If there ever was such an unwarranted, ridiculous, and devious list, I believe this would be
The Top 5 Sage SalesLogix Reports for the Holiday Season:

5. (History) History by Contact: Have you ever wondered if you can find not only who made the last change to a record, but what it was that they changed? Or maybe you changed a value, and now you want to change it back, but you can’t remember what it was. Use this report to see a list of all history—including database changes— for any account to which you have access. Now you no longer have to bribe your SalesLogix Administrator to look up something for you, and instead you can keep those reindeer-shaped cookies and almond bark pretzels all to yourself!

4. (Labels) A4 Avery L7159 – Address: Getting ready to send out office holiday cards of you and your staff dressed as adorable penguins wearing Santa hats? Make distribution easy by printing address labels for all of the contacts who made it on your “Nice” list this year.

3. (Sales Order) Sales Order Detail: Don’t have ERP Link configured yet? Surprise your back office staff with printed sales orders rolled up as stocking stuffers!

2. (Ticket) Support Ticket Knowledge Base Summary – Sample: What better activity to plan at the holiday office party than ticket knowledge base trivia?! The winner gets to pick a prize from the Ugly Christmas Sweater trunk.

1. (Opportunity) Competitor By Opportunity Status: Nothing says holiday spirit like finding out who your top competitors are and leaving a flaming fruitcake at their doors.*

*Do not actually do this. In fact, Sage is not responsible for cavities, embarrassment, paper cuts, regret, injuries, or any other consequence from reading this list. We hope you learned something about the power of reports! Happy Holidays!

What do paper airplanes have to do with Sage SalesLogix?

Check out some of the results of the survey in the graphic to the right.

Note: Full survey responses are reserved for Sage SalesLogix Partners and are posted on PartnersOnline with other 2011 Boot Camp materials.

Here’s a snippet of the SData discussion at Sage SalesLogix Boot Camp 2011 discussing the groups system endpoint, which implements the request to execute groups a little differently than we’ve seen with SData before. (Because the group itself is only going to get the metadata.) We do this through $queries/execute?[resource]. Here are two examples:

*************************************************************************************************************
Execute a group based on its plugin ID:
/slx/system/-/groups/$queries/execute?_groupId=p6UJ9A0004TS

Execute a group based on its family and name:
/slx/system/-/groups/$queries/execute?_family=Account&_name=All Accounts

*************************************************************************************************************

Why are “_groupId” and “_family” underscored? Nathan (SData expert) joins the SData discussion from Melbourne via Skype and tells us why:

…In this corner of the ring we have the newcomer: Web Admin. It’s light, it’s bright, and it’s quick on its feet. But is it a match for the ever-faithful, ever-powerful LAN Admin? Round 1: *DING!*

That concept is all wrong. The Web Administrator is not necessarily designed to replace the LAN Administrator; in fact, both toolsets are actually very complementary [and complimentary] to one another.

OH: “Web Admin, you look very nice today. LAN Admin, you are just too kind.”

But what if you have both a LAN and Web implementation of SalesLogix—when should you use either tool? Or what if you have a Web-only implementation—do you still need the LAN Administrator? Let’s explore.

Web Only Implementation

Even if your sales staff does not use the Network Client, you (as the administrator) still need to rely on the LAN Administrator for some tasks—like managing SpeedSearch indexes, cutting Remote databases for Offline Web Clients, or adding licenses, just to name a few. But the Web Administrator is still a great tool to rely on for light-weight tasks like adding a user or changing product pricing because you can use the Web Administrator from any computer (even from your mobile device), and it saves you from having to remote into your SalesLogix Administrative workstation or server. It is also great for delegating small, data-entry tasks—like managing pick list items or lead sources—to standard users so that they can complete them without any assistance from you.

LAN and Web Implementation

If your sales staff uses a mixture of LAN and Web Clients, the same scenario above applies. The difference is that in order to give LAN users administrative features, you can grant them access to the Tools > Manage and Tools > Maintenance menus through Function Security, whereas to give Web users administrative features, you can assign them to a role. Roles rely on secured actions and are specific to the Web Client only.

Here’s a short video to explore the toolset and compare it against the LAN counterparts so that you can identify how or when you might use each tool. (This video is best viewed in full screen, HD mode.)

For more information and other videos like these, visit the Sage SalesLogix Administrator’s Subscription page.

A recent request (thanks, Paul!) led me down a path I didn’t expect. How do you create a Delete Lead role in the Web Administrator? Because the existing Entities/Lead/Delete secured action is already created for us, I assumed that I would simply follow these steps:

1. Remove the Entities/Lead/Delete secured action from the Standard User role.
2. Create a Delete Lead role.
3. Assign the Entities/Lead/Delete secured action to the new role.
4. Assign a designated user to the new role.

While those steps are valid, it’s missing a very important piece! The out-of-the-box Entities/Lead/Delete secured action—and a few others—aren’t assigned to an interface item. To fix any of those out-of-the-box secured actions, you need to go into Application Architect, locate the interface item that you want to restrict, and then assign the appropriate secured action to it using the Applied Security property. After building and deploying your changes, then you can proceed with the steps above. This fix applies to Sage SalesLogix versions v7.5.3 (with the Admin Accelerator bundle) and v7.5.4.

For more information, check out this video I created to step you through the process.

For more video tips like this one—including a neat trick for creating a custom Librarian role in the Web Administrator—visit the Sage SalesLogix Administrator’s Subscription. Inside the subscription, you can also download an electronic workbook for using the Web Administrator tools.

We received a blog request to provide a detailed explanation of the metrics and dimensions that are available with each content type (i.e. widget or chart). Great question, Janetta! Unfortunately, my answer probably isn’t as great as the question because of the sheer number of combinations. Out-of-the box, Sage SalesLogix allows you to create a new widget using data from 1 of 12 different entities: Account, Campaign, Contact, Contract, Defect, History, Lead, Opportunity, Product, Return, Sales Order, or Ticket. Moreover, the available options for Metric and Dimension vary for each entity—there are 106 total metrics/dimensions—which means that we could create 226 unique charting widgets! (Here’s the complete list if you want to check my math.) I’m getting dizzy just thinking about that many widgets. Instead, let’s just start with the Account entity and develop a pattern that we can apply to other entities.

For starters, think of the Dimensions (D) as “buckets.” Inside those buckets is the Metric (M). For example, let’s pick Account Manager (D) and Total Revenue (M):

What does that mean? We’ve just created a bunch of Account Manager (D) buckets into which we’ll sort all of the 287 revenue values (M) that we find under the All Accounts group. When we’ve collected all the values, we’ll come up with a total for each bucket:

Now we need to choose a content type so we can compare the results. Here are the available options:

• Bar Chart (horizontal bars, Dimension on y axis)
• Column Chart (vertical bars, Dimension on x axis)
• Line Chart (data points connected by a line, Dimension on x axis)
• Pie Chart (portions of the whole in pie-shape)
• Funnel Chart (portions of the whole in funnel-shape)

How do we know what option to pick? Here is some criteria I use:

Spacing

Bar, Column, and Line charts always display up to the top 10 values in the Dimension (i.e. Top 10 Account Managers, Top 10 Cities, Top 10 Industries, and so on). Some Dimensions might not have 10 values (i.e. Account Subtype). For those kinds of Dimensions, a Bar chart works fine. But if you know you have at least 10 values in the dimension, Line and Column charts seem to provide better visual spacing than the Bar. In this example, between the Line and Column charts, I would choose Column because the Line seems to give the illusion of a trend, which isn’t appropriate for the Metric/Dimension that we chose.

Relationship

The Pie chart lists either 5 or 10 values in the Dimension and shows how the parts relate to the whole. A Funnel chart also shows relationship to the whole, but it is typically reserved only for charts that query on sales processes (i.e. Opportunity entity) because its parts represent a sequence of stages in your sales pipeline. In this example, the Pie chart would be appropriate, but I would not use the Funnel chart.

Do you have any other tricks for designing widgets? What other examples would you like to see?

Before students attend the Implementing or Administering Sage SalesLogix course, we ask them to complete the Introduction to Sage SalesLogix course. This Anytime Learning course contains three components:

1. Windows Administrator Fundamentals
• Client/Server Architecture
• Services
• IIS and Web Hosting
• Relational Databases
• Windows Domain, User Permissions, and Shared Folders
2. Sage SalesLogix Fundamentals
• Introduction to SalesLogix
• Accounts and Contacts
• Leads
• Opportunities
• Dashboards
• Tickets
• Lookups and Groups
3. Pre-Assessment

Why do we offer this course? One reason is that we no longer teach Sage SalesLogix fundamentals in the Admin/Imp courses, so this course is often the first chance that a new administrator sees the product that they are about to be responsible for administering! The other reason is to get students up to speed on basic Windows administrative functions that are required of someone in this capacity. The pre-assessment includes 20 multiple-choice questions, and it simply helps assess how well your skills meet class expectations. It’s no big deal if you don’t get a perfect score, but it could save you a week’s worth of frustration in training if you determine early that you may not be the person at your company to assume this role.

If you’re interested, take some time to check it out—there is no cost for registration!

The Upgrade Process

The upgrade process for Sage SalesLogix v7.5 Service Pack 4 is different than previous service packs because SP4 includes a full install. It’s very similar to the process of installing the base v7.5.0 product—except with a lot more features in the end! They are so similar in fact, that if you are installing Sage SalesLogix in a new, on-premise environment, you can go directly to the SP4 installer (no v7.5.0 necessary). If upgrading from an existing v7.5.X* environment, on the other hand, the SP4 installer runs in the same way except that it first removes applications with prior version and then re-installs them.

During the installation (or re-installation) for each feature (Admin Tools & Servers, Client, Web Host, Web Reporting, and so on), the SP4 installation wizard inspects your system for necessary prerequisites and even finds the appropriate installer for you, which makes the process extremely seamless. The Applying Service Pack 4 for Sage Saleslogix Version 7.5 documentation is the ultimate resource for choosing the right upgrade workplan for your environment. Always defer to the documentation when performing an upgrade in a production environment.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, I can reveal the following [abbreviated] steps that we use in Training to upgrade our image from v7.5.0–>v7.5.4. (Upgrading from v7.5.3–>v7.5.4 is similar, but you can skip steps 1, 9, and 10 if you already did them for SP3.)

1. Delete the MergeConfiguration.xml file and the PotentialMatchConfiguration.xml file in Application Architect.
2. Run the Setup.exe, and install Administrative Tools and Servers. (Restart.)
3. Run the Setup.exe, and install the LAN or Remote Client.
4. Install the LAN bundle in the Administrator.
5. Run the Setup.exe, and install the Web Host on IIS.
6. Run the Setup.exe, and install the Web Reporting Server.
7. Restore the SP4 project backup, rebuild web platform, deploy core portals.
8. Run the Role Security utility.
9. Add users to the Standard User role in the Web Client.
10. Reconfigure Web Reporting in the Application Architect.

Here’s a video of me going through the steps for the RC1 version with a bit more explanation. We skipped many recommended tasks from the documentation that you should perform on a production environment, but did I miss anything?**

For more videos like this one, subscribe to the Sage SalesLogix Administrator’s Subscription or contact training.crm@sage.com.

The Enhancements

Although I won’t review all of the enhancements from SP4—the Applying Service Pack 4 for Sage Saleslogix Version 7.5 documentation is the best resource for a comprehensive list—here are a few that we’re especially partial to in Training:

• Duplicate Checker (for Web Administrators):
  This tool is available under the Tools menu when logged on as “admin.” You can also grant a standard user access to this tool by adding the user to the Data Quality Manager role. It allows you to search within any group for Account, Contact, or Lead tables and look for duplicate records in the database. This feature locates matches and scores them based on match probability, and then it allows you to resolve any duplicates by merging records. Service Pack 3 introduced the ability to merge records in the Web Client List view (right-click > merge), but you still had to spot-check for the duplicate records manually. The SP4 enhancement automates the process AND includes the Lead table.
  




• Notes/History tab (for Web End Users): This enhancement brings the familiar Notes/History tab that we love from the LAN Client into the Web! It combines both history items and notes. You can filter the grid based on a variety of criteria, and you can even send any selected items to e-mail or to Word.
  




• Editable Sales Order Data Grid: Now you can more easily update pricing and discount for a sales order. (Not to mention use a revamped Accounting Integration process! More to come on this in later posts.)
  




• SData Enhancements (for Web Developers):
  In addition to excluding individual entity properties from the SData payload, you can also prohibit Create/Update/Delete SData operations on an entity. Also, more entities are exposed to SData.
  




• Enable Field-Level Security for New Entities (for Web Developers):
  




• Many more!

---

*If upgrading from an existing environment earlier than v7.5.0, you must first upgrade to v7.5.0 before running the SP4 installer.
**If you learned one thing from this post, let it be that you should read the service pack documentation!

---

Updated: Added the task to delete the PotentialMatchConfiguration.xml file to step 1.

The Web Administration tool set is scheduled for v7.5.3 on-premise release this summer. Great! But…what exactly is it? When we refer to “administration tools” for Sage SalesLogix LAN, it usually means one of two things:

Features accessible from within the SalesLogix Client interface; a user must have appropriate permissions (function security) to see these features: (Click image to enlarge)
Features only accessible from within the LAN Administrator interface; a user must be logged on as “admin” to see these features: (Click image to enlarge)

Now, when we talk about “administration tools” for Sage SalesLogix Web, we actually combine both of these definitions! First, users with appropriate admin permissions can access the Web Administrator from the same point of entry that they use to access other end user features in the SalesLogix Web Client. Second, in addition to providing common list management functions (competitors, lead sources, products, pick lists, literature items, packages), the Web Administration tool set also includes functions that were previously only available to the designated admin user (users, departments, teams, roles*).

*New functions available only for Sage SalesLogix Web. Roles allow/restrict user access to certain Web Client or Web Administration features using secured actions—similar to “Function Security” for LAN Client users.

Everyone here is looking forward to this release making for very cool summer in Scottsdale!