CentralStationCRM Änderungen & Updates

Find legacy data within your CRM

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 13:55:39 +0200

From now on, you can get to grips with deadbeats in your CRM system much more easily, because a long-awaited (and frequently requested) feature is now available in the account settings: The search for old contacts (or offers or projects), i.e. those that haven't received an update in a long time and have thus either "slipped through" or are no longer relevant. Of course, the GDPR also plays a role here, because data from people who once made a request 10 years ago is actually no longer needed today.

Until now, you could sort your list of persons (or other areas) in ascending order according to the last processing date and thus find the "old" contacts. But now, with our "dead body search", you can more easily find contacts that have been "untouched for 5 years", for example. We then give these contacts a unique tag / keyword, so that you can then go through these hits individually (e.g. with the series editing) or delete them collectively.

Click on the cogwheel, there on "Account settings" and then on "Find dead bodies". Here you can now decide what constitutes a dead body for you and start the search for it.

Have fun cleaning up - whether now or not until spring cleaning.

Tasks in calendar

Tue, 10 Oct 2023 10:58:12 +0200

From now on, you can also display your CRM tasks in the calendar. Tasks without a specific time are displayed as if they were scheduled for a whole day, while tasks with a fixed time are naturally sorted according to the desired time.

Updates in the GDPR contract: From now on we also store all files exclusively in Germany

Mon, 02 Jan 2023 13:26:56 +0100

For over a year now, we have been working on storing the files stored in CentralStationCRM only in Germany and no longer using the Amazon file storage solution (AWS). All other input in our systems has always been stored and processed exclusively on our own hardware.

And now, shortly after Christmas, the time had come: we flipped the switch and turned off the storage of files at Amazon.

In line with this change, we have adapted our order processing agreement (AVV) and removed Amazon from the list of approved subcontractors (Annex 3).

There are no other changes in the new version of the contract.

IMPORTANT: You do not have to do ANYTHING. Print nothing, sign nothing, send nothing. These changes are essentially formal adjustments that we would still like to communicate as transparently as possible, of course. For questions and comments, you can of course reach us as usual in customer support.

Improved results from filtering input fields

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 09:06:57 +0100

Since our recent custom fields update you have the option to define validation rules. These include text, numbers, dates or links as well as dropdown fields with predefined values. This change has significantly improved filter options, too. Date fields allow filtering of a specific time frame, or number fields can be filtered to only show contacts with a higher/lower number than your input.

Results shown in list view

Now, we’ve added another feature: You’ll see the exact values of the criteria you searched for directly in the list of results. You don’t have to open individual results to see them first.

Links to networks and drives

Another validation rule concerned URLs which allowed us to automatically turn them into hyperlinks so you can click them. We extended input options for that field type so that links to your internal file system or network drives can also be added and clicked.

Searched and found! The new search function in CentralStationCRM.

Tue, 22 Sep 2020 14:12:41 +0200

Crisis or no crisis, we have invested, in hardware and in work. The result is, wait a minute, I'll find it right away, a new search! More precisely, a new full-text search that searches notes, e-mails and the like.

What has changed in the CRM search?

Full text search as default

First of all, you will notice that the full-text search will now become the default if no name can be assigned to your search term. This means that pressing the Enter key is sufficient to activate it, the way via the mouse is no longer necessary.

CRM at speed

Compared to the old one, the new search is incredibly fast. Especially larger accounts with a large database will notice the difference immediately. The extra portion of speed is mainly based on new servers, which are purchased and used explicitly for the search. In addition, the search algorithm is different.

Semantic search (almost)

We don't take it too seriously any more. In other words, by using background knowledge, we take more account of the meaning of texts and search queries. This means that we now find results even though you may have mistyped your query or search for the word in the singular even though it is only in the plural in the note.

More search criteria

The new algorithm allows us to incorporate more search criteria, which ultimately determine the relevance and thus the order of the search results. In addition to the matching of letters, we now look more closely at the location of the search term (e.g. in the text or subject), the age of the note or e-mail, when it was last edited, etc.

Filter search results

By introducing new criteria, you can now narrow down your search, for example to the creator or even whether the search should only be carried out within e.g. tasks. The results can then be displayed in chronological order, either by relevance or by the time of creation.

As you can see, a lot has really happened in terms of searching. Do you have any questions, comments or criticism? Then you are welcome to write to us, preferably via the help section or on Facebook.

Fields of Gold - Custom fields 2.0

Thu, 27 Aug 2020 11:45:11 +0200

Our newest custom fields update may affect just a small part of CentralStationCRM but the impact it has on dealing with your contacts is rather huge.

Essentially, CentralStationCRM offers two mechanisms for categorizing and filtering contacts, projects and offers:

tags
custom fields

But recently custom fields have gained a significant addition: The option to define validation rules, namely text, numbers, dates or URL as well as dropdown fields with predefined values.

So what’s so cool about that?

On the one hand a large number of tags could make things hard to comprehend. Sometimes that’s down to a lack of dilligence and accuracy. But not always.

On the other hand filtering by custom fields used to be quite limited as there was no standard or format a filter could build on.

For example you could add a custom field to your companies for the number of employees. It would accept all characters like >100 or 100-500 but if you made use of that freedom of expression, it was impossible to get a comprehensive and reliable selection of companies with a certain range of employees. Exporting those values to excel would leave you with the same problem.

“Shit in, shit out”, as the guys from IT would say. Or less casual: If the data base isn’t properly formatted, you’ll inevitably get in trouble processing it.

This has changed now.

By specifying what’s supposed to be stored in your custom fields you make sure a standard is met when saving a record. If a character other than a number is typed into a numbers field, users get a warning. Same with the format of dates. As a consequence a precise search for a certain range or date delivers accurate results.

Requests like “show me all companies with more than 100 employees whose contracts run out before the end of the year” are now reliable and easy to make. Cool, isn’t it?

Same goes for processing that same data in excel. It has now become easy for the app to recognise numbers or dates as such.

What field types does CentralStationCRM offer?

text (basically how it was before - all characters accepted)
predefined values (offer multiple options in a drop down field)
numbers (filter values smaller or greater than a certain number)
dates (filter results before or after a certain date)
URL (make sure the URLs are valid and clickable)

So what do tags have to do with that?

Well, if your account is one of those with lots of tags, there’s now a great chance that you’ll be able to significantly reduce them while in the same time simplifying and streamlining the acquisition of your data.

Let’s say you have a certain number of tags to record the industry your contacts are working in. Now, you can create one field with predefined values such as IT Services or Supplier so users can immediately select one of those industries when adding a new contact. While you’re at it you can distill tags like Pharma or Medical down to one option for both.

Our fields were created before the update - how can we make the switch?

Piece of cake! Go to “Manage custom fields” in your account settings and click the edit/pencil icon next to the field in question. Use the button “Change field type” to specify what this field is for. In case it already contains records which don’t meet the new standard, CentralStationCRM shows you where to find them so you can make them fit.

In case there are too many entries which need change, you can export your customer data to excel and make the adjustments there. Custom fields can be updated via excel, too. We only recommend to keep the original export file in case you make a mistake as update imports can’t be undone, only overwritten

A bunch of updates regarding adresses, searching, filtering and the webform

Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:08:44 +0100

We've had some updates during the last days that you might want to know about. Those updates are about easier adding addresses, searching through emails and much more. Here we go:

Adding addresses

So far we've only had an autocomplete for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, but that changed. Now we're helping you while adding addresses all over the globe, but don't worry - we won't disturb you with the indian address if all your customers are located in the US and some in France.

You might also have noticed that we removed the textfield for the country name in favor of the dropdown containing all countries. By doing so we can be sure to have the right country names that you might want to filter for later. Otherwise it could be tricky to find all US customers, if some addresses have US, some USA and some United States.

CRM search

We improved the search for notes, emails and tasks so that you better find what you are looking for. You may now search for all these within your account, not only for the ones you created. Plus you may now search within appointments, file names, comments and task lists - or just search all of the mentioned.

Find contacts, deals and projects WITHOUT a custom field

Sometimes you may want to find all contacts that DON'T have data within a specific field that you added. You may now do so by submitting NULL within the extended filter of any of your index pages (contacts, companies, deals, projects).

We hope you're as happy with the change as we are, enjoy the rest of your week!

30 minutes of downtime due to maintenance on 17th of february

Wed, 17 Feb 2016 17:43:54 +0100

We are planning some maintenance work that requires to take CentralStationCRM offline for some minutes. We'll start with the maintenance at 10pm and it should not take any longer than 30 minutes.

Thank you for your patience

Birthdates within the CRM calendar

Fri, 22 Jan 2016 11:52:28 +0100

We just integrated birthdates into the CRM calendar, so you don't need to solely rely on the status page and the email summaries in case you want to send your birthday wishes. We'll only show the birthdays of contacts you work with within your calendar, so you won't see the birthdays of contacts you may never have heard of. The contacts within your birthday calendar are the contacts you follow. Read more about following contacts within our help.