CK Software & Consulting

Registration Installation Configuration Running the program BDE Issues Error Messages

Registration

How many GoldMine users need to be set up with BounceLinker?

Email blasts are generally sent out by one or only a few GoldMine users. The bounces resulting from those blasts are generally handled by the same person who sent the blast or by an administrator. As such, BounceLinker is an administrative tool and not a tool that is generally used by every user in a GoldMine system. The Standard and Pro Editions of BounceLinker are multi-user products that will save settings for each user and should be set up for any administrators that will process bouncebacks.

How many bounces come with BounceLinker?

For BounceLinker to process emails, you must purchase a BL Contract that will allow a set number of bouncebacks to be processed for a one year period. Multiple Bounce Contracts can be purchased to increase the number of available bounces.

What if my system crashes? Can I re-register BounceLinker?

In the even of a system loss or crash, re-registration is possible by contacting support.

Is the workstation registered or the installation?

BounceLinker is tied to the GoldMine installation that it will be working with. The main server installation must be licensed and a bounce contract must be registered for BounceLinker to run. There is no workstation installation or registration.

Do I have to purchase a license for every GoldMine user?

No, BounceLinker is tied to the GoldMine installation that it will be working with but is completely independent of the number of users in GoldMine.

Installation

Should I install BounceLinker on my local drive (c:\) or on a network drive?

BounceLinker may be installed on a local drive (c:\) or to a network path. For a network GoldMine installation it is convenient to install BounceLinker to a similar path so that it may be included in backups. For an installation to a network path, it should be installed FROM a workstation that will be registered and used to run BounceLinker.

Can I run BounceLinker from a server or should I run it from a workstation?

BounceLinker should always be run from a workstation. Servers generally do not have the software required to read the BounceLinker license file and errors will result when running on the server.

What if more than one GoldMine user will be running BounceLinker?

The Standard and Pro Editions of BounceLinker are multi-user products that will save settings for each user. When each new user logs into BounceLinker for the first time, it will automatically launch the Configuration Wizard to record the logon settings for the new user.

Configuration

I have completed the setup wizard but can't see BounceLinker email folders in the email center.

If email folders were added while GoldMine was open, close and re-open GoldMine. They should now appear in the email center for the user specified during setup.

How do I set up GoldMine so that bouncebacks do not clog my inbox?

In order to make the processing of bounceback and remove emails as independent as possible, we recommend using GoldMine Email Rules to file all return emails to the correct BounceLinker folders for processing.

A file called bouncelinkeremailrules.rs may be found in the folder where BounceLinker was installed. It may also be downloaded from www.ck-soft.com/assets/bouncelinkeremailrules.rs.

To import these rules for a particular GoldMine user, follow the following steps:

Log into GoldMine as that user who wishes to import the rules
Open the Email Center
Click the Email Rules button
Right click anywhere in the left hand window
Select Advanced
Select “Load from File” if you would like to overwrite all existing email rules for that user, or select “Append Rules from file” if you would like to add the new email rules to the existing rule set for that user

Running the program

I have completed the setup wizard and run BounceLinker but it never processes any emails.

Check the BounceLinker/Bouncebacks folder. If there are no emails in the Bouncebacks folder, there is nothing for BounceLinker to process. Click and drag any bounceback emails from the inbox or other folders into the BounceLinker/Bouncebacks folder and try again.

Check GoldMine email rules to see that they are directing bounceback emails to the correct folder.

Check the smtprules.ini file to see that it contains the proper rules for your SMTP server. If BounceLinker does not find a rule that matches the content of your bounceback emails, it will not be able to find the "From" address in the text of the bounceback email.

Is it really safe to delete the email address from GoldMine?

Some SMTP servers send more than one bounceback. Sometimes they can keep coming for up to 5 days. You can run BounceLinker on day 1 and delete the email addresses, but then on day 5 if you run BounceLinker it will not be able to match the new bouncebacks. It is better to run BounceLinker after all bouncebacks have been received.

Why isn't BounceLinker finding contacts for my remove/unsubscribe emails?

Frequently, remove/unsubscribe returns are not received from the same email address that you originally sent to. And frequently that new address is not in GoldMine. BounceLinker can't find the contact in GoldMine if the email address does not exist. These remove/unsubscribe returns must be processed manually.

BounceLinker is done. Now what do I do? What is the "Found" folder for?

After BounceLinker finishes it's job, it is now your turn to decide what to do about the bouncebacks. You can choose to contact each company to get a corrected address or remove them from the database. It is easy to step through the "Found" folder one email at a time and decide what to do about each contact. (Make sure that "Sync Contact" is checked in the email center context menu so that you can easily go from contact to contact.)

When I run BounceLinker, it processes emails but can't find all of them.

BounceLinker comes configured with a basic set of SMTP rules. Since every SMTP server may have a different bounce style, the SMTP rules may be configured to catch those unusual styles. If BounceLinker does not find a rule that matches the content of your bounceback emails, it will not be able to find the "From" address in the text of the bounceback email. Check the smtprules.ini file to see that it contains the proper rules for your SMTP server.

If you have done any database cleanup manually between the time that you sent out a mass mailing and ran BounceLinker, you may have already corrected or deleted a bad email address. BounceLinker can't find it if it isn't in GoldMine!

There is a certain type of bounceback for which I can't configure an SMTP rule.

It is possible for an email service administrator to configure Microsoft Exchange server to produced bouncebacks without putting the "From" address in the body of the email. Since the "From" address is not in the body, BounceLinker can not match it to the correct contact in GoldMine and these bouncebacks must be manually linked. See the help file in BounceLinker for more help on searching for contacts manually.

There is a certain type of bounceback that I think BounceLinker should process but it leaves it in the Bounceback folder.

Occasionally there are emails that are either corrupted or are not configured correctly by the smtp server when they are sent out. These emails often have vital information missing from the header of the email. If there is missing header information in an email, such as From: or To:, BounceLinker will not be able to process the email and it will be left in the Bounceback folder. These emails should be processed manually. See the help file in BounceLinker for more help on searching for contacts manually.

Do I have to send my email blast out through GoldMine in order to do the clean-up with BounceLinker?

No. BounceLinker doesn't need to know anything about how the email was sent out, i.e. whether it was from GoldMine or an external program, whether it was a primary recipient or a cc or bcc. BounceLinker is only looking at the bounceback so it only requires that the bounceback itself be retrieved in GoldMine. Since BounceLinker will be searching for the matching email address in GoldMine, the original outbound address must also be in GoldMine.

Are there any rules as to how I instruct my email recipients to be removed or unsubscribe?

When sending an email blast, there are general internet rules that specify how you must allow a recipient to unsubscribe. BounceLinker itself, though, doesn't require any special rules. BounceLinker only requires that you file the responses to the correct folder.

Filing emails is actually done within GoldMine. Use a GoldMine email rule to file emails into the BounceLinker/Remove/Unsubscribe folder. You can tailor the email rule to match the instructions you gave your customers on how to unsubscribe. When GoldMine retrieves the mail from online, it will file them to the correct folder where BounceLinker will be able to process them. For specific help on creating email rules, please take a look at the GoldMine help or the BounceLinker help.

BDE Issues

BDE errors when running BounceLinker while GoldMine is open.

Running add-on programs while GoldMine is open (particularly GoldMine version 6.0) can sometimes generate BDE errors (such as "unable to load BDE"). In order to fix this problem, it is necessary to change BDE settings to enable both programs to run together. Please see the FrontRange knowledgebase article on this subject for instructions on changing BDE settings. Click here to load that document.

FrontRange offers several BDE SharedMemLocation settings suggestions. Here are a few that have been reported to work:

6000
7000
7F00
7FFF
8192
6EFF

Error Messages

Unable to load BDE.

This error occurs when BounceLinker encounters a problem when attempting to log into GoldMine. It generally means that there is a problem with the login information, path to GoldMine or a BDE setting. The error message generally has two parts - "Unable to load BDE" followed by a second message with details on why it failed.

Here are several actions you can try to fix the problem.

BDE Failed to Load:

This generally means there is an incorrect BDE setting. Try opening BDE, go to Configuration, System, INIT, SHAREDMEMLOCATION and changing the setting according to your operating system. For more help, see BDE Issues in FAQ's .

Win 95/98/ME: <blank> or 7000

Win NT4/2000 (early service packs): 7000

Win 2000 (post sp2)/XP: 6000, 6BDE, 4000 or 7FFF

Cannot find license file:

The path to the system directory for GoldMine (GoldMine home directory) is incorrect. Open GoldMine and open BounceLinker. Go to the configuration wizard in BounceLinker and use the button to auto retrieve logon settings from GoldMine. Finish the wizard to save the new settings.

Cannot validate license file:

1.The username or password that you entered when logging into BounceLinker is incorrect. Close BounceLinker and log in again with a valid username and password.

2. If you are using version 6 of GoldMine or higher, you must make sure that the version of the gm6s32.dll in the windows\system32 folder is the same as the version of GoldMine that is running. Go to the windows\system32 folder, find the gm6s32.dll file, right click and select properties, and go to the version tab. Check that this is the same version as GoldMine. If it is not, close GoldMine, delete the gm6s32.dll file in the windows\system32 folder and then open GoldMine again. If the version is not corrected, then you may update GoldMine to the latest version by running gm6setup.exe.

The GoldMine database path is incorrect

1. The path to the GoldMine shared files (Gmbase directory) is incorrect. Open GoldMine and open BounceLinker. Go to the configuration wizard in BounceLinker and use the button to auto retrieve logon settings from GoldMine. Finish the wizard to save the new settings.

2. The sql logon is not set for the logged in user. In GoldMine, log in as a master user and go to File, Configure, User Settings. Select the username in question and click Properties. Go to the Access tab and make sure that the sql logon name and password fields are filled in correctly.

The Contact Set path is incorrect

The path to the contact set in GoldMine (Default contact database directory) is incorrect. Open GoldMine and open BounceLinker. Go to the configuration wizard in BounceLinker and use the button to auto retrieve logon settings from GoldMine. Finish the wizard to save the new settings.

Unable to read data from GoldMine (Invalid Datastream lHandle).

This error occurs when BounceLinker encounters a problem when attempting to read data from GoldMine. It does not mean that there is a problem with BounceLinker - it means there is a problem with the data in GoldMine.

If this happens when you are attempting to run BounceLinker to process an email folder, it generally means that there is either a corrupted email in the folder you are attempting to process, or there is a corrupted email folder in GoldMine.

Here are several actions you can try to fix the problem.

The first step is to do a rebuild in GoldMine on the mailbox table. Then attempt to process the same email folder again. Rebuilding generally fixes this problem.
If a rebuild does not fix the error, the next step is to determine if GoldMine itself can run the same sql query that BounceLinker is attempting to run when processing emails. Open the SQL Query window in GoldMine and run the following query. Replace your username in the query before running. If you are not able to run the query in GoldMine, then BounceLinker will not be able to run the query either. You must fix whatever message you are given in GoldMine before you will be able to run BounceLinker.

select recid,folder,rfc822,folder2 from mailbox where upper(folder2) like 'BOUNCEBACKS%' and upper(folder) like 'BOUNCELINKER%' and userid like 'username'
If you are able to run the above query, you must now determine whether the error is caused by all emails in the folder or just one. Remove all emails from the folder and attempt to process that folder. If you still receive an error, then the folder structure in GoldMine is corrupted and a rebuild is unable to fix it. Follow these steps:
- Remove all emails from all folders in the BounceLinker tree and store them in a temporary set of folders.
- Delete all folders in the BounceLinker tree.
- Run the configuration wizard for BounceLinker and have it re-create the standard folders for you.
- Manually add any custom folders that you had in the BounceLinker tree prior to deleting.
- Move stored emails back into the appropriate folders and then attempt to process them again.
If you are able to successfully process the folder when it is empty, then move one email back into the folder and process again. If it is able to process some emails and not others, then there are individual emails that can not be processed. It is recommended to go ahead and process anything that is successful and manually process any emails that can not be read.