The TopLine Dash preferences store the last dashboard that you opened so that it will automatically open the same one when you start ACT! the next time.  Sometimes you will want to reset these.  In order to do this perform the following steps.

1. Click on Start->Run

2. Type "%appdata%\TopLine Results\TopLine Dashboard" into the text box and press Enter.

3. Find the file that says TopLineDash.xml and delete it.

4. Restart ACT! and your preferences will be set back their default state.

We have just released TopLine Dash 8.1.1.  We've added a great new feature to this release called Manual Query.  When creating a new dashboard, you can now select Manual Query from the Solution group and write your own OLEDB SQL statements!  The possibilities are endless with this new ability.

To help get you started with some of the cool things you can do, try this query:

SELECT Record_Manager AS "User", History_Type AS Type, Count(History_Type) AS Count FROM History Group By Record_Manager, History_Type

This will give you a history KPI dashboard broken down by user and by history type.

Enjoy!

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!.

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.

If you are trying to install TopLine Dash and/or TopLine Designer and when you open ACT! you are not seeing the menus or toolbar items that you are expecting, then follow these instructions.  Also, if you see the menu or toolbar items but they do nothing when you click on them, these instructions should help as well.

1. Make sure you have the right version installed.  For TopLine Dash, there are many versions that only work with specific versions of ACT!.  If you try to install the wrong version, it won't work.  Check out our download page to find out exactly which version you should be using.
   http://www.toplineresults.com/products/downloads.htm
   If you find that you have the wrong version installed, uninstall the Dashboard and/or Designer and delete the DependentDLLs.xml file located in the appdata folder (open My Computer and in the address bar type, "%appdata%\act" then open the folder for your version of ACT! and delete the file).  Now reinstall the correct version.
2. If that didn't work, you may have a problem with your ACT! install.  ACT! adds what are known as Policy files which are supposed to be registered with .NET during install.  Sometimes this doesn't happen correctly.  If you are using ACT! 2008 10.0.1 or lower, you should look in your C:\Windows\Assembly folder and you should see LOTS of files that have the words ACT and Policy in them.  If not, then this is your problem.  If you are using ACT! 2008 10.0.2 or higher, then the policy information is buried in an XML file. It is located in C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG\Machine.config.  If you edit this file in notepad, you should see some mention of ACT! files.  If not, then this is your problem.
   If this is your problem then you should uninstall ACT! and uninstall .NET completely (search google for how to completely uninstall .NET) and then reinstall both.  You can also try to copy the relevant section from a working computer into the non-working computer's machine.config file, but make sure you have a backup of that file because you can mess up your machine.  Attached to this posting is a text file that contains the missing part of the config file.  This was taken from a machine running ACT! 2009 11.1.

These are the most common problems with getting Dash and Designer to work.

act-asm.txt (30.81 kb)

A new version of TopLine Dash has been released.  The only change is to add compatibility with TopLine Designer 3.1 and higher.  Due to changes in TopLine Designer, TopLine Dash stopped working with custom tables.  If you are experiencing an error when trying to view dashboard after installing Designer, you should install this update.

Download from here:
http://www.toplineresults.com/products/downloads/toplinedash7.htm

Have you ever wanted to have a report that always showed a relative date?  Sure, there are pre-built dates that allow you to do this like Next Week, Start of Week, Start of Year, etc...  But what if you don't see what you need in these options?  TopLine Dash allows you to add or subtract any number of days from any of these relative dates.

 Any time in TopLine Dash that you see a dropdown with an option to select relative dates, simply add a + or - sign and then a number.  For example, Start of Week - 7.  This will return last week Sunday because it will go to the start of this week and then subtract 7 days from that date.

 This works in any location where a date is filled in.  You can even manually type in these relative dates (with offsets) into Contact/Company/Opportunity queries!

Did you know that you can quickly rearrange columns in TopLine Dash?  Just click on a column header and hold the left mouse button down.  Drag the column to it's new position and let go!

You can also Delete, Rename, or make a dashboard Readonly by right clicking on the dashboard button at the bottom of the screen!

 In the lower left corner of the dashboard, you'll see a button called New.  Right click on this button to see a list of subfolders within your Dashboard Saves folder.  You can save dashboards into these subfolders and use this trick to quickly access them!