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 - Who counts as an administrator here - What works today - Client Status Values - Fill Client Status from a field - Signed in now - Web Access - Client Database Verification - Reports - Interface Customizations (export, import, reset) - License Information - Not yet available, and why

Who counts as an administrator here

Wherever this guide, the User Guide or a TechieCRM message says administrator or global administrator about the desktop app (for example Default User Templates, Client Status Values, seeing everyone's figures on the Entrepreneur Dashboard), it means your own CRM database's administrator:

the MASTER login of the connected database, or
any login whose source-CRM rights include Modify on user administration (the Users right, the one that puts the key mark on a person icon in the Clients list).

It does not mean an administrator of your TechieCRM cloud workspace on client.techiecrm.com. Being a workspace (tenant) administrator there gives you nothing here, and a database administrator here needs no cloud role. The two are set up in different places: database rights in the source CRM's Administrator, workspace roles in the cloud's workspace settings.

Where administrators manage linked CRM logins (October 2026)

Linking a person's TechieCRM ID to their CRM user ID (Administrator Guide A3, Your two email addresses, and the link between your two user IDs) is done, for now, outside this program:

on the desktop, in the Configuration window, page Linked CRM logins: from the gear on the sign-in window, Sign in as an administrator for this page with MASTER or a login with the Users right above; once signed in (Setup ▸ Administration ▸ Configuration on the ribbon, or File ▸ Configuration... here), an administrator's own sign-in counts for the database signed in to. Then Link another person (their TechieCRM ID email and the CRM user ID) or Remove any link (Administrator Guide A14);
on the local portal, Config database ▸ Linked CRM logins, as a portal administrator whose own CRM user ID is linked (Administrator Guide A13).

The Link and Unlink buttons under Users in this program are still coming.

What works today

File ▸ Configuration... (October 2026): the same Configuration window as the sign-in window's gear and the ribbon's Setup ▸ Administration ▸ Configuration, on its Database page: this computer's database, linked CRM logins, licence, local copy and cloud sync, and email. Signed in, administrator actions need a TechieCRM administrator (see Who counts as an administrator here), and choosing another database asks to sign out first; Sign out now opens this window's sign-in window filled with it. Open Settings > Email on its Email page opens Preferences on Email. See Administrator Guide A14.
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).
File ▸ Client Status Values…: the list every client's status is chosen from: names, colours, order, and what new entries start as (see below). Also on the main window's ribbon: Setup ▸ Client Status Values. Its Fill from a Field… button sets many clients' status at once from a field you already use, with a preview first.
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). Its User-Defined Fields tab shows the user's field values read-only: values are changed on the user's record in the Clients list (open the user there), while the fields themselves are set up under Setup User-Defined Fields here; 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). Anyone may change their own password; changing another user's password is for administrators only (user-management rights, the same rule as the Clients / Related right-click Change Password…; see Appendix A3). Without the right TechieCRM says why and the password window does not open; 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; History Notes… (October 2026) lists the History notes TechieCRM keeps on the selected user's own record, newest first, with the full text of the selected note below: for example one for each company or individual the user deleted, listing what it held (Chapter 17). They are kept in TechieCRM and the cloud only, never in the office database, and cannot be changed or deleted.
File ▸ Signed in now…: who is signed in to this workspace, where and since when, and what is held against their ID; sign a place out, clear a password flag (see below).
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 / Sheet)…: 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 opens Check Database, the read-only health checks on the connected database; Utilities ▸ Repair Database opens Repair Database, the previewed, backed-up and logged repairs (see below and A12).
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.

Client Status Values

Every Company and Individual has one Client Status, chosen from a short list that belongs to the whole workspace. It starts with four values:

Status	Colour	Notes
Prospect	Blue	New Companies and Individuals start here (you can change this)
Active	Green
Former client	Grey	Set by Mark as Former client in the delete warning; can't be retired or deleted
Do not contact	Red

A client with no status shows Not set. Contacts show their company's status and have none of their own.

Where to find it: in this window, File ▸ Client Status Values… (just under Setup User-Defined Fields); in the main window, Setup ▸ Client Status Values on the ribbon.

Who can change it: MASTER, or a user whose rights allow managing users. Nobody can change it while TechieCRM is read-only without a licence. For anyone else the menu entry here is greyed out. The ribbon button still opens the window, but only to look: every button is greyed out, with a line explaining why.

Every change saves as soon as you make it, for every user. There is no OK button to press afterwards. If a change is refused, a message says why and the list is shown as it really is.

What you can do (select a status in the list first):

Add…: type a name and pick a colour. The new status goes to the end of the list.
Rename… (or double-click the status): changes the name users see. Saved searches, filters and Coloring Rules keep working, because they remember the status itself, not its name.
Colour of the selected status: choose one of five colours: Green, Blue, Amber, Red or Grey. These are the theme's own status colours, so they match the Light and Dark themes, the web portal and the phone apps. You can't pick any other colour.
Move Up / Move Down: the order statuses are offered in.
New client entries start as: the status a brand-new Company or Individual gets. Choose Not set to leave new entries without one.
Retire: stops the status being offered. Clients that already have it keep it, and it still shows on them. Reinstate offers it again. If you retire the status new entries start with, new entries start as Not set until you choose another.
Delete: removes a status completely. You can only delete a status you added yourself, and only when no client has it. The Clients column shows how many Companies and Individuals have each status, and Delete is greyed out for a status some clients have (its tooltip says how many), so you can retire it instead or change those clients first. The four starting statuses can't be deleted, only retired.
Fill from a Field…: opens Fill Client Status from a field (next section).

Former client can't be retired or deleted: the delete warning's Mark as Former client button sets it, so it must always exist. Its Retire and Delete buttons are greyed out. Their tooltip, and a line under the list, say why. You can still rename it and change its colour.

On the web portal and the phone apps. When this computer syncs with TechieCRM Cloud, the list goes with it, so the web portal and the phone apps show the same names, colours and order. A change you make here reaches them on the next sync (about every 15 minutes while TechieCRM is open). Only changes are sent: a sync where nothing in the list changed sends nothing.

This list is the one that counts for a workspace that uses this database. If someone changes a status name or colour on the web, the next sync puts this list's version back. A status that exists on the web but not here is retired there (no longer offered, still shown on the clients that have it), never deleted. Until this computer has synced once, the web and phones show the four starting statuses.

If the window says Client Status is unavailable, its tables haven't been set up in this database yet. Sign in once with the MASTER ID (or another ID with SQL administrator rights on the database), and TechieCRM creates them.

Fill Client Status from a field

Most databases already record "is this a client?" somewhere, usually in a user-defined field called something like Status, Category or Type. This tool copies that field onto Client Status for many Companies and Individuals at once. You choose what each value becomes, see a preview, and then apply it.

Where to find it: Fill from a Field… in the Client Status Values window (File ▸ Client Status Values… here, or Setup ▸ Client Status Values on the main window's ribbon). Only administrators can use it, the same people who can change the list. Anyone else sees it greyed out.

Step by step

Field: pick the user-defined field to copy from. The list holds the Clients user-defined fields, the same ones the column setup editor offers.
The window lists every value found in that field. For each value it shows how many Companies and Individuals have it (Clients) and how many of those already have a Client Status (Already have a status).
In Set Client Status to, choose a status for each value you want to copy. Every value starts as (leave alone), and nothing is guessed for you. Values you leave alone are not changed. Retired statuses aren't offered.
Choose what happens to clients that already have a status: - Only clients with no status yet (the default). Nobody's existing status is changed. - Overwrite a different existing status. Clients whose value you mapped get the new status even if they already have another one.
Press Preview. Nothing is written yet. The preview lists: - how many clients would be set, per status (and, when overwriting, how many of those would replace a different status), - how many keep the status they already have, - how many already have the status their value maps to, - every value you left unmapped, by name, with how many clients have it, - how many clients have nothing in this field, - how many have more than one value in the field (see below).
Press Apply and confirm. Everything is written in one step: either all of it is saved or, if anything goes wrong, none of it. The result lists what was written and everything that was left alone, in the same form as the preview.

Apply only works on a current preview. If you change a value's status, the mode or the field after previewing, Apply greys out until you press Preview again. The counts you confirm are always the counts for your current choices.

Fields with more than one value. A few fields let a client hold several values. The tool uses the first one, in the field's own list order, the same value the Clients list column shows first. The window tells you how many clients this affects.

What it doesn't do

It writes no History notes. A normal status change adds a History note to the client, but a fill can change thousands of clients at once, so it doesn't add one to each. In the client window, a status set this way reads "Set on date by Fill Client Status from a field".
It never changes the user-defined field itself. The field is only read.
It doesn't change contacts. A contact shows its company's status.
There is no undo. You can change a client's status to another status (one by one, or with another fill using Overwrite), but a status can't be cleared back to Not set. Check the preview before you apply.

Signed in now

File ▸ Signed in now… (just under Manage Users) shows every place where someone is signed in to this workspace, so you can see who is working where and sign a place out when you need to. It belongs to the rule that one ID is used in one place at a time; see Signing in from more than one place.

Who can open it: administrators only (see Who counts as an administrator here, above). For anyone else the entry is greyed out, and its tooltip says why.

What the list shows

Column	What it means
User	The person signed in. (administrator) follows the name of an administrator login.
Where	The device: the computer's name and its Windows user for the desktop app, or the browser and system for the web portal. Hover over it to see the TechieCRM version as well.
Surface	Desktop, Web, Office portal, Phone app or Tablet app. admin work is added when that place is doing administrator work (the Administrator program or the Admin Portal).
State	Active, Idle (no typing or clicking for 15 minutes), Waiting (deciding whether to take over from another place, or waiting for it to sign out), Signing out (showing the countdown), or No contact (the place has stopped answering, for example a computer that was switched off).
Since	When that place signed in, in your time zone. A time on its own is today.
Last active	When someone last typed or clicked there.
Flags	What is held against the ID: Strike 1 of 3 or Strike 2 of 3 (the three strikes rule), Disabled after 3 of 3 strikes, or Password must be changed (the person chose This wasn't me). Blank when there is nothing.

The line above the list says where the list comes from and whether sign-ins are being checked. Tick Show recently signed out to add the places that ended in the last 7 days, with the reason (for example Signed out (by an administrator)). Press Refresh to read the list again; it never refreshes on its own, so a long-open window can be out of date.

For an office that runs TechieCRM on its own database, opening this page also tidies the register: places that signed out more than 90 days ago are removed, at most once a day. The activity log keeps the permanent record, and a person's strike history is never removed.

Signing a place out

Select the place in the list. To sign out several places of the same person, hold Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac) and select each one.
Press Sign out, or Sign out everywhere to sign out every place where that person is signed in, and confirm.
Each place gets a short countdown that says "Your administrator signed you out." The person cannot cancel it. Anything they had not saved is kept on their device, as described in chapter 30. The list then shows the place as Signing out, and it disappears once the place has gone.

Things to know:

Your own place cannot be signed out from here. To sign yourself out, close TechieCRM.
A registered phone app is never signed out from here. Phones are personal; remove an unknown phone from the person's registered devices instead.
Sign out works only while sign-ins are checked (Enforce). In Observe or Off (Setup ▸ Settings ▸ General ▸ Signing in from more than one place) the list still shows what was recorded, but Sign out tells you nobody was signed out.
Every sign-out is written to the activity log first (Sessions force ended, see A11). If the log cannot be written at that moment, nobody is signed out and you are told to try again.

Clearing a password flag

When someone chooses This wasn't me on a desktop that signs in with a source-CRM login, every other place is signed out and their ID shows Password must be changed. TechieCRM never changes source-CRM passwords, so you do it:

Change the person's password in the source CRM's own administrator program, and give them the new one.
In Signed in now, select one of their places and press Clear password flag. Read the reminder and answer Yes only if you have changed the password.

Until the flag is cleared the person can still sign in where their ID is not already in use, but cannot take over from another place. If they are not signed in anywhere, tick Show recently signed out to find a row for them (it lists the last 7 days). The change is written to the activity log first (User edit).

Re-enabling an ID after the third strike

An ID disabled by the three strikes rule is resolved by TechieCRM, on a call with you (chapter 30). For an office that runs TechieCRM on its own database, TechieCRM asks you to do the last step while they are on the call:

Select the person (tick Show recently signed out if they have no place open) and press Re-enable ID….
Type TechieCRM's reference for the call and the Reason they gave (for example system error, fixed), and press Re-enable.

Both are kept with the person's strike history and written to the activity log first (User enable). Do not re-enable an ID without TechieCRM on the call: if two people really were using one ID, the second person needs their own licence.

A workspace on the TechieCRM cloud

If your workspace uses the TechieCRM cloud, the list comes from the cloud, and Sign out asks the cloud to do it. The Flags column is blank and Clear password flag and Re-enable ID… are not shown: for a cloud workspace a password flag or a disabled ID is cleared by TechieCRM, so call TechieCRM support. Your computer must be signed in to the cloud as a workspace administrator, or the list says that only an administrator can see it.

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 opens Check Database, the same window as the main window's Ribbon ▸ Tools ▸ Database ▸ Check Database. It checks the connected database for records that point at something that is no longer there, for record-number counters that have fallen behind, and (as later releases add them) for problems with the SQL Server, TechieCRM's own tables, the local MongoDB copy and the TechieCRM files on this computer. Choose Run All Checks; select a line to see up to twenty example records; Save Report… writes the results as a text, CSV or JSON file you can send on, and Copy puts the text report on the clipboard.

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. The checks run in the background and Stop ends the run after the check that is running.

The database tabs are for administrators (see Who counts as an administrator here); anyone else sees only the files on their own computer.

Utilities ▸ Repair Database opens Repair Database, the same window as the main window's Ribbon ▸ Tools ▸ Database ▸ Repair Database. Each repair first shows what it will change, keeps a backup of what it changes, records who ran it in the Activity Log and runs only after you confirm; some can be undone. The repairs in this release set up missing TechieCRM tables and put back the Activity Log's protection, create missing MongoDB indexes, and fix TechieCRM's own files on this computer. Fixes to the source CRM's own tables are reviewed scripts for your database administrator (Tools ▸ Database ▸ Database Scripts).

Every check, repair and script, and what each answer means, are described in A12. Database tools.

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 (every license has a date; there is no perpetual license; a key with no date is reported as invalid); 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, was refused by a safety check, or (after 3 attempts that could not establish which database server holds the data) needs TechieCRM support; see Chapter 13). 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 and type (computer, phone or tablet; phones are registered to a person, one per user; there is no limit on computers), 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

Seven 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 / Sheet)…, 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 ▸ 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.

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