Chapter 20

Column setup, coloring rules, searching, favorite lists & key fields

Source-CRM equivalents: Column Setup, Coloring Rule, Search, Favorite Lists, Key Fields.

In this chapter - Column setups (Clients, Related, Sales, Service, Marketing, To-Do) - Column setups on the TechieCRM windows (Agreements, Financials, Work Orders, Partners, Compliance & SLA, HR & Payroll, Inventory, Projects, Conversations) - Coloring rules (colouring the Clients list by a condition) - Page size, the list footer and Show all (web portal) - Sorting and quick type-ahead search - Quick Search box - Search by Field / Search All Fields - The Search Catalog (saved searches, including the source CRM's) - Retrieve, Undo, Repeat, Show All - Favorite lists - Key fields - Not yet available

Column setups

Every source-CRM-backed list has a Column Setup button (and Clients/Related a setup dropdown). The Column Setup dialog: Show All Column Setups / My Column Setups; the Defined views list (Name, Creator); Add…, Edit, Copy (asks for a name), Delete (confirmed), Use Now, Close. Setups are the source CRM's column setups, shared with its users. Add / Edit ("Defined View Properties"): Details of view: Name, Full access and Read access (Public / Private), Creator; Columns in view: one cell per column, New Column / Remove Column / ◄ Move / Move ►; Fields in current column: pick from Basic Fields or User-Defined Fields, Add -> / <- Remove, a per-field Field label and per-column Width. A column can stack several fields (they render on separate lines). Entry Type Icon puts the record icon in the first column. OK saves and applies the setup.

TechieCRM Fields (Clients and Service setups)

Clients and Service column setups also offer a third group under Available fields: TechieCRM Fields. These are fields TechieCRM adds that the source CRM does not have:

  • Client Status (Clients setups): the client's status (Prospect, Active, Former client, Do not contact, or any value your administrator has added). A contact shows its company's status. An entry with no status shows an empty cell.
  • Response and Resolution (Service setups, 25 October 2026): the ticket's two SLA clocks, with the same words and colours as the built-in Service list columns (Chapter 4, The SLA clocks on a ticket). They are offered only when SLAs are set up in this database; sorting either column sorts by time left. A setup that holds one of them in a database without SLAs shows the column with empty cells.

How they behave:

  • A column of its own. A TechieCRM field always takes a whole column; it is never stacked with other fields. Add -> puts it in the current column if that column is empty, otherwise in a new column just to the right. Adding a Basic or User-Defined field while a TechieCRM column is selected starts a new column after it. Each TechieCRM field can appear once per setup. In Columns in view the field is shown as Client Status (TechieCRM); Field label, Width, ◄ Move / Move ► and <- Remove work as for any other column.
  • Where it is saved. TechieCRM saves these columns in its own table, alongside the setup. The source CRM's copy of the setup keeps only its own fields, so a source-CRM user who opens the same setup sees it without the TechieCRM columns. Copy copies them, and Delete removes them with the setup.
  • At least one ordinary field. A setup can't consist only of TechieCRM fields. Add at least one Basic or User-Defined field too, or OK asks you to.
  • When the group is missing. The group only appears once TechieCRM has set up its tables in this database (it does this automatically when someone signs in with the MASTER ID, or an ID with SQL admin rights). If a setup already holds a Client Status column and the status tables are unavailable, the column still appears, with empty cells, and nothing fails to load.

In the Clients list, the Client Status column is coloured by the status's colour: a light tint of the colour behind the cell, and the text in the colour itself. The colours follow the theme: Prospect is blue, Active green, Former client grey, Do not contact red. An administrator can choose a different colour for any value. The column sorts like any other: click its header. Clients that have a status also get a small coloured status dot in the corner of the record-type icon at the left of the row, whether or not the setup has a Client Status column. Hover over the icon to see the status by name. The status column's colour takes the place of a coloring rule's background in that one cell; the rest of the row keeps the rule's colours. In the Related panel the same column shows the status text, without colour.

Column setups on the TechieCRM windows

The TechieCRM-native windows have their own Column Setup, which looks and behaves the same as the source-CRM one but is stored in TechieCRM (it is not visible to source-CRM users). It is available on Agreements, Financials, Work Orders, Partners, Compliance & SLA (a separate setup for each of its three views: SLA Board, Partner Compliance, Expiry Board), HR & Payroll (one per view: Employees, Timesheets, Leave, Payroll), Inventory, Projects (one for the native Projects list and one for Project Plans) and Conversations. (Order Desk had one too until it was retired into Financials, Chapter 24.)

  • The button. Every one of these windows has a Column Setup button (🗂️) on its toolbar, just left of Refresh. The ribbon Setup ▸ Column Setup opens the same dialog for the active window.
  • The dialog. Defined views lists the setups for that window: Name, Owner, Public; Show filters All Column Setups / My Column Setups. Buttons: Add…, Edit…, Save As…, Delete, Use Now, Close. Double-clicking a setup is the same as Use Now.
  • Default vs your own. Each window comes with a built-in Default setup: the columns the window has always shown. Default cannot be edited or deleted; select it and Save As… to start your own setup from it. Setups you create list your name as the Owner.
  • Add / Edit. Details of view: Name and Available to all users (bold = on; off = only you see it). Columns in view: pick fields from Available fields and move them to Selected columns with the arrows (double-click also adds/removes); reorder with the up/down arrows. For the selected column you can type a Header (blank = the field's own name) and a Width in pixels. The first, icon column of the window is always present and is not part of the setup. OK saves and switches the window to the new setup.
  • Sharing. A setup marked Available to all users appears in everyone's list for that window; a private one appears only in yours. Only the owner (or the administrator MASTER login) can Edit or Delete a setup. Save As… copies any listed setup, including other users' public ones, into a private copy of your own.
  • Use Now. Selects the setup for the window and re-renders the list. Each window remembers its OWN last-used setup independently; changing the setup in one window (e.g. Related) never changes another window's (e.g. Clients') remembered setup. The choice is remembered per user, per window (and per view) and restored the next time you open it. It does not affect other users. If the setup you were using is deleted, the window falls back to Default.

Coloring rules

Source-CRM equivalent: Setup ▸ Display ▸ Coloring Rule.

A coloring rule paints rows of the Clients list according to a condition: overdue accounts in red, one region on a yellow background, and so on. Open it from Setup ▸ Display ▸ Coloring Rule while the Clients list is the active module.

The Coloring Rules dialog

Defined rules lists every rule you can see. The first entry is always (Not using a rule): select it and click Apply to switch colouring off. Selecting a rule shows its Description underneath.

Button What it does
Add… Opens an empty Rule Properties dialog to build a new rule.
Properties… Opens the selected rule for editing. A rule someone else owns opens read-only.
Save As… Copies the selected rule under a new name (offered as " (copy)"), the way to base your own rule on someone else's.
Delete Deletes the rule, after asking. Disabled unless you may edit it.
Apply Colours the Clients list with the selected rule and remembers it, so the list is still coloured next time you start TechieCRM. It reports how many entries the rule colours.
Close Closes the dialog. Rules are saved by OK in Rule Properties, not by Close, so closing loses nothing.

Rule Properties

Details of the rule: Name (required, and unique), Description, Full access and Read access. Full access Public means anyone may edit the rule; pick a user instead and only that user can change or delete it. Read access only matters once Full access is a specific user, so it stays greyed out while Full access is Public, exactly as in the source CRM.

Criteria of the rule: Match entries using this field with a … button opens a field picker listing the Client fields and every client User-defined field. That field is simply where new criteria start; each criterion can test a different field.

Match entries using the following criteria is the ordered list of conditions, each row drawn in the colours it applies, so you can see the rule while you build it.

Order matters. The first criterion that matches an entry is the one that colours it; later criteria never override an earlier one. Move Up / Move Down are how you decide which condition wins when an entry matches several.

Add… / Change… open Set Up Criterion; Remove deletes the selected condition. OK saves the rule; Cancel discards every change, including criteria you added or reordered.

Set Up Criterion

Details: Field name (with its own … picker), a Condition and a Value. The conditions offered depend on the field: text fields get contains / starts with / equals / does not equal / is empty / is not empty, numbers get = ≠ < > between, dates get on / before / after / between / today / this week / this month / this year / in the last N days / in the next N days, list and Yes-No fields get their own values in a dropdown.

Color settings: Text color and Background color, each with a … colour picker and a Clear button. Clear means leave that alone: a criterion with only a text colour recolours the text and leaves the row's background as it is. A preview line under the swatches shows the result. A criterion must set at least one of the two; one that sets neither would match entries and then change nothing, so OK refuses it.

Notes and limits

  • Rules are stored in your TechieCRM database, so a Public rule is shared with your colleagues. The rule you are using is remembered per login.
  • Colouring survives sorting, searching, reloading and column-setup changes; you do not need to re-apply it. It does not refresh by itself when the underlying data changes; re-open the dialog and click Apply to recompute.
  • Login rows and your organization row (the synthetic entries at the bottom of the Clients list) are never coloured by a rule; they keep their own colours.
  • If a criterion can no longer be evaluated (its field was removed, for example), Apply colours everything else and tells you which criterion it could not use, rather than failing silently.

Page size, the list footer and Show all

Web portal only. The desktop windows load their lists differently and have no page controls.

Every module list in the web portal (Sales, Service, Marketing, To-Do List, Email, Library, Knowledge Base, Quotas, Financials, Agreements, Compliance & SLA, HR & Payroll, Work Orders, Projects, Partners, Inventory) shows one page at a time, with a footer strip along the bottom of the list panel.

  • How much you are looking at. The left of the footer reads Showing 1–50 of 214. If a list cannot be counted without reading the whole collection it reads Showing 1–50 and stops there; it will never print a total it does not actually have.
  • Rows. The Rows drop-down on the right picks 25, 50 or 100 rows per page. Your choice is remembered per module and follows your login, so a list you always want 100 rows of stays that way on any device.
  • Pages. ‹ Prev / Next › and Page 2 of 5 move through the list. Your search, filters and sort travel with you; changing a filter starts again at page 1, because page 3 of one filter is not page 3 of another.
  • Show all. The Show all link swaps page numbers for one long list that loads more rows as you scroll, 200 at a time, so the page paints immediately instead of waiting for everything. Show pages puts the page numbers back. This choice is also remembered per module and follows your login.

Three limits, every one of which the list tells you about rather than applying quietly:

  • Show all stops at 20,000 rows and says so: Showing the first 20,000 of 41,600. Narrow the search to see the rest. That is a browser limit, not a database one; 20,000 rows of table is already slow to draw. Use the search box or a filter to get to what you want.
  • Some columns cannot be sorted at all, and the list says which and why. A column the list can order inside the database sorts normally. A few columns cannot be: they show one thing and store another. Examples you will actually meet: To-Do's Date shows the due date or the scheduled date when there is no due date; To-Do's Pr. shows the word "High" while imported to-dos store the letter "H"; Email's Subject falls back to the description on imported mail; and any Client / Name / Partner column is filled in from the client directory after the page is read. Clicking such a heading leaves the list in its own order and the footer explains it in plain words: This list is in its own order: this column shows the due date, or the scheduled date when there is no due date, so the list cannot be ordered by it. Use the search box or a filter to narrow to what you want instead.
  • Show all is off while a column like that is sorted. Even for columns that can be ordered in the database, a list that arrives 200 rows at a time would end up sorted within each block of 200 and not across them if the order were done afterwards, which looks perfectly ordered and is not. So when you sort a column the list cannot order in the database, Show all turns itself off for that view and the footer says: Show all is off while this column is sorted. Clear the sort to turn Show all back on.

Occasionally a list has to stop reading early to stay responsive. When that happens the footer says so (This list stopped after scanning 5,000 records, so there may be more) rather than presenting a partial list as if it were complete.

Click a column header to sort (remembered). With the Clients list focused, just start typing: the list jumps to the first entry whose sorted column starts with what you typed (case-insensitive; the buffer resets after a second).

Sorting ignores capitals. apple, Apple and APPLE sort together, so a text column reads Apple Jones, apple Smith, banana Lee, Zebra Co, not Apple Jones, Zebra Co, apple Smith, banana Lee. This is the same for every list in the product. (Until September 2026 three of the newer lists, Financials, Agreements and Compliance & SLA, sorted capitals ahead of lower case, so Zebra appeared between Apple and apple. They now match the rest.)

The Quick Search… box on the Clients title bar (Enter or the magnifier) filters the list to entries whose name, first name, company, city, phones, e-mails or website contain the text. An empty search shows all. The title bar reads N Client Entries Displayed (search: quick 'text') while a search is on.

Search by Field / Search All Fields

Ribbon Search ▸ Search By (or the magnifier button on the Clients title bar): - Company · Last Name · All Phone Numbers · All Email Addresses · Other Fields ▾ open Search by Field on that field. Other Fields lists every system field (name, address, phones, e-mails, website, entry type, owner, creator, dates, lead status, territory) and every Clients user-defined field (text, number, date, table/list, yes-no) with the right operators for its kind: contains / starts with / equals / is empty…, =, <, >, between, on / before / after / today / this week / this month / this year / last-next N days, is / is not / is any of, is Yes / is No, plus a NOT box. Choose which entry kinds to include (Companies, Individuals, Contacts) and how to Retrieve: Replace the current list, Narrow the current list (AND with what is showing) or Add to the current list (OR). Count previews how many entries match before you run it. - All Fields opens Search All Fields: build any number of criteria in the table (Add / Update / Remove / Clear All), match ALL (AND) or ANY (OR), pick entry kinds and the retrieve mode, Count, then Search. Save… stores the criteria in the Search Catalog (name; available to all users or just you); Catalog… loads a saved search back into the builder. The title bar shows the active search in words (City contains Victoria AND Entry type is Company). Searches run as SQL against the source CRM's client table (and the UDF value table); nothing is written.

The Search Catalog

Search ▸ Catalog ▸ Search Catalog lists TechieCRM saved searches (yours and public ones, with their criteria in words) and the source CRM's own Address Book catalog searches (read-only: All Companies, All Contacts, your existing saved searches…). Retrieve runs the selected search (replace / narrow / add), Save Current… saves the criteria of the search you last ran, Rename… and Delete manage TechieCRM searches you own; the filter box narrows by name. Source-CRM searches run through the same criteria translator as the dashboard indicators; a search using a criterion TechieCRM can't run yet says so instead of returning a wrong list. Recent Catalog Searches ▾ on the ribbon re-runs your recently used saved searches; each run updates the search's Last run / Run count.

Notify me of new matches

Select a search in the Search Catalog and tick Notify me of new matches under the list. TechieCRM counts the entries that match now and says so on the line beside the box, for example Monitoring: 1,204 current matches, you will be told about new ones. The entries that already match are never reported. From then on, whenever an entry starts to match (a new client, or an edit that makes an existing entry match, made in TechieCRM or in the source CRM), you get an alert in Notifications (Chapter 12) and, where monitoring emails are set up (Chapter 12, Monitoring emails), one daily email at 8:00 listing the new matches, unless you choose otherwise under Saved search matches there. An entry that stops matching and matches again later is reported again. Untick the box to stop; when nobody monitors a search any more, its count is forgotten.

  • Which searches. Your own TechieCRM saved searches and public ones (a private search only by its owner, and administrators), and the source CRM's Clients catalog searches, up to 100 different searches in the workspace. Sales and Service have no saved searches yet.
  • How quickly. With the other monitoring checks (Chapter 12, Notifications): within about two minutes of a change, at most 15. Only the clients that changed are checked, so a large search costs nothing between changes.
  • Who is told. Everyone who ticked the box, but only about clients they are allowed to open: a public search never tells you about a private client. A change you made yourself does not alert you.
  • Many at once. When an import makes many entries match, each person gets one alert with the count (312 new saved search matches) instead of hundreds.
  • Editing a monitored search. After you change and save its criteria, TechieCRM counts the matches again on its next check, quietly: entries that match the new criteria already are not reported.
  • Too many matches. A search that matches more than 20,000 entries is not monitored: This search matches too many records to monitor. Narrow it first. (Matching that many, it is a list, not an alert.)
  • Contacts and companies. A contact matches Client status through its company, as in the Clients list. A source CRM catalog search matches a user-defined field value found anywhere in the company (the company or any of its contacts), as the source CRM does.

"This search can't be monitored here." Monitoring checks each change on this computer's own copy of your clients, which keeps most fields exactly but not all. Rather than guess, TechieCRM refuses a search it cannot answer exactly as the Clients list would, and the line names the field and the reason. The usual reasons:

What the search uses Why What to do instead
Phone 1 to 4, Email 2, Territory, Salutation the copy keeps phone numbers as one list (without which was Phone 1, 2...), only the first email address, and no territory or salutation search on another field, or on the name
NOT with contains, starts with or equals on a text field; NOT with is / is any of on Owner, Creator or Assigned to the copy cannot tell an empty field from one never filled in, and the search treats those two differently use does not equal or is not
a condition with no text, or with a space at the start or end the copy does not keep blanks or outer spaces type the text without the spaces
is empty / is not empty on a number, list or Yes/No user-defined field; is not on a list field; does not equal on a text user-defined field; the source CRM's no value assigned the copy does not keep a field that holds 0, a blank or an unlabelled choice ask for the values you want (is any of)
a user-defined number condition that a value of 0 would meet (= 0, < 5, between -1 and 1) the copy does not keep a value of 0 use a range above or below 0
a user-defined field whose name another field shares, a choice whose label another choice shares, a calculated field, a field with a password-like name the copy keeps values by field name and choice label, and keeps calculated and password-like fields out rename the field or choice (an administrator)

Two small differences remain and are accepted: a field whose text starts or ends with spaces is compared without them, and the source CRM's "empty date" (1 January 1900 and earlier) counts as no date.

Retrieve, Undo, Repeat, Show All

Search ▸ Retrieve ▸ Companies / Individuals / Contacts (and View ▸ Filter ▸ Companies / Individuals / Contacts / Users; Users lists only the login users and your organization row) replace the list with all entries of that kind; Sales / Tickets open the Sales / Service module showing the selected client's records; Partners opens the Partners module. Options ▸ Undo Search steps back to the previous list (up to 20 steps), Clear Undo forgets the history, Repeat All Fields re-opens the last criteria in Search All Fields, and Show All (also View ▸ Filter ▸ Clear List / All Entries) drops the search. View ▸ Filter ▸ Last Session List brings back the search that was active when you last closed TechieCRM. Edit ▸ List ▸ Make List Current replaces the list with the entries you have check-marked. Validation ▸ Check Duplicate lists other entries sharing the selected entry's name/company, phone or e-mail (double-click to open one). Module lists (Service, Sales, Marketing, Library…) have their own Search By buttons: each asks for text and hides rows that don't contain it in that column; View ▸ Clear List shows all rows again.

Favorite lists

From the client (or case) dialog toolbar Favorite List ▾: View Favorite Lists, Add to Favorite List, Remove from Favorite List. The dialog shows All / My lists with Name, Creator and the list's entry count; double-click a list to commit. Lists are the source CRM's favorite lists.

Key fields

On the client dialog, Key Fields For: picks any key-field list defined for that entry kind; the fields render in the source CRM's two-column layout and are editable (dropdowns for list fields, the native table-value picker for multi-select). Your choice is remembered per entry kind.

Not yet available

Coloring rules on modules other than Clients (the Coloring Rule button in Sales, Service, Marketing and To-Do says so and points you at Clients; coloring rules that re-apply automatically when data changes (click Apply again); creating/renaming/deleting favorite lists from the ribbon (use the dialog); designing key-field lists (Administrator ▸ Key Fields is a placeholder); Column Setup on Personal; per-user/group access on a column setup (TechieCRM-window setups are either private or public); source-CRM catalog searches that use criteria the translator doesn't cover yet (notes/document full-text, some UDF date forms); the Catalog dialog tells you which; Notify me of new matches on the web portal and the phone apps (the alerts themselves reach them through the cloud, but the box is on this computer's Search Catalog only).