding the character limit would be to use the $ (the “contains” operator). For example, the above filter can be shortened to the following:

contact1->state $ “CA MA NY KY OH”

This essentially limits the filter to records whose state is contained within the list of states shown.

The FINAL GoldMine 6.7 patch was released April 12th. This patch marks the end of the line for GoldMine dBase (Standard Edition).

Fixes in version 6.70.70226 include:

1. Fixed: Issue where temporary database tables leftover from a previous database rebuild could prevent a rebuild from occurring properly.
2. Fixed: Issue in which the Complete > Pending Activities screen failed to record contact History data.

I am approaching this patch with caution and advising clients to do the same. After the problems with the January 6.7 patch, who wants to be first in line to install it on their production system? I sure don’t.

If you’ve ever tried to create an Automated Process in GoldMine, you know that it can be difficult to wrap your mind around complex tracks. Thinking about all the different triggers, actions and branches can befuddle even the most grizzled GoldMine veteran.

When I find myself mumbling out loud about trigger expressions and sequential steps, I stop and harken back to the advice of my high school (PASCAL) programming teacher, Mrs. Tedesco: Create a flow chart to help you see the program.

In the past, I’ve used Visio to accomplish this. Eventually, Microsoft bought Visio and it became a lot more expensive and bloated. Personally, I’ve switched to Dia, an open-source, cross-platform tool capable of creating fine flow chart/diagrams.

Now, if only someone were to parse my AP diagram’s XML-friendly file format and create the AP’s in GoldMine for me.

Do you love the ability of GoldMine to automatically fill in the city and state when you enter the zipcode but HATE hand-keying 42,000+ zip codes?

I see a request for a good source of zip codes for GoldMine just about once a week on the various support forums. The answers always vary from, “Buy an out-of-date list and import it with out-of-date freeware tools.” to “Tough luck.”

Not being one to accept such things at face value, I googled around a bit and found www.populardata.com where a meticulously maintained comma delimited list of zip codes (with the lat/lon coordinates as well!) is offered for free, direct download with no strings attached — a labor of love, to say the least!

I contacted the maintainer and he was happy to allow me to redistribute the list for free in GoldMine-compatible form. Inspired by his altruism, I proper-cased the city names with BR7 from GoldBox’s site and imported it into a clean GoldMine database. I then made a sync transfer set suitable for retrieval into GoldMine 6.7 (Standard or Corporate Edition.)

The file can be downloaded here.

To import the zip codes, you’ll probably first want to delete the existing zip codes in your current GoldMine database. This may sound simple, but if you synchronize, you’ll need to delete them in a sync-friendly way. This means a tool like GoldBox or a properly written GoldMine API-leveraging program. Whichever way you go, you’ll want to delete the records returned by this query:

Obviously, take care when doing this as you could delete the wrong things, importing 42,000+ new lookups will impact remote synchronizers, you may duplicate existing zip code lookups, etc.

For the more technically inclined, you might want to obtain the .TXT file from the Popular Data site and Beyond Gold from DJ Hunt’s site and use the zip code import tool built in there. You’ll end up with all UPPERCASE cities, though, unless you take action to deal with that.

Enjoy!

GoldMine Standard Edition is being discontinued.

A letter from the CEO of FrontRange:

Over the past couple of years FrontRange embarked upon an aggressive GoldMine product strategy to add additional functionality to our current offerings as well as bring new products to market. Our strategy was formulated to insure that we continue to provide our current customers with added value, as well as to provide new products on a modern architecture that will take our customers well into the future.

As you may know, we were recently featured by Microsoft as the only CRM Product in their Vista Launch. This is a tribute both to our brand in the market as well as our outstanding product capabilities.

We have recently announced two new products to the marketplace, GoldMine Premium and GoldMine Enterprise. The two new products represent hundreds of man years of development, and are our most significant new products in several years.

Our first new product, GoldMine Premium, is based upon the same architecture as GoldMine Standard Edition and GoldMine Corporate edition, and includes a New user interface, a customer service module, and new workflow and features. GoldMine Premium is well suited for existing customers familiar with GoldMine, but is looking to add customer service and new features. GoldMine Premium also is well suited for new customers that require both sales automation and customer service capabilities.

Our second new product, GoldMine Enterprise Edition, is based on our new architecture and utilizes .net technology from Microsoft. It is based on a service-oriented architecture, is very flexible allowing you to add and modify unlimited fields, forms and relationships, and also has the same ease of use and robust feature set core to the GoldMine philosophy. With advanced workflow, as well as sales, marketing and service capabilities, GoldMine Enterprise is ideal for existing customers seeking an integrated product set as well as new customers with more robust product requirements.

With our new products coming to market, we have decided to consolidate our offerings to GoldMine Corporate Edition, GoldMine Premium, and GoldMine Enterprise. This will allow us to dedicate our efforts and focus our development team on more rapidly building new capabilities for the market.

GoldMine Standard Edition customers are welcome to stay on their existing product, or may choose to upgrade to GoldMine Corporate Edition, GoldMine Premium Edition, or GoldMine Enterprise. We will not be offering GoldMine Standard Edition for sale beyond April 30, 2007 but we will continue to support the product through April 30, 2008.

Our GoldMine strategy is predicated on providing great value to our existing customers, including attractive upgrades to our newest products and offerings. We believe that GoldMine Corporate Edition, GoldMine Premium, and GoldMine Enterprise achieves a good balance for existing and new customers, and allows FrontRange to focus our development efforts so that we are able to rapidly bring new products and features to market. If you would learn more about upgrade specials call us at 1 800 443-5457 or visit http://www.GoldMine.com.
I would also encourage you to take a look at our most recent products on line at http://www.FrontRange.com.

Sincerely,

Michael McCloskey
CEO
FrontRange Solutions

For additional information, and to post your questions to GoldMine product team please visit http://goldminecrm.blogspot.com