Technology Advisors, Inc.

Today I was asked about creating an opportunity group in SalesLogix that contained opportunities estimated to close this month.  This is a similar request to the previously posted creating a SalesLogix Group of Contacts with Activities Completed Today.

This query once again requires the use of an IN statement.  We know we are looking for Opportunities, so we will look for a specific list of OpportunityIDs in a list created/provided by us in a SQL statement.

So we will have SELECT * FROM OPPORTUNITY WHERE OPPORTUNITYID IN (**SQL statement that returns the list of opportunities we want.**).

Our SQL statement needs to return the OpportunityIDs of Opportunities estimated to close this month, so we need to find the first and last days of the month.  These two SQL statements provide these dates:
----First Day of Current Month
SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(25),DATEADD(dd,-(DAY(GETDATE())-1),GETDATE()),101)
----Last Day of Current Month
SELECT CONVERT(VARCHAR(25),DATEADD(dd,-(DAY(DATEADD(mm,1,GETDATE()))),DATEADD(mm,1,GETDATE())),101)

In both of the above SQL statements we are taking todays date and adding or subtracting from it to get the desired day of the month.  That date is then converted into US standard date format, mm/dd/yyyy.

We then insert these into a SQL statement that compares these dates to each Opportunities Estimated Close Date and returns a list of OpportunityIDs:
SELECT OPPORTUNITYID FROM OPPORTUNITY WHERE ESTIMATEDCLOSE <= CONVERT(VARCHAR(25),DATEADD(dd,-(DAY(DATEADD(mm,1,GETDATE()))),DATEADD(mm,1,GETDATE())),101)
AND ESTIMATEDCLSE >= CONVERT(VARCHAR(25),DATEADD(dd,-(DAY(GETDATE())-1),GETDATE()),101)

We end up with this group:

Knowledgesync is an Alerts and Workflow solution for numerous business applications. A few of the more basic uses are:

• Business activity monitoring for events customers want to know about.
• Business Process automation. Automatically deliver confirmations, quotes, thank you emails, etc.
• Alerts for warnings regarding issues with clients.

How can these items be accomplished? Here is a short list of some basic capabilities:

• Triggered emails based on events in a database or email inbox.
• Web dashboards using html with graphs, etc.
• Deliver crystal reports via email as a pdf on a schedule.
• Trigger crystal reports sent as a pdf to a group of people.
• Inbound email marketing
• Triggered updates integrating several databases or applications.

Off the top of my head, I can see several very good uses for this application within Technology Advisors for the Customer Advocate position.
Such as:

• Automatically send pdf ticket reports to customers.
• Send alerts to the Customer Advocate and Support about issues that need to be followed up for a customer.
  • Tickets, Contract Status, etc.
• Alert emails to Customers and the Customer Advocate
  • Tickets opened & closed.
• Alerts to the Customer Advocate
  • Ticket without an updated for 7(3?) days.
  • Customers the Customer Advocate has not contacted in the last 30 days.

These basic functions would not take long to setup, but could save our users several hours a week in effort. Not to mention avoiding headaches from issues that might slip through the cracks otherwise.

Best of all, SalesLogix users can download a free 30 day trial at http://www.sageknowledgesync.com. For best results, I would advise our customers to work with Technology Advisors to make sure the trial is beneficial and used to its fullest potential.

Entrepreneur.com has an article up on 5 Simple Ways to Show Customers You Care:

1. Share Your Knowledge
2. Ask, Listen, Respond, Adapt
3. Reward Customers
4. Hold a Customer Appreciation Event
5. Do Good

It's a great article and I recommend you check out. Here is my take on how you can apply these points to your own business.

1. Sharing Your Knowledge.  Social CRM is here.  As has always been the case, with it you can manage your e-mail newsletters.  You can now also manage your incoming and outgoing Social CRM communications with applications such as Twitter or Facebook.

2. Ask, Listen, Respond, Adapt.  Without a CRM application, how will you be able to keep track of all of your correspondence with your customers.  Newer CRM packages have the ability to integrate with all forms of communications.  Fax, Email, Snail Mail, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, etc.

3. Reward Customers.  With the proper CRM application you can track Campaigns where you use Coupons, Gifts, Events, Targeted Mailers, Phone Calls, Social Media, etc.

4. Hold a Customer Appreciation Event.  Customer Appreciate Events or User Groups are a great way to keep your name in a customers mind.  With CRM you are able to invite your customers or potential customers to the events, track registrations and report on attendance and survey results.

5. Do Good.  Doing good is a great thing, but how will your customers know about it if you aren't able to track and effectively communicate your "good."

Using newer CRM products goes far beyond just a giant electronic Rolodex of names and phone numbers.  With a properly setup CRM application and trained user base, you should be able to manage your complete customer experience from prospect to repeat business.  And then some.

 Technology Advisors achieved Sage Software's Chairman's Club status for the 3rd year and made President's Circle for the 9th time.

2009 Chairman’s Club membership is awarded to Sage Business Solutions (SBS) business partners that develop an exceptional level of new business revenue through defined sales and marketing programs. Technology Advisors is one of 22 Chairman’s Club members and a top-selling Sage business partner across all of North America for Sage SalesLogix, SageCRM and ACT! by Sage.

View Official Press Release

 

In the Sage SalesLogix Application Architect after completing all of your new web customizations I occasionally run into some errors while building the web platform.  (Imagine that!)

The error message is sometimes less than descriptive:
ERROR - C:\Documents and Settings\jkuehlthau\Application Data\Sage\Platform\Output\Sage.SnippetLibrary.CSharp\src\Sage.SnippetLibrary.CSharp.@.84971c17-fdb8-4d87-9b5a-f944d61c24b9.codesnippet.cs(43,40):; expected

I recently found that I can double click anywhere on the row, and it will open the CSharp code snippet to the location of the error!  This saves me a lot of time trying to navigate around the Application Architect trying to find the error.

Let me know in the comments how this works for you?

You get a handful of Groups out-of-the-box when you purchase SalesLogix - some that may be useful, and some not. If you find that they are almost useful, you can take some initiative and make them useful for your organization by copying the group, and then changing the logic. For instance, let's say you want to change the Latest Accounts group to show Accounts that have been modified in the last 60 days (the default is 30), and that are labeled as Type = ‘Prospect', and you want everyone to see this in place of the original Latest Accounts group.

This is really quite easy... To do this, login to the SalesLogix Client as the Administrator. Right click on the tab for the group when you are in list view, and select ‘Copy'. From there, go to the conditions. You see the original condition of Modified in the last 30 days:

Double click on the condition, and change the ‘30' to ‘60'.

Click ‘Ok'.

Make sure the Account table is selected in the upper left hand side, and on the right, double click on ‘Type'. Change the Operator to ‘Equal to'. Hit the Browse button and choose ‘Prospect' (or any other type(s)).

You will see two groups - Latest Accounts and Copy of Latest Accounts. You will want to change the name of the Copy Group, so double click on that, and change the name under the Properties tab. In our example, I'll name it Latest Accounts - TAI.

In the SalesLogix Architect, go to Manage Plugins, and change the filter by option to Groups and Groups ACO. If you click on Accounts on the left hand side, you will see your new group, and the old Latest Accounts group. Release your new group to Everyone. Click on the old Latest Accounts group, select Release, and remove the Everyone from it (to unrelease it). It should look like this:

Log into the SalesLogix Client as any user who is not the Admin to test it out. You should see your new group, and no sign of the old Latest Accounts group.

 

michaelwallace: learning about some cool new features in SalesLogix Mobile at the Sage Partner conference in Nashville
about 1 hour ago from mobile web · Reply · View Tweet  

aloktyagi: #insights09 - Travis demo Saleslogix Mobility and customize blackberry apps using SLX. Linking GPS info with contact address. Cool stuff
about 2 hours ago from TwitterBerry · Reply · View Tweet  

BrentLeary: Motasin Najeeb - SalesLogix will be GPS enabled to include location awareness for iPhones and BlackBerry Storm.{what about ACT?} #insights09
about 3 hours ago from TweetChat · Reply · View Tweet  

kgsc: #Insights09 Motassim Najeeb (Sage CTO) states that SalesLogix will use LBS / GPS for iPhone and Storm clients.
about 3 hours ago from Tweetie · Reply · View Tweet  

incortech: #insights09 SalesLogix to gain location awareness tools in mobile client.
about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry · Reply · View Tweet  

Thursday, May 14 @ 11am - 12pm EST

This webcast is open to Scribe customers and the public. It will cover the newly released Web Services Adapter for Scribe Insight and Scribe Insight Enterprise. The webcast will include a feature overview and several demonstrations of the Web Services Adapter enabling integration to Dynamics AX, Microsoft SharePoint and 3rd party commercial web services.

Register Now

The Scribe presenters for the webcast will be:

Bob Sturim - Vice President, Products

John Gravely - Vice President, Marketing and Product Marketing

Lou Antonucci - Vice President, Sales

Tomas O'Brien - Product Manager

When an Activity is scheduled in SalesLogix it is automatically assigned to the user creating the Activity.  This user is the Activity Leader.  The Activity Leader then has the option of adding other SalesLogix users to the Activity via the Members Tab:

 

Activities Members are users in the SalesLogix system.  The Activity Leader can only add users they have access to "Add Activities" for in the Calendar Tab of their User Profile in the Administrator:

 

Once the creating user adds the other users as members of the Activity:

1.            The Activity record is created in the ACTIVITY table.
2.            A record is created in the User_Activity table for the creating user and each member.
3.            A record is created in the UserNotification table for each member.   When each member user logs into SalesLogix they are prompted to confirm or reject the activity.
4.            Depending on if they Confirm or Reject the activity, the USER_ACTIVITY.CONFIRMED field is set to True or False.
5.            The creation user is then notified by a new record in the UserNotification table.

Registration is now open for the June 4th Midwest SalesLogix User Group (MSUG) meeting in Chicago. This summer's half day, breakfast included, meeting will take an in-depth look at how to Increase Productivity and Improve Sales in the down economy. We will discuss e-mail marketing from a high level and then delve into a specific e-mail marketing tool that allows you to easily send out mass e-mail blasts, as well as track the results of those e-mails within your SalesLogix system. We will talk about the ever growing Web 2.0 Social Networks, including LinkedIn, and how you can incorporate those tools into your SalesLogix system. The feature presentation of the meeting will discuss How to Increase Sales. We'll take a look at how to improve follow up with sales processes and process orchestration. 

I want to Register Now!!

 General MSUG Information

tzqg9ur6sm