Getting started: the workspace

TechieCRM opens on the Clients list with the Related entries and Interactions panels below it, an icon bar of modules on the left, a ribbon across the top and the calendar control bar on the right. Everything you learn here applies to every module.

In this chapter - Logging in - The icon bar and the ribbon - Record lists (the "guide") — icons, sorting, right-click, open - Layouts: Classic, Stacked, Outlook, Floating; popping a panel out - Master-detail: Related + Interactions follow the selected record - Interactions — one timeline for everything about a record - Settings

Logging in

Choose the SQL Server and Address Book (database) and enter your CRM user ID and password. TechieCRM reads your existing CRM data in place. If the server is unreachable you get a plain "couldn't reach the database" message and can retry.

On every later launch, TechieCRM reopens whichever module was on screen when you last closed it — unless Settings ▸ Agenda ▸ When starting, go directly to is set, which always takes priority (Chapter 23).

On first launch the app also starts a 7-day cloud trial for this computer (see Chapter 13). If the trial has ended and no license is installed you are asked to activate.

The icon bar

The icon bar lists the modules: Agenda, Clients, Sales, To-Do, Calendar, Email, Messages, Library, Dashboards, Quotas, Marketing, Service, Inventory, Projects, Financials, Work Orders, Partners, Agreements, Compliance & SLA, HR & Payroll, Personal, Order Desk. (The Knowledge Base lives inside the Library panel — open Library and pick its Knowledge Base list; there is no separate icon-bar button for it.) Every module has a colourful emoji icon — 📰 Agenda, 📇 Clients, 💰 Sales, 📋 To-Do, 📅 Calendar, 📧 Email, 💬 Messages, 📚 Library, 📊 Dashboards, 🎯 Quotas, 📣 Marketing, 🛠️ Service, 📦 Inventory, 🏗️ Projects, 💳 Financials, 🔧 Work Orders, 🤝 Partners, ✍️ Agreements, 🛡️ Compliance & SLA, 🪪 HR & Payroll, 📔 Personal, 🛒 Order Desk. Click a module to open it in the main area; the active module is highlighted. Modules that are not part of your current plan are dimmed with a tooltip that says so (Chapter 13).

Modules still in beta review are dimmed too. While TechieCRM is reviewing a new module before release, it stays on the bar (in the cloud portal, in the sidebar) but is greyed with a tooltip naming it — "Notes is in beta testing — you need the beta tester role to open it. Ask TechieCRM support." The entry is never hidden: clicking it opens the page that explains what beta review is and how to join, so you can always see what the product contains and ask for access. If you are a beta tester, none of this appears — every module you can open looks completely ordinary. The same mark appears on any action that leads into one of those modules, such as the cloud Dashboard's Quick Actions buttons, so a button never takes you to a refusal you had no warning about.

Size and position are set in Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Shortcuts, under Icon Bar Properties — not on the bar itself; there is no right-click menu on the icon bar. In that group the small/large button (it reads Enlarge when the bar is small and Reduce when it is large) switches between the two layouts — the wide bar with the module names beside each icon, and the narrow bar that shows the icons only; the show/hide button (Hide / Show) hides the bar and brings it back; and the Docked Left / Floating / Docked Right radio buttons move it — Floating frees the bar to be dragged and resized anywhere inside the application window. The Recent Entries tickbox in the same group shows or hides the recently-opened-records list on the bar. On a brand-new sign-in the tickbox starts ticked, which is what the bar itself does — the recently-opened list is on until you turn it off.

Settings opens on your very first sign-in (September 2026). Until this was fixed, opening Setup ▸ Settings during your first session — before anything had been saved about your window layout, which is the state every new user is in — did nothing at all: no window appeared and no message explained why, however many times you clicked. It cleared itself once you had quit and started TechieCRM again, so it only ever affected the first session and went unnoticed for a long time. Nothing you need to do; Settings now opens the first time you ask for it.

Hiding a bar now lasts (September 2026). Hiding the calendar control bar — from Settings ▸ show/hide or from your name at the top right ▸ Calendar Control Bar — used to be forgotten the next time you started TechieCRM: the bar came back every launch. Both bars now reappear exactly as you left them. If you have never touched either setting, nothing changes; you get both bars, as before.

The bar follows your text size. The bar is not sized on its own — it grows and shrinks with Setup ▸ Settings ▸ Font Style ▸ Font Size (and with your computer's own text-size setting, where it has one), so the module names always have room and the icons stay in proportion. Change the font size and the bar re-draws immediately, wide layout or narrow; there is nothing to restart, and there is deliberately no separate size control for the bar. The wide bar is 162 pixels at the standard text size and about 186 at Large; the narrow bar is always exactly one icon wide. The only label that does not fit the wide bar is Compliance & SLA — at every text size, including the standard one — so hover it to read the full name. See Appendix A5 for the whole size story.

You can also drag the bar by its title area: drop it on the left or right side of the application window to dock it there, or drag it all the way to the edge of a monitor to dock it full-height against that screen edge. Screen-edge docking applies immediately but is not remembered — the next time you start TechieCRM the bar returns to the left dock. Dock positions chosen in Settings are remembered.

If you drag the bar onto the side where the calendar bar is already docked, the two share that side as tabs, with a tab strip along the bottom for switching between them, rather than splitting the space.

The ribbon

At the top-left corner, set over the ribbon, is the TechieCRM application icon button — the transparent TechieCRM logo, sitting half over the tab row and half down over the ribbon sections (the first section of every tab curves its top-left border around the icon's edge). Clicking it opens the application menu: Open Database… (sign in to another database), Create Mongo Database… (creates a new local TechieCRM Mongo database with you as its first user, then offers to import records into it — see A8), Sign in as a different user…, Import/Export/Transfer ▸ (Import from CSV / Excel… — the mapping wizard, A8; Export to Excel / Advanced Export), Administrator, Help ▸ (User Manual (PDF) — this manual, bundled with the app; Online Documentation — the knowledge base at www.techiecrm.com; About TechieCRM) and Exit. Beside the icon, in the band space before the centred tabs, lives the Quick Shortcuts strip — small one-click buttons you choose yourself. Right-click the strip or any shortcut to open its menu: right-click a shortcut and the menu leads with Remove; tick commands on and off directly in the list; More Commands… opens the full Customize Quick Shortcuts editor: a Choose commands from picker (the Icon Bar and every ribbon tab — Home, Edit, View, Search, Tools, Reports, Setup, Custom Actions), the available Commands on the left, Add → / ← Remove, your chosen shortcuts on the right with Move Up / Move Down ordering (that order is the strip order), and Reset to defaults. Any icon-bar module or ribbon command can become a shortcut. Export to Excel opens a preview dialog: the first 5 records to be exported over your current column setup, each column with an Include tick (untick to drop it, or tick a hidden column to add it — the advanced part), an Export field headers toggle, and an Export picker (Selected records / Showing list). Set Where and Save As at the bottom and click Save — clicking Save as-is is the simple path. Your shortcuts — including their order — are remembered on this computer as soon as you set them, and they also follow you between the desktop and the web like your theme once this computer is connected. If you change them while the connection is down they are still kept, and they travel up the next time it is back. (To collapse the ribbon itself, use the 📌 pin at the top-right corner of the ribbon — see below.)

At the top-right corner of the ribbon itself — on its first row of buttons, hard against the right edge, the same place as in the cloud CRM — is the pin (📌 when pinned = ribbon always open; 📍 when unpinned = only the tab row shows and clicking a tab pops the ribbon open until you use a button, click elsewhere, press Esc or click the tab again; while the ribbon is collapsed the pin is out of sight with it; remembered per user). At the top-right of the ribbon's tab row is the signed-in user menu — your display name ▾ → My Profile (your User Properties), Change Password… (changes the database sign-in password TechieCRM uses for your login in SQL Server and MongoDB where applicable), Sign out (switch user)… (the same switch-user flow as the application menu's Sign in as a different user… — re-opens the sign-in window on this session; cancelling it keeps you signed in as you are). Same menu as the cloud portal's user drop-down.

Tabs Home / Edit / View / Search / Tools / Reports / Setup / Custom Actions — the same tabs, groups and captions as your source CRM's ribbon, rebuilt for whichever module is active (open Sales and the ribbon becomes the Sales ribbon; buttons the source CRM greys in a module are greyed here too). The tab row uses TechieCRM's rounded-top-corner tab style (the same look as the Settings dialog's tabs): the active tab is lit, the others are dimmed until you hover. Large buttons and small three-to-a-column buttons follow the source CRM's mix; a ▾ caption opens a drop-down; toggle buttons stay highlighted while on. Every button does something — real actions where TechieCRM has the feature, and a one-line explanation for the few legacy-CRM features not carried over (macros, Crystal Reports, OLE hooks, Outlook sync…). Appendix 6 lists every tab/group/button per module.

The tabs at a glance (Clients shown; other modules swap the Create/Filter/Search-by groups): - Home — Create (Client Entry ▾ Company/Individual/Contact/User, Ticket, Sale, Project, Agreement, Work Order) · Write (Email, Note, Letter, Fax, Document) · Text (SMS) · Phone (Make / Receive a Call → logs a Phone Call note) · Schedule (Meeting, Task, Phone Call, Project Plan) · Insert / Print · Track ▸ Time a Task (stopwatch, save as note) · Subscribe. - Edit — Entry (Open, Delete, Duplicate) · List (Make List Current, Invert Selection, Select All, De-select All, Select Entry — these drive the record-list checkbox marks) · Replace ▸ Global Edit · Relate & Convert · Links (Copy Link puts a techiecrm://client/… link on the clipboard; Paste Link opens it). - View — Filter (Clear List, Last Session List, Entry Templates, My/All/Company/Contact Leads, All Entries, Companies, Individuals, Contacts, Users — login users + your organization row only) · Favorite Lists (All Lists, Recent, Add to List, Remove From List) · Logging (Phone Log, Activities) · Show (Organization Chart, Properties, Map, Website) · Availability · Window (Switch Window ▾ — every module, Refresh, Sort By ▾ — the list's columns). - Search — Options (Undo Search, Clear Undo, Repeat All Fields, Show All) · Catalog (Search Catalog, Recent Catalog Searches ▾) · Search By (All Fields, Company, Last Name, All Phone Numbers, All Email Addresses, Other Fields ▾ — every system field and user-defined field) · Retrieve (Sales, Tickets, Partners, Companies, Contacts) · Validation ▸ Check Duplicate · Web. See Chapter 20. - Tools — Internet · Macro · Office (Export to Excel — CSV of the current list; Advanced Export — all columns; Sync with Outlook; Open Word) · Other (TechieCRM Editor, Graphing, Phone, Timer, Wizard, World Clock, Active OLE Hooks) · Cloud (Cloud Connection, Sync Now, Backup Now, Web Portal). - Reports — Personal (Journal, Expenses, Phone ▾, Quota Report) · Crystal Report ▾ · Clients ▾ / Contacts ▾ / Related Entries ▾ (Column Report = print preview of the list; Detailed Report = the selected entry) · Sales ▾ (incl. Sales Pipeline / Funnel) · Marketing ▾ · Service ▾ / Knowledge Base ▾ · Associated Entries (Notes, Documents, UDFs) · Activities (Calendar ▾, To-Do List ▾, Activities) · Dashboards (Dashboards, Financials, HR & Payroll). - Setup — File Management (Document Administration ▾, Template Library ▾) · Templates (Entry Template, Note Template — chapter 28) · Territory · Preferences (Settings) · User-Defined Fields (Set Up UDF) · User Management (Manage Users, Security Groups, Teams) · Display (Column Setup, Coloring Rule) · Workspace (Custom Actions, Icon Bar → Settings ▸ Theme Layout, Window ▾ → Classic / Stacked / Outlook / Floating layouts) · Administration (Administrator, Database → Settings ▸ Database, Licensing, Diagnostics → Settings ▸ Diagnostics). - Custom Actions — Dashboards · TechieCRM (Web Portal, Messages, Notifications, Manage Custom Actions).

Module ribbons: Calendar (Meeting; Manage Meeting; Legend; Options — Other User's Calendar, Tasks / Users ▾, Carry Forward, Daily / Weekly / Weekly List / Monthly, Go to Today, Go to Calendar Date), Service (Process — Resolve / Assign / Escalate / Monitor Ticket; Filter — My Tickets, All Tickets, Status Filter ▾, My Current Tickets, Ticket Queue, Overdue; Search By — Basic Fields, Ticket #, Owner, Creator, Notes, Last Modified), To-Do List (Task; Manage Activity — Reassign, Mark as Completed, Set Priority; Filter — Show Meetings, Carry Forward, Today's … Next Week's Tasks, Build To-Do List), Sales (Ticket, Sale, Quote, Invoice; Process ▸ Monitor Sale; Filter — All / Current / Team Updated / Won / Lost; Analysis — Funnel, Pipeline; Search By — Company / Partner, Contact, Partner, Competitor, Status, Objective, Stage, Confidence Rating, Team, Leader), Marketing (Automated / Traditional; Review — Steps, Roles; Retrieve Client Entries), Email (Compose, Respond, Manage Email, date filters, Preview / Show Entry), Library / Knowledge Base (Article ▾, Folder, Paste Document, KB Article ▾; KB status filters; Search By File Name / Author / Creation Date / Text in Note / Last Modified; KB Any Field / Phrase), Personal (Journal Note, Expense; Date Range / Text in Note), Quotas, Order Desk (Order Desk ▾), Dashboards (designer: New, Properties, Add Indicator, Wizard, Email, Print, Full Screen), My Work Day (Choose Indicators, Dashboard Mode, Meetings / Tasks / Announcements) and the TechieCRM modules — Inventory, Projects (incl. Gantt), Financials (incl. Aging), Work Orders (Dispatch — Assign, Set Status ▾), Partners, Agreements (Agreement; Generate Due; Pause / Resume / Cancel), Compliance & SLA (Requirement, SLA Policy, Compliance Record, Evaluate SLAs; SLA Board / Partner Compliance / Expiry Board), HR & Payroll (Employee, Time Entry, Leave Request, Pay Run; Employees / Time / Leave / Payroll), Messages — each with Create, Filter and Search By groups over its own list.

The words TechieCRM uses

The buttons use one word per thing, all the way through — the same word on the ribbon, in the right-click menus, on the panels and in this manual. Where you see two words for something that sounds similar, they really are two different things:

Record lists — the guide

Every module list looks and behaves the same: | Element | What it does | |---|---| | Status icon (first column) | Coloured icon for the record's state (e.g. active/paused, overdue, breached). The whole row is tinted the same colour. | | Column headers | One uniform bold header bar in every list (same height everywhere). Click to sort; numbers, money and dates sort as numbers. Drag borders to resize. | | Filter toolbar | Module-specific filters (status, type, date) plus ➕ New, 🗂️ Column Setup, 🔄 Refresh, ⚙️ Settings, ❌ Close at the right. | | Double-click | Opens the record's detail dialog. | | Keyboard | On the Clients, Related and Interactions lists: ↑ / ↓ move to the previous / next record (exactly as if you had clicked it, so the panels below follow), and Enter opens the highlighted record — the same as double-clicking. F5 refreshes everything on screen. On the other module lists ↑ / ↓ move the row in the ordinary way; Enter is not wired there yet, so use double-click or right-click ▸ Open. See Chapter 3. | | Right-click | Context menu — Open at the top, then module actions (New, status changes, Refresh). Empty-area right-click offers Add/New. | | Selection | Two independent things. The current row — the one you last clicked — is outlined, and it is what drives the panels below. Selected rows are a separate multi-row set shown as a peach fill: click the first column's icon cell to select a row, click the header's master box to select or clear them all, or right-click a row ▸ Select (the item reads Unselect when the row is already selected). Every record list works this way — Clients, Related, Interactions, Sales, Service, To-Do, Marketing, Projects, Inventory, Partners, Work Orders, Agreements, Compliance & SLA, Financials, HR & Payroll, Personal, Quotas and Order Desk (Order Desk's own list has no rows to select yet — it is not connected to the database). Ribbon Edit ▸ List (Select All, De-select All, Invert Selection, Select Entry) acts on the same set. | | Lists without multi-select | The Knowledge Base article list uses ordinary click / Shift-click / ⌘-click selection instead of the record-list mark layer. |

Cloud CRM (31 Aug 2026): right-click now works in the web portal's record lists too — on a row and on the empty space below the last row — on the Clients list and on the Related and Interactions panels of every module workspace. On a tablet, press and hold instead. The items are the desktop's, in the desktop's order; the ones that are not built on the web yet say so when you choose them rather than doing nothing. See Chapter 3.

Icons — one symbol per function. Toolbar and menu icons are system emoji, and the same function always uses the same symbol everywhere in TechieCRM: ⚙️ Settings (every panel's corner gear and Setup ▸ Preferences), 🗂️ Column Setup, 🔄 Refresh, ❌ Close, 🔍 Search/Find, 🖨️ Print, 🗑️ Delete, 📧 Email, 💾 Save, ➕ Add, 📝 Note, 🗓️ Meeting, ✅ Task. Record status icons in the first list column keep their colour-coded meaning and are not part of this set.

Layouts and floating panels

Settings ▸ Theme Layout ▸ Content Panels chooses Classic (Clients top, Related + Interactions below), Stacked, Outlook (Clients left) or Floating. In Floating you drag and resize panels freely; the lock icon in a title bar locks all panels (they then snap to the edges and resize proportionally). Any module panel can be popped out to its own window from its title bar and docked back. Positions and sizes are remembered per user, and so is whether a panel is shown or hidden.

Fixed (3 Sept 2026): in Floating layout, a normal quit could silently mark the Clients, Related or Notes panel as hidden even though nobody had hidden it — the shown/hidden flag was being written from whether the panel happened to be on screen at the exact instant the app closed, which is always "no." The next launch then faithfully restored it hidden, and the state persisted through every launch after that until someone noticed a panel was missing and re-opened it. A normal quit no longer does this; explicitly hiding a panel is still remembered as hidden. If a panel is already missing from an earlier launch, re-show it once from its layout controls — no re-hide/re-show loop is needed after that.

Master-detail

Selecting a record in Clients, Sales, Service, Marketing or Projects makes the Related and Interactions panels follow it: Related shows the record's contacts/members, Interactions shows its history. Closing a module returns Clients to the top slot.

Interactions — the unified timeline

The Interactions panel lists, newest first, everything attached to the current record: Notes, Documents, Tasks, Meetings (formerly Appointments), Emails, Sales, Service, Marketing, Inventory, Work Orders, Agreements, Communications (texts + emails sent through the cloud), Projects, Quotes, Invoices, Quotas. Use the type dropdown to show one type, tick Show all to include closed items, and double-click any row to open it in its own dialog. Right-click ▸ Add creates a new item of any type for the record.

Double-click opens every type (September 2026). Until now a small number of rows opened nothing at all when double-clicked, depending on which panel layout you were in: Notes opened, and Documents, Tasks, Meetings and Emails simply did nothing. Every type on the list above now opens its own dialog from a double-click, from every layout.

Settings

Setup ▸ Settings — fifteen tabs: General (the TechieCRM logo, plus a Project Templates… button), Agenda & To-Dos, Theme Layout (Theme System/Light/Dark — Light turns the whole interface light, Dark keeps the dark-grey look; only colours change between them, never text size or spacing — plus the primary and accent colours, the panel layout picker, and the icon bar / calendar control bar docking that used to live on a Shortcuts tab), Font Style, Service, Calendar, Email (your own email accounts — Chapter 12), Meeting Notes, Database (connections, sync status and Backups), Marketing, Diagnostics (per-module diagnostic logging for support — Appendix A5), Orders & Inventory (Inventory's Set Up Inventory Types…), Agreements & SLA (SLA Policies…, Compliance Requirements…, Agreement Templates…), HR & Payroll (HR Setup…) and Connect (TechieCRM Connect's remote-support preferences — Chapter 27). Each module's toolbar ⚙ button opens Settings on that module's page; where a module has no settings of its own, its toolbar simply has no ⚙ button at all — except Sales, Work Orders and the three workspace panels (Clients, Related, Interactions), which (for now) keep a ⚙ that says so plainly instead of opening someone else's page, and, as of September 2026, also tells you which Settings pages do govern that module (Theme Layout, Font Style and Database), so it points somewhere useful instead of stopping the conversation. See Appendix A5.

Fixed in the September 2026 update. Two things about that ⚙ and about Dark:

• the ⚙ on Clients, Related and Interactions used to do nothing at all — no window, no message, no error. All three now give the plain notice described in Appendix A5;
• the record lists on those same three panels used to stay white in Dark, so choosing Dark gave you a dark window wrapped around three bright-white lists. They now follow the theme like everything else — dark cards on a dark background — and they follow it while you are looking at them, without restarting TechieCRM. Nothing about the size or spacing of a row changes when you switch: a theme change is a colour change and nothing else.