SHARE YOUR IDEAS

Import / Update Data from Excel

Jeff_Granger — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:11:00 GMT

Is it not about time someone made the import of data from Excel into ACT! work in the way most users would expect it to work?

1. Import data directly from Excel files, any tab, without having to convert to *.csv and without having to close the Excel file.

2. Import is tolerant of the usual hidden flotsam and jetsom in Excel such as carriage returns, line feeds and other hidden characters and just imports anyway.

3. Import is tolerant of blank lines in the data and just ignores them an imports the rest of the data.

4. Users can specifically update and replace data in any field they choose, whether it's blank or not.

5. Import to any table.

(Yes I know there are Add-ons, but the standard ACT! software needs to do more, much more!).

Jeff

Add Custom Commands to Layouts

Trevor Lever — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:26:33 GMT

I would like to be able to add commands to the Contact layout.

This idea is to create "button" that could be used to trigger a custome command / query / email or document merge.

This would allow users to quickly send specific email templates, mail merge specific letter templates etc etc. by "pressing" these customised buttons on the layout.

Folder Metaphor instead of Tag Metaphor in Groups

vogelap — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:19:22 GMT

It would be VERY useful if ACT Groups used a FOLDER metaphor instead of a TAG metaphor... For example, in the attached screenshot, if ACT used the FOLDER metaphor, I could click on "Information Session Attendees" to see the TOTAL number of constituents who attended any of the Information Sessions that were sub-items. This is not currently possible. Could this be implemented, at least as an option, in ACT?

Days of the Week

Trevor Lever — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:52:31 GMT

Any chance we can have added the name of the day (Mon, Tue, Wed etc) to the Daily, Weekly and Work Week Calendar?

Currently they only appear in the Monthly Calandar.

Automatic Web Site entry

Trevor Lever — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:44:33 GMT

Just a simple time (type-) saving idea...

When entering an email address into a contact record have an option (in User -> Preferences) to automatically update the website address.

So if you enter john.smith@verylongcompanyname.com the website field is automatically updated to www.verylongcompanyname.com

Just a thought.

"To" and "CC" posted in History Tab

KSchwartz — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:17:53 GMT

I am an ACT11 user and would like to see the which email address and who was "CC" autmoatically posted as part of this history when emails are auto attached from Outlook.

Outlook History Options - Include/Not Include Attachments

klock — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:42:13 GMT

Can we please add an option to recording history to be able to attach the full email, but not to include the attachment (if any). This would be an option for both the Record History option for attaching the full email and the option where you include the text (many clients have asked to have this option - but also would like to see the file attachment if they had one).

Thanks,

Kris Lock

kris@fortierconsulting.com

Start Up Views

JimFry — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:51:15 GMT

Why was the Calendar View left off the choices in Preferences. While you are answering that question add Task List, Opportunity List, and Company List. This should be a very easy fix. In 9 years as an ACT! Consultant I have never found anyone who launches ACT! to see the Welcome Screen or there own My Record.

New features are nice but it's the little daily annoyances that push loyal customers to rethink their product choices.

Jim Fry, ACC

952-226-5498

jfry@ActSource.com

Faster Duplicate Checking

Jeff_Granger — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:03:21 GMT

A couple of suggestions.

Firstly, am I the only one who thinks that the default duplicate checking on three fields (Company, Contact and Phone) is unlikely to detect duplicates in the real world? Are two people going to enter this information, especially the phone number, in exactly the same way? Personally, I usually suggest that the phone option is deselected and the default is Contact and Company or even just Contact.

Secondly, could we have the duplicate warning message pop up immediately after entering data in the field (s) and not after trying to save the whole record? For routine data entry I would like to have the duplicate settings using a single field, Contact, and I would like the warning to appear as soon as I heve entered a duplicate contact name, not after I've spent five minutes filling out the rest of the record.

Jeff

Multiple Documents Attachments for Activities, Notes and History

patgenn123 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 02:05:53 GMT

We should be able to add multiple attachments to the attachments line in activities, notes and history!!!

Pat

New Idea Voting

KCaudell — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:26:01 GMT

Why not let us as users vote for the new ideas that are presented? This would give you the ability to gauge the user base as to what new ideas are important to us versus what you think would/wouldn't be a good idea.

It should be quite an easy tag to add to an idea similar to a FaceBook "Likes This" tag.

Just an idea!!

Oulook vs. ACT for SmartPhones

KCaudell — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 16:08:06 GMT

I posted this in a thread elsewhere, but feel very strongly and wanted to post my thoughts here too.

First off, TBanghart hit the nail on the head. Outlook is simply a contact manager, period. Even Microsoft has acknowledged that by adding "Business Contact Manager" (BSM) as an option and most interface programs link to basic Outlook and not BSM, the contact sets between Outlook and BSM even exist as seperate entities. The problem that I have is that as a simple contact manager, I have no link between contact information (including history) and calendar events that automatically get added to contact info. Contact managers, and hence Outlook, keep contact information and activities in the calendars as completely seperate issues.

ACT used to have an HP palmtop application that put ACT on a portable device that linked seamlessly with ACT on the desktop. Even though I'm still a marginal user of ACT (marginal because of this lack of integration), I'm still waiting for them to catch up on this capability that was available 10 years ago. This application allowed me to transfer all of the contact, history, and user fields to the portable device and search and sort as I required. I make cold calls into a specific vertical market and have seperated my customers/prospects into geographic regions. I used to be able to pull up a list of companies based on user fields of only those customers in a specific geographic region and add notes from the call on the fly that sync back into the the contact information on the desktop. I could also set an appointment on the portable device that was an integral part of the contact informaiton and history and have that sync'd back into the desktop. The calander item and the contact information have an inherent and dependent link. This is HUGELY important in a CRM system. Again, Outlook is simply a contact manager as correctly potinted out by TBanghart as calendar and contact information have no relationship to each other.

For all of us "Road Warriors" out there, we need a single and seperate application for the iPhone and PalmPre that gives us ACT on a SmartPhone device as an application and not just an interface to the existing contact manager. An Outlook interface is a cop-out and the lazy way of creating a truly useful extension of ACT. I will be a marginal user of ACT until this is fixed. It's a big and glaring problem. You cannot use the Contact List on the iPhone, this simply perpetuates Outlooks weaknesses. NOT a solution.

Thanks for letting me vent. I hope your program becomes useful to those of us who spend more time on the road vs. in the office and who won't run a laptop on their passenger seats.

Clear MRU lists

Jeff_Granger — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:18:25 GMT

Could we have a quick way to clear the dropdowns of previous lookups that appear when doing a lookup? You type in a name incorrectly once and it keeps coming back to haunt you and you can't select the offending item and delete it.

Can the "Lookup By Example" Window remember resizing.

Trevor Lever — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:49:46 GMT

Can the "Lookup by Example" window remember if a user has resized it. For those with large screen layouts it is very frustrating having to resize this window each time it is opened.

Could we have a new entity of "Project" ?

Trevor Lever — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:26:11 GMT

Many of my clients use ACT to track "projects" within their database. A "project" is a piece of work that they do for a client. At the moment you can use Groups and, to some extent, Opportunities to track a "project" but this really is using and customising what is there, rather than having in ACT what is needed.

As an entitiy a "Project" would have a start date, estimated end date and the option to add other customised fields. The "Project" could be associated wth the Client Contact(s) and the ACT user(s) involved in that "Project". Tasks, Documents and Notes - specific to that project - could be added. A "Project" might have several stages (a bit like an Opportunity) that are used to track the progess of te project through it's key stages. In this regard a "Project" has some attributes similar to an Opportunity. It would also be possible to send an email to all contacts associated with a "Project". In this regard a "Project" has some attributes similar to a Group.

It would be possible to product reports for "Projects" that are similar to the pipeline report for Opportunities so that an overview of all "Project" may be created.

Finally, when an Opportunity is closed off as "Won" the user will be asked if he wants to create a "Project" based upon that Opportunity. All contacts, history etc from the Opportunity will then be copied over to the "Project".

Message Edited by Trevor Lever on 11-13-2009 07:49 PM

Can we have automatically populated "Next" fields?

Trevor Lever — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:24:30 GMT

ACT has fields that are automatically updated when activities are cleared, such as "Last Letter", "Last Meeting", "Last Reached" and so on.

I would like to see an equivalent set of ACT updated fields for scheduled future activirty such as "Next Meeting", "Next To-do", "Next Phone Call" etc. With this feature you will not only be able to track historical coverage and activity with contacts, but also look at planned activity for your contracts.

This will also make possilbe a search on these "next" fields for those that "do not contain date" to see which contacts you might be ignoring or forgetting.

Document Tab Ideas

patgenn123 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:55:46 GMT

After fully observing how the Document tab works, I propose a few ideas to improve the Document Tab and ACT! overall.

#1) Adding and Removing a substantial amount of files from the Document tab should not take as long as it does. Not only that, but it freezes the computer while it's happening. Try adding 70-100 files to a document tab and then removing them and while this is happening and watch paint dry while it's going on.

#2) The right click menu corresponding to the document tab should have cut, paste and copy and move functions. For example, the Group tree and the Document tab is the perfect example. I am on a group layout and I want to move or cut/copy a file to another group layout. It would be nice if it could be cut, move the mouse to another Group ON THE TREE Itself and right-click paste. Voila! I just cut a file from one Group Layout and pasted it onto another USING the Group Tree to paste it!

Of course, if you wanted to copy it, then copy it and right click the tree structure and the destination of the copied file and it should go there!

A move command could use the dialogue box that could move multiple files to multiple places or a single file to multiple places. If you wanted to move the file from a Group to a Contact or Company or vice versa or whatever combination, these commands should be available.

#3) I can see why ACT! wants to avoid using real folders instead of a shortcut link. ACT! buries the attachment folder so deep into a directory name that if you add addtional directories and file names, it quickly reaches a limit of 250 for file naming purposes. Surely there must be a better way. Maybe there is an answer that I don't know about, but why can't we choose where the attachment file could be located? That way we could create real folders in the attachment folder without the risk of reaching the 250 character limit on file naming. We could then create folders in the document tab without a problem.

#4) Clicking on a document or multiple documents and typing CTRL+C does not give the user the ability to copy the file names to the clipboard. Task list does, Why not the document list in a specfic tab.

I am willing to be that this oh so old document tab system will NEVER be updated to any standard. There are obvious reasons. The technology is so YESTERDAY it's not even funny.

Pat

Number in Company System Field

Jeff_Granger — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:04:59 GMT

For those not using Company level records it would be nice if there was a number next to the Contact level Company field to indicate how many contact records had the same Company name as the one you are on. So, if TechONE appeared three times in the Contact List you would see a "3" next to the Company field in Contact detail (or list) views when looking at any of those records.

(Or, you could just make Company records work in a sensible manner ;-)

Schedule FOR More than one ACT! User

scotta — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 23:05:05 GMT

ACT! is built for multiple users. Why is it that those users cannot easily share activities?

We are constantly bombarded by customers who want to schedule activities FOR multiple users. The only way to do this is to Schedule WITH the users since you can only schedule FOR one user at a time. The problem with this is the confusiion of who the actual activity is scheduled WITH.

For example, I have a sales manager, sales person and admin person meeting with John Doe the customer at the same meeting.

You can either schedule FOR one user and WITH the others AND the customer OR you can create 3 separate activities scheduled FOR each user and WITH the same customer.

In many of my larger workgroups, our ACT users have resorted back to Outlook simply because ACT! cannot handle this kind of scheduling. This is embarassing for ACT!

PLEASE add this feature. You could even consider it a Premium feature.

Scott Abboud

Allied FS

Schedule an email activity

bretts — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:58:07 GMT

Add functionality for an activity type "email" - where from the activity record you generate the eamil and when you clear it, the history record is the email. Right now the only way I know to schedule an future email activity is "to-do" and then when I clear it, I still have a second history record of the actual email. - this is inefficient for a host of reasons.