SHARE YOUR IDEAS

Changes to Opportunities in ACT!

alduet — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:59:44 GMT

An ACT! Certified Consultant made the following observations related to opportunities in ACT!:

I spend a lot of time in Opportunities in ACT! and I need a way to track history and activities linked to an opportunity.

I’d like to see Opportunities looking like Contacts, and Companies, so I can still link one Opportunity to multiple contacts or companies, and be able to track history for that Opportunity.

Do you use opportunities and have a suggestion for improvement?

Message Edited by alduet on 06-01-2009 10:08 AM

Message Edited by kjosephs on 06-09-2009 09:40 PM

Instant Messaging and ACT!

alduet — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:03:47 GMT

Our ACT! Certified Consultants have suggested that integrating Instant Messaging to ACT! would be beneficial.

There's a couple of ways we could integrate Instant Messaging:

1) Internal - users of ACT can now communicate with each other real time inside of their database

2) External- Integrate with facebook, AIM, Yahoo, and other instant messaging services to communicate with customers real time who are using any IM program with results going to history of that contact.

Any other suggestions on integrating messaging?

New idea on Activities and Histories

alduet — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:06:05 GMT

An ACT! Certified Consultant recently suggested the following feature:

Since a History typically begins as an Activity, why not just display Cleared Activities in the History tab, rather than having to Remove Cleared Activities with the Tools > Database Maintenance?

And you would also be able to see manually created Histories as Cleared Activities on the Calendar. Print the calendar, and you've got a graphic Weekly Progress Report!

What do you think?

Re: New idea on Activities and Histories

dflood — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:24:05 GMT

Good idea. We were just discussing this issue today.

It seems to be un-necessary duplication to keep a cleared activity and then create a history. Just keeping the cleared activity seems like a simpler approach.

Make the Opportunity windows editable

jeff_granger — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:33:09 GMT

Many clients ask me if they can:

a) Change the column headers in the Opportunities - Products and Services Tab, either to add or remove columns or just to make the headers more meaningful to their business.

b) Show the profit margin for both individual items and for the whole opportunity; many sales people have GP targets to meet.

c) Have the ability to create additional fields in the User Fields Tab

In addition, many people (including me) find that having to click between four tabs to create an opportunity is both time consuming and results in people forgetting to fill in information, so why don't we have new opportunities set out as a single, editable table that users can customise to suit their needs.

Jeff

Automatically Create Companies from Contacts

jeff_granger — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:50:22 GMT

Many people assume that ACT! does this already and are somewhat perplexed to find that it doesn't. We also need to be able to automatically create companies when importing contact data. Probably the best way to handle this would be to have some additional options in Preferences.

Option 1 - Do not automatically create Companies from Contacts.

Option 2 - Always create a new company if it doesn't exist when adding a new contact and automatically add to a company if it already exists.

Option 3 - Always create and link a new company if it doesn't exist when adding a new contact and automatically link to the company if it already exists.

Jeff

Re: Instant Messaging and ACT!

dflood — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:53:36 GMT

YEEEEESSSS PLEEEEESE!!!

I would definately like to see Google Talk and Twitter integration. Having the history of IM and other social media conversation in the history would be great.

It would be useful if ACT! could notify if another user in the database was looking at a record that I was on, or if they had completed a task that you had scheduled for them. Upping the ante' on the collaboration side of the program would be very helpful.

I just watched the Google Wave demo on youtube and it gave a great insight into how the future beyond email might look. Perhaps there could just be a google wave tab embedded into the history tab. They have a very open platform with API's etc. Would definately be worth seeing if you could levelerage that into ACT!. If you could get a neat integration to Google Wave you could let it handle all the colloboration protocols and integration with IM and social media platforms.

Re: Automatically Create Companies from Contacts

dflood — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 13:00:32 GMT

Jeff, this would be good. I think you do need to have the options as there will always be users that want to have it one way or another.

Having said that I would suggest that option 3 should be the default. We spend an inordinate amount of time training and cajoling clients to create companies. It is a highly under-utilised side of the application. That is mostly because there is so much work involved in manually creating contacts and then linking all the conacts to it.

Re: Instant Messaging and ACT!

mmoldofsky — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 05:53:12 GMT

google talk and twitter would be a strech. the typical ACT user doesn't even know what they are.

start with supporting what ever Meebo (Web) and Trilium (windows) supports.

IM should be an icon on the toolbar - all the logged in users should be avail. blah blah blah.

Restructure Companies and Contacts in ACT!

jeff_granger — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:28:26 GMT

The current Companies part of ACT! looks and feels like an afterthought. Many users also find it both confusing, not knowing where to enter their data, and awkward in having to potentially flip between two screens to fill out a record. I believe this could be better implemented.

The good points about Company View I see as:

It allows you to quickly see contacts who are in that company.
It allows you to see the relationships between parent companies and divisions.
It allows you to see all the notes and history created in any contact record who is in that company.

The problems / limitations are:

Users are confused whether they need to fill in the company level information or not.
Companies don't get created automatically.
You can't mailmerge company information, therefore to do this you have to link required fields to the contact record and remember to update the link, which is messy.
Updating the linked records frequently causes problems by erroneously over-writing the contact level data.

I would propose that ACT!is restructured as follows:

Company level information gets entered on the "Contact level" view only. In practice, this would not necessarily take up additional screen space. Perhaps an additional pane would be required, and we already have the SDK Middle Pane app which potentially could be adapted for this purpose.
The Companies Detail View would be retained in all it's functionality except that it now becomes read only. All the information at company level is pulled from the contact level records.
I would then also be inclined to have Opportunities linked directly to the Company name rather than a contact record ( when creating a new Opp you just select which of the contacts are to be associated with it.

The benefits would be:

Entering data is now intuitive; it all goes on the "main screen" .
You don't have to manually put contacts into Companies with all the confusion that entails.
Contacts are also automatically linked, so that chore goes away.
You can mail-merge any field on the screen, including Company level information.
Company view would automatically show combined Notes, Histories, Activities, and Opportunities

I think this would make ACT! more intuitive, easier to operate, less prone to errors and omissions, and increases the funcionality and clarity of the software.

Jeff

Re: Changes to Opportunities in ACT!

jeff_granger — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:38:28 GMT

Certainly, it would be a benefit if we could automatically trigger an activity or activity series when moving from one sales stage to the next.

Jeff

Re: Restructure Companies and Contacts in ACT!

ritakog — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 10:41:55 GMT

Great ideas, Jeff...and comments below. Would like to make sure that the associating of contacts (in addition to linking) does not go away!

Company level information gets entered on the "Contact level" view only. In practice, this would not necessarily take up additional screen space. Perhaps an additional pane would be required, and we already have the SDK Middle Pane app which potentially could be adapted for this purpose.
++How would you handle company record address information when the linked contacts are at different company locations?
The Companies Detail View would be retained in all it's functionality except that it now becomes read only. All the information at company level is pulled from the contact level records.
++Same issue as above
I would then also be inclined to have Opportunities linked directly to the Company name rather than a contact record ( when creating a new Opp you just select which of the contacts are to be associated with it.
++Yes, that's a great idea.
You can mail-merge any field on the screen, including Company level information.
+++But some contacts may be at different addresses...see above.
Company view would automatically show combined Notes, Histories, Activities, and Opportunities
++And Documents and Secondary contacts, please.

Re: Restructure Companies and Contacts in ACT!

jeff_granger — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:01:11 GMT

Company level information gets entered on the "Contact level" view only. In practice, this would not necessarily take up additional screen space. Perhaps an additional pane would be required, and we already have the SDK Middle Pane app which potentially could be adapted for this purpose.
++How would you handle company record address information when the linked contacts are at different company locations?

++++ In some ways we have that issue now when you update the links. You would have to be able to record the "Head Office" address in the "Company" part of the record and a local address in the "Contact" part of the record. You would also need a drop-down or two to be able to define hierarchies of Companies and Divisions.
The Companies Detail View would be retained in all it's functionality except that it now becomes read only. All the information at company level is pulled from the contact level records.
++Same issue as above

++++ The Head Office address comes from the "Company" Part of the record. Individual contact addresses could be seen in the Contact list.
I would then also be inclined to have Opportunities linked directly to the Company name rather than a contact record ( when creating a new Opp you just select which of the contacts are to be associated with it.
++Yes, that's a great idea.
You can mail-merge any field on the screen, including Company level information.
+++But some contacts may be at different addresses...see above.

++++ Retaining the Contact level address fields gives you the choice of mailing addresses.
Company view would automatically show combined Notes, Histories, Activities, and Opportunities
++And Documents and Secondary contacts, please.

++++ Agreed !!!

++++ Jeff

Additional Dashboard Functionality - History

jeff_granger — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:56:48 GMT

Dashboard charts are a great way to make data contained within ACT! easily visible to everyone in the organization, and a couple of changes could make them even more useful.

One of the common management reports required by many companies is "How many outbound telephone calls did we make today / this week / this month". Strangely, it is not possible to obtain this information using the Dashboards and it is not a straight forward matter in the Task list either.

The first challenge is to decide how the organization is going to record this information in ACT! Essentially, there are two options; either schedule a call then clear it when completed, which many people find too laborious, or Record a History which is much quicker.

The problem is that whilst a Dashboard will let me see calls that have been scheduled in ACT! the filter options won't let me show just the completed ones, the default option shows all the open activities, but not the cleared ones, or I can check the "Show Cleared" box which then shows me both open + cleared activities.

What we need is an additional check box for "Show Open Activities", the user would then have complete control over the data displayed and would be able to see and record work that has actually been done as opposed to work that was just scheduled to be done! The same additional filter would also be useful in the task list.

The difficulty with recording calls as History records on the other hand is that History is currently not available at all in the Dashboards, which I believe it should be. I do however share the views in another post that having completed activities recorded in both Activities and History is confusing and should be addressed. I would be in favour of reducing History to be the "audit trail", and focus on Acivities for management reporting purposes. So instead of a "Record a History" button why not move the functionality to the Activities area and have a "Record a Completed Activity" button to speed up the recording of calls and to-dos that have not been scheduled.

The easier it is to get useful, common management reports out of ACT! the more likely it will be that organizations will want to use it as a key sales management tool.

Jeff

Re: Instant Messaging and ACT!

GLComputing — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:31:48 GMT

IMs like AIM and Yahooe are rarely used outside North America. You need to also look at Skype and MS Messenger. Even Twitter is starting to get used for IM, although it doesn't show if the user is on-line

An internal IM might be a nice option.... or, at least a method that an Admin. Manager (or Standard with the priv) could send a message to another use or all users.

Of course, you need to think how an internal IM would be handled for remote sync and web users.

Re: Changes to Opportunities in ACT!

GLComputing — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:47:12 GMT

All Contact details (Company, Contact, phone, etc) available to the Sales Opportunity List and Tab

Ability to put custom ops fields in Quotes

Auto-number quotes and ops

Alarms when an opportunity is due

Activities (even for multiple users) connected to an opportunity - so you can project manage a sale even when different part need to be done by different users or with different contacts

Re: New idea on Activities and Histories

GLComputing — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 18:50:17 GMT

The first would require some thought regarding recurring activities.

But manual histories being in the cal would be nice

Limited Access for Opportunities, Activities and History

Ken Anslem — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:34:39 GMT

We need to make Opportunities, Activities and History have Limited Access? I can make them Private or Public but not Limited. We are a trade association with competing members. The association shares a common Database of customers in India with a shared Sales Force. When a Opportunity is marked Private it excludes the Users in India (our sales force). If I mark the Contact as Limited Access and separate the competing members into Teams one or the other member is prevented from having access to that Contact.

What I really need to do is mark an Opportunity as Limited and have all Activities and History related to that Opportunity be limited to a particular team. Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Ken A.

Improve Import Options (Opportunities)

JasonD — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:01:19 GMT

I have an ever changing balance with in my opportunities that requries updating, so having the import feature to include import to the opportunities would be a huge help and improve efficency

Re: Instant Messaging and ACT!

JasonD — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:06:06 GMT

I really like this idea as a number of my client have MS Messenger and i comunicate to them some time via this method.

If this becomes a feature there would also have to be the ability to record a history

Also the Act User option is great idea for the business as this would improve the level of communication between users and build better business