Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ 1

What is the relationship between companies, contacts and addresses in Bluebase?

Remember that with Bluebase, each company can have more than one address, and at each address there can be more than one contact.
The order of adding a new contact must be company, then address, then contact.

FAQ 2

How do I add a new contact to Bluebase

• If the company does not exist already in Bluebase, go to the Company form, click New, enter the company details and click Update.
• You will be prompted to add a new address for that company, select Yes and you will be taken to the Address form, and a new address record will automatically be started for the company that was entered.
• Click Update when you have finished entering the address details.
• When you have added the address you will be prompted to add a new contact, select Yes and you will be taken to the Contact form, and a new contact record will be started for the company and address that have been entered.
• Click Update when you have finished entering the contact details.

FAQ 3

How do I add a new contact for a company and address that already exist in Bluebase?

• Go to the Contact form
• Click New
• Enter the relevant contact details.
• When you reach the company field, start typing the name of the company, and/or expand the drop down list to find the correct company.
• When you reach the address fields, expand the drop down list and select the correct address.
• Finish entering the contact details and click Update.

FAQ 4

What is the best way of checking if a contact, company or address already exists before I start entering a new contact?

• Go to the Contact form.
• At the top of the form enter the company name (or the first few letters of the company name) and click Search.
• If nothing is found…
  • You know that the company, the address and the contact all need to be added. See FAQ 2.
• If one or more contact records are found, (but none are the contact you need to add)…
  • You know that the company is already entered…
  • The details of the first found record will be displayed at the bottom of the form. Expand the address drop down list.
  • If the address you require is appears in the list, you now know that the company and the address exist. See FAQ 3.
  • If the address you require does not appear in the list, go to the address form and add the address, and then continue with FAQ 3.

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FAQ 5

When searching for a company to see if it exists already, can I do a broader search, for example if I search for Bluesoft Ltd. can Bluesoft Limited be found?

Yes. On the Company form, enter your search criteria at the top of the screen, but before you press the Search button, press and release the left CTRL (Control) button on the keyboard. The caption on the Search button will change to Fuzzy. Click the Fuzzy button.

Examples of how the fuzzy search works…

Search for	Will Find
Bluesoft Ltd	Bluesoft Limited
Blue Soft	Bluesoft Limited
ABC	Active Board Company
Great British Steel	GBS

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FAQ 6

I can’t change the owner of an activity, the Our Contact field is inactive?

Upgrade to the full multi-user version of Bluebase. This will allow activities to be associated to colleagues, and added to their todo lists.

FAQ 7

What are Dynamic Groups, and how do they work?

Traditionally in contact management software, a group is a set list of people. For example you might put into a group all managers, so you can easily send new product specifications to the people that count.
Or another example is to put into a group all sales reps based in London, so you can inform them all of a seminar you are holding in that area.
Imagine if every time you added a new contact, you had to manually view all of the groups that had been created, and manually add the new contact to any groups the he/she is suited to. This could be very time consuming.
This is why Bluebase has been developed to include Dynamic Groups.

A dynamic group is simply a rule, or a formula, with a name. For example a dynamic group with the name “London Sales Reps” would contain the rule “job title must contain Sales Rep, and address region must contain London”
Any new contact that is added, and any existing contact that is found to fit the rule will automatically appear in the group.

FAQ 8

On the Contact form, with the Summary pane left open Bluebase is very slow.

If the summary pane seems slow, try closing the parts of the tree view that show static groups and dynamic groups that the contact belongs to, as these take a reasonable amount of precessor time to evaluate.

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FAQ 9

What are the Profile Fields? How do they work?

Many users need to add their own fields easily to their contact management software. For example a company may want to record the date of birth of their contacts, or another company may want to record which consultant is responsible for each contact.
Profile fields allow you to easily add these custom fields to Bluebase, but unlike traditional contact management software, in Bluebase these custom fields are truly relational. What does this mean? What this means is that each custom field can hold an unlimited number of values.
Take for example the company who wants to record which consultant is responsible for each contact. A profile field called Consultant is created (Options/Maintenance/Profiles) in Bluebase and the appropriate consultant’s name is added for each client. When the consultant for that contact changes, the same profile field can store both the previous consultant, and the new consultant, in fact there is no limit to the number of values that can be stored in each profile fields, each entry with it’s own date and comments.

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FAQ 10

What is the naming convention for profile fields?

If you want to add a profile field for storing text, name it profilename_t
If you want to add a profile field for storing numerical vlaue, name it profilename_n
If you want to add a profile field for storing dates, name it profilename_d
This is a system requirement, but will also indicate to users what type of value is expected.

FAQ 11

On the contact form it mentions a vCard. What is this?

A vCard is a standard way of passing contact details between computers. Both Outlook and Outlook Express can export contacts as vCards. They are often seen as email attachments. If you receive a vCard attachment, simply save it say to your desktop, and then drag it onto Bluebase (to the area indicated on the contact form).
Bluebase will then look for similar companies that might already be entered in Bluebase, and the same with addresses. You will prompted if a similar company is found and given the option to use the found one, or to continue adding the new one.
NOTE: the vCard import facility is currently suspended on all versions of Bluebase.

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FAQ 12

When I send contact details by email, the email contains Bluesoft information. Can I remove this?

Yes. When you are viewing a contact, you can click the black down arrow next to the Write button to send the contact details as an email. The email that is sent us based on a template called ContactDetails.emt that can be found in the moretemplates folder. This template can be edited in a text editor such as notepad. Fields that are populated with data are indicated as /fieldname/.

FAQ 13

When I write to a contact, I am asked to enter a subject. Why?

The subject that you enter (or select) is used in several places.

• If you select Save the Document the subject you enter is used to create a document name.
• If you select to add an activity, the subject you enter is used as the activity subject.
• If you are using an email template, the subject you enter is used as the subject for the email.

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FAQ 14

When I send an email by clicking the Write button and selecting an email template, why is the Word document saved and not the email that is created?

Bluebase can automatically save Word documents and attach them to activities, so to use Word to write emails adds this auto-save functionality to any emails that are sent.
Also, Word a much better text editor to write emails in than the Outlook text editor, as Word contains your macros, custom dictionary, autotext entries and much more.

FAQ 15

When creating an activity, why am I asked for an Activity Type, a Subject and a Project?

The Activity Type is a pretty much a fixed list and should contain items such as ‘Letter Out’, ‘Telephone’ and ‘Visit’. The Subject, although a drop down list, can be typed into. This is the field that you will more than likely use to find the activity at a later date, so keep it brief but informative. Examples could be ‘Welcome Letter Sent’, or ‘Hardware Support Call’. If you can pick a subject from the drop down list it is recommended to do so. Any new subject entered will appear in the drop down list next time.
The Project field allows any activity to be associated with a project that has been entered on the Job form. Reports that are generated for that project will then include this activity record.

FAQ 16

What does the ‘non-member filter’ do on the Groups form?

When you are building a static group, you have a list on the left of non-members, and a list on the right of members.
The list of non-members can be huge, and browsing through it looking for contacts can be tricky.
The non-member filter allows you to display in the non-members list, only those contacts who fit certain criteria. The rule, or formula, is built in exactly the same way as when creating dynamic groups, (see FAQ 7) or a previously saved rule can be opened and used.

FAQ 17

I use the Bluesoft on-line diary. Can Bluebase automatically populate the diary?

Yes it can. If you are not sure what the Bluesoft on-line diary is, visit www.bluesoft.co.uk/diary. Create an activity or navigate to an existing activity. Go to the Diary tab and click the Update Diary button. The activity will be instantly sent to the on-line diary.

FAQ 18

Why do some of the main navigation buttons have back arrows on them?

This is part of the Bluebase dynamic navigation.
For example, when looking at a contact on the Contact form, click the down arrow next to the Activity button. You can quickly jump to all activities for the contact, or create a new activity for the contact with the company and contact already selected for you.
Try clicking on all of the down arrows from any of the forms to see how dynamic navigation can really speed up your use of Bluebase.

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FAQ 19

In some comments fields when I try to start a new line by hitting Enter, the record is updated. The Enter key seems to press the update button.

The Enter key will always press the default button, (the button with the dark border around it).
To start a new line in a comment field, hold down the CTRL (control) button on the keyboard while you press the Enter key.

FAQ 20

When I write to a group using a Word template, Word opens with field names shown rather than the contact details. What should I do?

Bluebase integrates with the Word Mail merge feature when writing to groups.
When Word has opened a new toolbar should be visible with a button labelled <<abc>> Click this button to view the contact details rather than the field codes. You can then click the red arrow buttons to scroll forwards and backwards through the members of the group.
(NB If you still see field codes, select Tools/Options from the menu, and untick the Field Codes option.)
When you are happy with the template select File/Save, and click the Merge… button.
The contact details and the template will be merged to a new document that can now be printed. You do not need to save this new merged document if you saved the first document just prior to merging.

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