Drop-down primary key field

[StuartMcMinigal]

Hello,

Is it possible within the contact page to create a drop-down field which in turn filters the number of contacts to view.

I tried yesterday to implement a way of altering results depending on which layout I am using. I am highly confused as to what to do and would love if possible to chat with someone or picks someones brain about the product and what I require from it as I am highly new to Act!

My predicament is I have 3 main users and not all of the users require to see eachothers users contacts that they enter or edit. I have explored the making each contact private to the user who enters it but this makes it private to the overall administrator. Can you have a database within a database?

Sorry, is anyone available to chat via skype or anything about my issues?

Thanks

Stuart McMinigal

[gmartin]

Since your post is in the Premium forum, take a look at creating Teams for your users.  Once Teams are set up you can then set the contacts to Limited Access for the appropriate team.  Then only users assigned to the particular Team can view that contact.

Articles with further information:

Createing and Using Teams - KB Article 15322

How to Set Contact Access Controls for Users - KB Article 15228

[StuartMcMinigal]

Amazing, this is actually an avenue I have stumbled across towards the end of my day but you have just cemented that this way is the most pluasible.

Another question I have is, is there a way to disable certain layouts per different users. I.e the sales team will not require to see any of the frnachise info as it will be not needed and to much so hiding the extra field and layouts would be great?

Thanks Greg

[gmartin]

There isn't a way to hide layouts, but you can have multiple layouts. ACT! remembers which layout was last selected, so once they select the desired layout - it should be the one always presented to that user.

If you only want 1 layout, and want to clean up the views for specific users - an option is to put their specific fields on different tabs - keeping the 'common' fields on the top area. Space may be an issue with this option... but you can drag the tabs area up to provide more space (especially if the number of fields is reduced in the top portion). And they would have to select the tab.

[Roy_Laudenslager]

Actually there is a tricky way to do what you want thought it's not perfect. You could setup sync from the parent database on the server and have each user run a local copy of the database that was synced to the parent. Because they are running a local copy you could manually delete the unwanted layouts from their copies of the database.

[StuartMcMinigal]

The database will be held on an internal server, there will be users on the network around the building as well as a few out in the field. Is it difficult or could this cause any issues with the database if I was to have each person running a local copy of the database - would all functions still be available?

Can people still run the main copy from computers within the building or will all need to be copies if I go down this route?

Thanks for the help guys

[StuartMcMinigal]

Thanks Greg again,

If I were to go down this route it would be slightly more feasible and easy using different tabs for each user - this is the main reason for creating multiple layouts.

I also understand you can use the teams function to blank/grey out details from other team members. Is this the only viable way of hiding information that needs to be kept hidden? I also discovered something silly which is that when no matter what level of user who can enter a new contact has this option can select to make a contact private or public in turn disallowing even the administrator from seeing it - how do you get around this?

Thanks Again.

Cheers everyone

[gmartin]

That is correct - for users with Standard or higher levels of authority, you cannot disable the ability to set a contact, for which they are Record Manager, as Private (or Public/Limited).

You can set the Preference for new contacts through the Tools > Preferences > Startup > Record Creation Options..., this is done for each user individually, but this will not prevent them from changing the access.

[Roy_Laudenslager]

The remote (local) copies would be fully functional except for a limited number of administrative functions like adding new users. A mix of direct and synchronizing users would be fine.

[StuartMcMinigal]

Amazing, great help guys. I'm sure i'll be back on picking your brains again soon

Cheers

Stuart