Please pardon my bad attempt at being clever with the title of this article. So you know what you’re getting into, this post has to do with the importance of “User Preferences” in GoldMine software. (Not to be confused with “user rights” or “user properties.”)
Having trained thousands of GoldMine users over some 15 years, there are many things I have come to expect. Some good, others bad. Here’s one aspect that most users have failed to optimize. It is also one of the most expedient and simple ways to improve a GoldMine user’s experience. It is to change their GoldMine User Preferences. Today, in GoldMine Premium, the user’s preferences are now found within the “Tools” pull-down menu under the name “Options.” It is also likely to be on your user “Toolbar” by the same name.
Once you enter the Options Dialogue window you’ll find tabs for specific categories where individual settings are made. The “out-of-the-box” preferences, otherwise known as the “default” preferences, are reasonably appropriate. But GoldMine programmers fully expected users, let alone administrators, to modify and adapt to their needs.
The problem is that most users don’t know the impact of all the choices available to them so they don’t know what to change. Oftentimes GoldMine Administrators, who may not even be regular GoldMine users, don’t take the time to fully learn what all the options do or to coach their users to make good choices, let alone to make changes for them. And yet, some simple changes to the defaults can increase user satisfaction and usage which is certainly desirable for all concerned.
One of the things a qualified GoldMine Solutions Partner, who is also a “Power User” by definition, can do for you is walk you through the settings and help you to understand them and make beneficial changes.
In addition to the Option settings, users have the following additional choices in many other areas of GoldMine:
- Window sizing
- Toolbar and Personal Task Bar
- Personal Knowledge Base
- Grid Controls for “Grouping, Filtering, and Summary” within views that have columns and rows such as the Record Tabs and Search Center, Contact List.
- Calendar View
- Which Navigation Panes and Record Tabs to Display
One of the nice things about the GoldMine client is all the ways each user can adjust their client view. It takes significant programming to provide for that! It only takes a little effort on the part of individual users to take advantage of it!
If you’d like me to review your settings and make recommendations; I can do that very quickly with you. It is just one of the many services that First Direct Corp. offers.
