Administrator Guide · A4

The Administrator program

A separate administration window for system-level work, mirroring the shape administrators know from the source CRM. Open it from the main window (Ribbon ▸ Setup ▸ Administrator) or run it directly; it signs into the same database.

In this appendix - What works today - Web Access - Client Database Verification - Reports - Interface Customizations (export, import, reset) - License Information - Not yet available, and why

What works today

Preferences — opens the same Settings dialog as the main window (theme, fonts, database status, diagnostics and the rest). The System Preferences diagnostic entries open Settings on its Diagnostics tab.
Setup User-Defined Fields — the same Set Up UDF manager as the main window (folders, field types, custom sort).
Manage Users — the live user directory of the connected database (display name, user ID, email, login state). Open edits the user's General details (name, position, company, address, phones, email — saved on OK); Disable / Enable turns the login off or on (MASTER cannot be disabled; a disabled user can't sign in to TechieCRM or the source CRM); Change Password… changes the sign-in password through the source CRM's own procedure (the current password is required); Access Rights… shows the rights matrix — every user × every module, R/I/M/D as the source CRM computes them (read-only); Security Groups… opens the groups window.
Security Groups and Teams — the database's security groups with their members; Add Member… / Remove Member change membership. New groups are created in the source CRM's Administrator. If Add Member… cannot read the user directory (no database connection, or a failed query) it says so — it does not claim everyone is already a member.
Import ▸ Client Entries (CSV / Excel)… — the same import wizard as the application menu (see A8).
File ▸ Open TechieCRM… — opens the main CRM window; Open/Close Database and Login re-run the sign-in. If the CRM window is already open it is simply brought to the front. If you had closed it, choosing this again opens a fresh CRM window and fully shuts the previous one down first, so repeatedly closing and reopening the CRM from here does not build up in memory. Any module panel you had popped out of that closed window closes with it.
Help — User's Guide and Administrator's Guide open the bundled manual PDF; Online Help/Support opens the documentation site; About shows the version.
File ▸ Web Access — who may sign in to the source CRM's web portal (see below).
File ▸ Client Database Verification — read-only health checks on the connected database (see below).
Reports — User ID List, Client Database Summary, Sales and Marketing Teams, Installed Workstations and Current Users (see below).
Import ▸ Interface Customizations and ▸ Reset All Interface Customizations — save, restore or clear your saved layout (see below).

The window's chrome — background, tabs, group boxes, fields, buttons and menus — uses the same fixed dark styling as every TechieCRM interaction dialog and context menu, by design, in both Light and Dark theme; that part does not change with the theme switch. What DOES follow you live, the moment you change it in Settings ▸ Theme (even while this window is already open), is your Primary colour (focus highlight), Accent colour, and font choice — no need to close and reopen the Administrator window for those to take effect.

Web Access

File ▸ Web Access lists every user of the connected database with two columns that matter: Desktop login and Web portal.

The source CRM keeps both in a single setting, and it has only three states:

Desktop client	Web portal	What it means
Enabled	Allowed	Normal
Enabled	Blocked	Uses the desktop only
Disabled	Blocked	Switched off entirely

There is no web-only state. So:

Allow web access is offered only when the user does not already have it. If that user's login is switched off entirely, the confirmation says in as many words that allowing web access will also switch their desktop sign-in back on — because there is no way to have one without the other.
Block web access is offered only when the user currently has it, and it leaves their desktop sign-in alone.
MASTER cannot be changed, here or anywhere else. Both buttons are unavailable when MASTER is selected.

If a change reports "No account row was updated", that user has no account record in the database at all — Client Database Verification finds and names those users.

This is the source CRM's own web portal. It is not your TechieCRM cloud account or your subscription plan — those are in Settings ▸ Cloud Connection and are not affected by anything in this window.

Changing web access needs user-management rights on your login, the same rights Manage Users needs. Without them the change is refused with a message saying so; nothing is silently ignored.

Client Database Verification

File ▸ Client Database Verification checks the connected database for records that point at something that is no longer there, and for record-number counters that have fallen behind. Press Run checks; select a line to see up to twenty example records; Save report… writes the whole thing to a text file you can send on.

It is read-only. It counts and lists; it changes nothing, so it is safe to run at any time — though on a large database it can take a while.

Check	What a finding means
Contacts with no company or individual	Those contacts do not appear under any client entry.
Notes with no client entry	Note history attached to an entry that has been deleted. Ticket and appointment notes are excluded — they legitimately have no client row.
Documents and emails with no client entry	The same, for filed documents and emails.
Users with no account row	Their login state cannot be read. TechieCRM lets an unreadable state sign in, so a user you meant to switch off may not be.
Unrecognised login states	The account holds a value TechieCRM does not know, and is treated as "could not determine".
Group memberships naming a missing group or user	Membership rows that are invisible in Security Groups and Teams but still counted by the source CRM.
Record sequence counters	A counter that has fallen behind its table means the next record the source CRM writes will collide with an existing one. This is the most important finding in the list.

Each check reports separately, and a check that could not run says so rather than reporting "nothing found" — "clean" and "could not look" are different answers.

Repairs are made by your database administrator or from the source CRM's own Administrator; TechieCRM does not offer a repair button (see Not yet available).

Reports

Every entry under Reports opens the same window, with a picker at the top so you can move between them without going back to the menu. Export CSV… saves the grid; Refresh re-reads it.

The main window's Setup ▸ User Management ▸ Teams ribbon button opens the Administrator window straight onto Sales and Marketing Teams (below) — the same report, one click closer.

Report	What it shows
User ID List	Every login: user ID, display name, email, login state, and the security groups they belong to.
Client Database Summary	Counts of companies, individuals, contacts, notes, documents and emails, tasks, appointments, sales opportunities, service tickets, user-defined field definitions and security groups, plus the licensee, serial number and database schema version.
Sales and Marketing Teams	Every security group and its members. The source CRM stores sales and marketing teams as security groups, and does not record which is which in a way this release can read — the report says so on screen.
Installed Workstations	Every machine that has signed in, with how many sessions, how many different users, and when it was last seen. "Installed" means "has signed in at least once" — nothing in the database records a software installation.
Current Users	The sessions the source CRM currently has open. A client that crashed leaves its row behind, so a name here is not proof somebody is at the keyboard.

All five are read-only, and a table that is missing from your database is reported as missing rather than as a count of zero. If the database cannot be read, the window says why instead of showing an empty grid.

Interface Customizations (export, import, reset)

Import ▸ Interface Customizations and Import ▸ Reset All Interface Customizations open the same window; the second one just starts with the reset section in view.

Your interface customizations are the window and panel positions, the layout template, the theme and fonts, sort orders and saved column setups. The window lists every one of them by name, so you can see exactly what is included before you do anything.

Never included, in any of the three operations: your database connection, your last sign-in, and your TechieCRM cloud account. Resetting your layout will not sign you out or unlink your cloud account. Nothing in this window touches the CRM database, so no customer record can be affected.

Export to file… writes everything in the list to a .json file. Keep it as a backup, or copy it to another computer.
Import from file… applies a file you exported. Settings the file contains replace yours; settings it does not mention are left as they are. A file that was not written by TechieCRM is refused with a message, not half-applied — and a hand-edited file cannot smuggle in a connection string or a cloud account, because those are filtered out on the way in.
Reset all clears everything in the list.

The reset is deliberately hard to do by accident:

The list above shows exactly what will be cleared.
You must type the word RESET into the box before the button becomes available.
You are then asked to confirm.
A copy of everything is saved first. If that copy cannot be written, nothing is deleted.
The message afterwards names the file the copy was saved to.

To undo a reset, use Import from file… and choose that copy.

Restart TechieCRM after an import or a reset. The application reads these settings when its windows are built, so nothing changes on screen until it is started again.

License Information

License Information… shows two clearly-separated halves:

TechieCRM license — this computer: the license key (masked), plan and status, License valid until — the expiry date and the number of days remaining ("perpetual" only for a signed perpetual key) — the licensed user, whether cloud sync is on, and the revocation in force if there is one (and whether a device release removed the local data, is still waiting for the upload to verify, or was refused by a safety check). Below it: Seats (total, in use, free, pending release — a removed user's seat stays in use until all of that user's devices have confirmed back), Assigned users, and Registered devices with each device's status, this computer's fingerprint, the local database bound to this license, and the date of the signed revocation list on this computer. Validate now runs License Validation immediately; Refresh re-reads. Buttons for the Cloud Connection window and the portal. The same window opens from Settings ▸ General ▸ License Information… in the main application.
Source CRM license — connected database (read-only): what the connected source database records about its own license — licensee, serial number, database schema version, and the count of named users. TechieCRM only displays this; it is managed in the source CRM's own Administrator (which is also where its licensed-user limits live — the source CRM stores those encrypted).

Not yet available, and why

Eight entries are still in the menus, because they are the shape of the program administrators know — but they have no working backend. Each one says so when you click it, and says WHY, not just "it is planned". Several offer the real alternative in the same message and open it if you say yes. None of them leaves you on a blank screen wondering whether the click worked.

Menu entry	Why it is not built	What the message offers instead
Import ▸ Advanced Import	Advanced Import maps your file's columns onto CRM fields, including user-defined fields, and then writes those records into your CRM. TechieCRM has no verified field-mapping writer for user-defined fields, and guessing at one would put wrong data in your database.	Opens Import ▸ Client Entries (CSV / Excel)…, which is the supported route.
Document Administrator ▸ Convert Embedded Documents	Rewrites where every document's contents are stored. Needs the source CRM's own document components on the machine, which TechieCRM does not install.	Run it from the source CRM's Administrator, on a server that has them.
Document Administrator ▸ Move Linked Documents	Moves document files between shared folders and re-points every record. Same missing components, plus access to both folders.	As above.
Utilities ▸ Holiday Editor	TechieCRM's calendar takes public holidays from a maintained list for the country and region you choose. There is no store of hand-added holidays yet, so there is nothing for an editor to edit.	Opens Preferences ▸ Calendar, where the country and region are chosen.
Utilities ▸ Repair Database	Repairing a SQL Server database means index and consistency work that needs administrator rights on the server and a maintenance window. That is not something a desktop application should do to a live CRM.	Offers Client Database Verification, which reports what is wrong without changing anything. Repairs are made by your database administrator.
Utilities ▸ System Configurations	Edits the source CRM's own system record — duplicate checking, record numbering, journalling. Those settings drive how the source CRM writes records, and TechieCRM has not verified what writing them does.	Opens Preferences, which covers every setting TechieCRM itself uses.
Utilities ▸ Time Zone Alignment	Re-stamps the date and time on every note, document, appointment and task at once. It cannot be undone and changes every date a customer has relied on.	Nothing — it is simply not built.
Help ▸ Training	There is no training course to link to yet.	Opens the bundled manual.

Removed: File ▸ Purge

The File ▸ Purge submenu, with its Notes… and Documents… entries, has been removed from TechieCRM Administrator. It is not hidden and it is not "coming later" — there is no such menu.

Bulk deletion of notes and documents is not something TechieCRM will do. In this database a filed email keeps its body in a note row and an appointment keeps its description in one, so a date-range note purge would quietly destroy emails and appointments as well as notes; and the documents table holds every filed email, so deleting from it leaves the source CRM's record-number counter out of step.

Delete notes and documents one at a time, with a confirmation, from an entry's Interactions tab. File ▸ Client Database Verification reports record-number counters that are already out of step.

Also not yet available: creating users and security groups, and editing access rights (the matrix is read-only until the source CRM's rights-rebuild procedure is verified on a live database).

Preferences ▸ System Preferences shows the source CRM's row of preference buttons. Only Diagnostic is wired (it opens Settings on its Diagnostics tab). The rest — System Options, System Fields, Locations/Resources, Clients, Service, Sales, Marketing, Automated Services, Dashboards, Key Fields, Mandatory Fields — open a page carrying the same "not yet available in this release" caption rather than an empty screen.

Source-CRM-only tooling from the original layout (product updates, legacy database upgrades, and all third-party contact-manager imports — ACT!, GoldMine and "Other Contact Manager Database") has been removed rather than left as dead entries.

← Users, security & logging in

Settings reference (customization) →