Blog.Free.Crm

• New Office skin was added, which provides more functional space for your data. Give it a try - change your look and feel from Preferences.
• New navigation tabs now perform like a menu. Hover the tabs for more options.
• Shortlist now includes a tick box per group which will invert the group’s selection.
• You can now copy any campaign’s subscribers to the Shortlist. See the Shortlist button in each campaign’s page.

We are upgrading the SMS gateway to a more reliable carrier.  The SMS reminders and campaigns will be offline / non-functional until the new gateway and carrier are set up this week.  Thank you for your understanding as we strive to improve the service.

Besides a few minor issues that are now resolved we added the following. We’ll continue with a series of small releases during the next few weeks to address issues with calling, sms and print campaigns as they arise and build up a more robust feature set around those features.

• You can now set up call reminders which will alert you a predefined time before a call is due, either via email or Text message (sms).
• In the Print campaign section you’ll now find a button to pop up a list of all the available merge tags you can embed in your Microsoft Word template.

We’re delighted to announce major new features: Voice CRM, Microsoft Word Mail Merge and Print Campaigns!
Voice CRM integrates your telephone with Freecrm. Right click any phone number and you can dial it directly. Your phone will ring first, and after you answer it the target’s phone will ring as well. The details of the call, start and end times will be captured automatically in a call record.
This is available for users of the Professional version and is currently in Beta. While we are testing the service and iron out any issues the calls you make are completely free!  Make sure that the right click menu is enabled (via Preferences). Before you start be sure to set up your voice account and phone numbers for each user. You can do this via the Setup screen under Voice Setup.
Microsoft Word Mail Merge allows you to upload Word documents with embeded special tags like [contact.first_name] or [contact.company.company_name] and have them replaced with the contact’s details when you compile the document. You can Create Print campaigns, subscribe many contacts to them or use a saved search and generate multi page document ready for printing.

More documentation and examples for Voice CRM and Print campaigns will be added soon.
Additions:

• Voice CRM! Make calls directly from the crm and right now - its free!!!
• Microsoft Word Mail Merge lets you merge contact and company data into a predefined Word template.
• Print Campaigns allow you to generate word documents for multiple contacts.
• You can now create an email signature to be used when emailing individual emails to contacts.
• You can now subscribe to all campaigns from the contact context menu. Simply click any contact link with the right mouse button.
• We enhanced the call screen to include tabs for easy access to the contact, deal, case etc.
• You can now create a document backup of all your files under the Docs section. If you have a large number of files you will have to wait up to 24 hours for the  backup to be created.
• Mail account verification - you’ll now find a Verify link next to your mail accounts. Click it to attempt to verify the accounts setup. We’ll email your account an email using your account, and immediately go to check if it has arrived.
• New report: Calls by time.

Fixes:

• Quick search on 3 term keywords used to throw an error under certain conditions. This has been resolved.
• Fixed issues with saving unavailability times.
• Vonage calling will now show in phone number context menu if there is no vonage account is defined.
• We resolved various small issues across the CRM that affected small number of users.

A small maintenance release to resolve a few issues:

• Record flags are now available across contacts, companies, deals, cases and tasks.
• The record flag box display issues are now resolved. As well you’ll find a new icon to ‘acknowledge’ a flagged record and remove it from the list.
• You can now create an alert to be triggered when a note is added to a record.
• You can now add Web Search view to the Summary Views selection
• Adding or modifying a note for a company record will now amend the last_modified date of the record.
• Resolved a problem opening document files with foreign file names.

• Text/SMS campaigns are now functional
• You can now set reminders to arrive via a text message instead of emails
• Alerts can now be delivered via text messages to your phone.
• You can now flag records for other users (or for yourself). A new home page box can be added to the homepage to display flagged records. A flagged record can be given a note. Once a user acknowledges the flagged record it will be removed from his flagged records box.
• Due to the new record flags feature we renamed the “Flag” link to the more appropriate “Shortlist”.
• You can now create digest style alerts. You will receive a daily email detailing all the alert events for that day instead of a separate email per alert. See Page 2 of your preferences screen for this option.
• You can now disable Google Maps via a user preference. See Page 2 in you Preferences screen.
• You can now disable the web search (done via google) via a user preference. See Page 2 in you Preferences screen.
• You can now search contacts and companies by creation or modified dates and use a range of dates in your search.
• You can now control which panels appear in the Summary view of each record. User administrators can set this via the Profile Settings screen under setup (pro users only).
• Deal contacts view now shows the contact’s company as well.
• When viewing deals from a company record you will now also see deals indirectly associated to the company via its contacts.
• Data confirmations now allow the company or contact to update/create their address.
• You can now add a weekly calendar view to the home page boxes. Click Add Boxes from the left menu when in the home page to add this box.
• You can now add a day calendar view to the home page boxes. Click Add Boxes from the left menu when in the home page to add this box.
• From a contact’s page you can now click to open that contact and his associated company in the combined contact-company form.
• You can now define a custom price for a product in a deal to override the default product price.
• Pipeline report was modified to account for custom prices of products in deals. As well, more detail was added to the report. The total amounts have been separated to the total projected amount as set in the deal record, and the total value which is the total of the actual value of all products in the deal, where available.
• Company records now have a Source field.
• All in-screen popup dialogs are now proper “lightbox” style dialogs.
• We put in some fixes to the home page box dragging behaviors.
• Resolved a vonage problem with Firefox 3.

• We integrated Google Maps with addresses. Each address you view will now include a map for it as long as Google can map it.
• You can now set incoming emails to be saved automatically as contact notes when the email is viewed. You can also determine that attachments will be saved as documents and where available attached to the the contact. If a contact does not exist you can have the system create a new one for you. See Preferences, page 2 (bottom 3 new settings). This is available to the Pro version only.
• You can now delete emails from your mail server.
• Deal exports (via left menu) now contain contact information fields for the primary contact as well
• Deal pipeline report now includes deals by source.
• Identifier field was added to custom view available fields for contacts and companies
• Remember me will now remember your entire login until you log out, instead of just your user name. Please note that if you are on a shared computer, it would be more secure not to use this feature.
• This won’t really relate to most of you, as you you are already using the system, but we’ve completely redone our registration process.

• We’re introducing a brand new support site at http://support.freecrm.com. It contains video tutorials, a knowledge base, docs and downloads.
• Pro Users: we’re phasing out the old crm support system in favor of a the new ticketing system in the new support site. You can log in using your FreeCRM login and post your support cases there. This will enable us to better track and handle all of your support cases. Please click here for more information.
• You’ll now find a Quick Search drop down with all of your saved searches. Using that drop down you can now call up any of your previously saved searches from any screen you’re on.
• The web search tab showing search results for companies now works with Google search, providing web, local, video and blog searches.
• Call search now shows Call To columns with both contact and company links where appropriate.
• You can now ‘lock’ the sort order of search results so that it will be the default sort order used.
• Custom views now contain a page list at the bottom of the view as well as at the top.
• Pro users can now change the site’s title from FreeCRM.com to their company name (or any other title of their choice).
• Pro users can now duplicate email campaigns and copy their subscriber list to a new campaign.
• Resolved a pipeline issue when counting deals by stage.

We’re happy to introduce our new dedicated support site at http://support.freecrm.com!
The new support site completely replaces our old support system and built-in FAQ section. It will enable us to better track all support cases and respond to them in a more timely manner than was possible using the old system.
The support site contains an ever growing knowledge base of frequently asked questions, solutions, ideas and guides. You will also find video tutorials demonstrating various actions around the CRM.

Pro users: You can log into the support site using your existing CRM login. Logging in will give you access to the support ticketing system where you can post any problem or question you might have.
Unfortunately we cannot import existing cases from our old system into this new one. If any old case is still valid one, please reopen it in the new system. We apologize for this extra step.

• Contacts can now have an image assigned to their record.
• Email campaigns now include a new option to prevent the same email from being emailed twice on a campaign.
• You can now allow other users to add contacts to your own email campaigns. This can be turned on by the Administrator via the Setup->Security Settings screen. This does not give users access to view the campaign page or use it to mail out - they can only subscribe contacts to it.
• The call search form now includes a search by all call date fields and by assigned to field. It has been organized better. The search results will now include additional fields by default (flag, assigned to etc.)
• Follow up link on calls will now carry the relevant contact/company/task/deal etc. data to the call form.
• User Administrators can now clean up tags globally for the account. See Setup->Manage Tags.
• We resolved a problem with importing parent companies and merging it into existing records.
• We resolved a problem where certain pro users could not update their credit card information.