As always, we have introduced some updates to our addons to go along with the new version of ACT!.  The good news is that it's all compatible with previous version of ACT! as well! 

Unlike previous updates to TopLine Designer, you will want to make sure that if a single user updates to version 5.5 or higher that all of your users update.  Due to some scripting changes, your users may run into problems if some of them upgrade to 5.5 and others don't.

When importing a CSV file, I always make sure that there are quotes around all of my values.  It eliminates a lot of issues.  Here is the difference.

Normal:
ID, Name
1, One
2, Two
3, Three

With Quotes:
ID, Name
"1", "One"
"2", "Two"
"3", "Three"

 In order to accomplish this, we use an Excel macro.

1. Open your CSV file in Excel  
2. Create a new macro.  Using Excel 2007, you click on the View ribbon tab and click on the Macros button.
3. Type anything into the macro name box and click Create.  I typed "abc" into the Macro Name box.
4. Open the file attached at the bottom of this post.  Copy the entire contents of the file by pressing CTRL-A and then CTRL-C.
5. Go to the Excel macro editor and erase everything that you see in the Module1 window that is open.
6. Paste the contents of your clipboard into the Module1 windows by pressing CTRL-V.
7. Close the entire macro editor window by clicking on the red X in the upper right corner.  This will close the Microsoft Visual Basic window.
8. You are now back to looking at your Excel spreadsheet.
9. Highlight the data in your spreadsheet.  You must highlight only the specific data; do not highlight entire rows or columns.
10. Click on the Macros button once again.
11. You will now see an item in the list called QuoteCommaExport.  Make sure it is highlighted and click Run.
12. Type in the full path where you want to save your newly created spreadsheet.  You should use something like C:\MyFile.csv.  If you are using Windows Vista or Windows 7, you may not be able to save the file to the root of your C: due to security reasons so you may have to put it in a new folder.
13. Once you've clicked OK, your new CSV file has been created and you can use that file to run your import.

Please note that if you open that newly created CSV file again in Excel to modify it, you will need to repeat these steps if you want to save it again.

ExportExcelToCSV3.txt (1.61 kb)

If you're running TopLine Alerts on a Windows Server 2008 server and trying to email TopLine Dash excel spreadsheets, you may notice that it doesn't work.  This is the result of a very unusual quirk in the Microsoft Excel assemblies.  To get this working, you simply need to create a folder.  Here is what you need to do:

Navigate to C:\Windows\SysWOW64\config\systemprofile (C:\Windows\System32\config\systemprofile for 32 bit machines)
Create a folder called Desktop.

That's it.

TopLine Dash 8.0 has been released via the TopLine Update program.  This is a huge milestone as we are introducing a huge new feature that will increase productivity dramatically.  We're finally giving people what they have wanted for years. 

 Better Queries

We've spent months with the ACT! 2010 OLEDB v2 provider creating a simple, and easy to use front end that allows you to tap into this awesome power.  We're starting by giving you 38 queries out the box (more if you have custom tables) that span everything from contacts to companies, groups, opportunities, notes and histories (that's right, you can now query on notes and histories).  We've designed a whole new advanced query engine that will make it extremely easy for you to create the exact query that you've been looking for.

The user interface shares a lot with the ACT! advanced query, but add a lot more value.  We've even added in full text descriptions of the query that you're creating in plain english.  We've created 38 dashboard files for you to try this out with.  You can download them from the address here: http://files.toplineresults.com/downloads/Addons/QueryDashboards.zip Just unzip the files to your Dashboard Saves folder.

Please note that our advanced query does not yet support querying the ACT! activity table.  This table was intentionally removed because of a bug in ACT! where some databases will throw an error if you try to query the activity table using the OLEDB v2 provider.  Rather than have some queries work and some not as a result of this bug, we removed the feature entirely.  We're sorry about this inconvenience, however we will be putting this is when we feel that this issue has been resolved within ACT!.

New printing functionality!  This is included in version 7.6.1.

 TopLine Dashboard now creates professional looking reports.  You can output the results to your printer or to PDF.  Here is an example:

Many bug fixes and two exciting new features mark the newest release of TopLine Designer.  The two new features are bolded below.

A minor upgrade to TopLine Designer has been added with major new features.  This is available from our update program by running TopLine Update from your start menu if you already have TopLine Designer installed. 

• Updated Microsoft Word integration with a new Merge Fields toolbar. 
• Added images to right click menus.
• Added the ability to move columns by dragging them.
• Lookup field type lookup table dropdown now sorts.
• Removed warning when switching from Define Custom Table Fields to Design Custom Table Screens.
• Added Help button to lower right corner of subentity windows.
• Fixed bug where doing a mailmerge to more than one record would incorrectly give a message about subtables.
• Added the ability to drag and drop grids on the designer screen to rearrange them.
• Added the ability to add fields from parent tables to a child table's screen.
• Modified list columns to allow you to view columns from multiple related tables.
• Update for non-english version of ACT! where adding menu items would not always work.

A new version of TopLine Designer has been released!  No groundbreaking new features have been added except for ACT! 2010 compatibility!  This means that you can now use TopLine Designer to create custom entities in the 2010 release of ACT!.  Along with this, we've added the ability to create custom tabs on the Opportunity table.  So now you can create custom tables that roll up to the opportunity natively.  All your existing customizations should be fully compatible with the new version.

 If you upgrade to ACT! 2010, you MUST have v4.5 (or higher) of Designer installed or you will experience lots of errors in ACT!. 

An update for Designer for Web will be released shortly.

TopLine Designer 7.6 has been released.  The major new feature is compatibility with ACT! 2010, however there are also a number of bug fixes as well.  We have also changed the format for distributing our addons.  We used to release a different setup file for each version of ACT! but now we bundle them all together into one setup file and the software chooses which version to load on it's own. See below for a list of fixes and changes:

4.6.0.3

-Fixed bug where products graph would not work in v12 of act and refreshing product dashboards would not work.
-Fixed bug where using the quick date form to select a date would exit when using the popup calendar.
-Fixed bug where loading a custom entity dashboard would throw an error in ACT! 2010.
-Added keystroke handling to column selection list when selecting a column in for a list.
-Fixed bug where a filter date would show up when filtering a subentity even if you are not filtering on a date.
-Fixed bug when filtering subentities where it would not filter YesNo fields.
-Added sorting to the Field dropdown box in the subentity filter.
-Added support for multiple plugin dlls to load for different versions of ACT!.
-Added support for roaming profiles - up to a max of 10.
-Added nav bar side window for ACT! 2010.