ACT! 2009 (v11) Update

larryr — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:35:11 GMT

Here's some early feedback on the latest...

Re: ACT! 2009 (v11) Update

dflood — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 07:52:29 GMT

Hi Larry,

Have found the installation process for V.11 many times more reliable. It is much easier when upgrading from previous versions. In the past I've always un-installed prior to installing a new version. I have been installing straight over the top with V.11 and have had no problems to date which has been a great time saver.

Making the product easier to use with a more modern and intuitive User Interface has to be worked on further I think. Look forward to some of the things you have in the pipeline there.

The Net Promoter Score is a good metric. To be honest we have been riding the good will of the ACT! user base for some time since the move to the new SQL .Net platform, I think we are definately on an upward curve to getting people to loving ACT! again with the later versions, particularly this one. Any chance you can share what the current Net Promoter score is? Nothing like putting it out there to give you the challenge to improve on it.

Good to meet you at the conference recently, look forward to hearing more about the direction of ACT!, particular in relation to the 2010 vision.

Cheers,

Darren.

Re: ACT! 2009 (v11) Update

larryr — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:33:37 GMT

Hi Darren,

Thanks for the reponse and confirmation of the v11 progress. We generally don't specifically publish the NPS though I can assure you we challenge our team to dissect the various drivers we see in the responses.

You can look forward to ongoing ACT! improvements to overall usability to reduce clicks, improve clarity, easier feature discovery, etc. We also have plenty of new features on the drawing board as well.

Thanks for being an ACT! Fanatic,

Larry

Re: ACT! 2009 (v11) Update

GLComputing — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:43:10 GMT

I'd like to offer my congrats to the dev team... with ACT! 2009, I feel that the product is back to being the best product for SME and corporate work group CRM in the market and once again worthy of the brand.

As someone who has devoted 21 years to the product, I can see this as a time to focus again on the solutions rather than fighting with .Net and SQL.

The opportunity this gives for Sage to market the brand and to work on new and exciting features must be good for the morale in the product group.

Thanks guys,
Mike Lazarus

Re: ACT! 2009 (v11) Update

mmoldofsky — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 23:59:44 GMT

Any more feedback or update news?

We desperatly need updates to SAFARI Support.

Re: ACT! 2009 (v11) Update

larryr — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 18:07:38 GMT

Hi Michael,

We will have a number of updates to ACT! v11 during the new year. From your message I can't determine specifically what update to SFARI you are after though I know there are a number of desired enhancements. Can I ask you to check in directly with Beth Kohler and team to make sure we fully communicate on this?

Thanks, Larry

Re: ACT! 2009 (v11) Update

DJ2009 — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:32:36 GMT

Larry,

I just installed 2009 v 11.1 I've been using ACT on a daily basis since 2001. I was very happy when the tab for secondary contacts was added however I've been disappointed that there's never been an upgrade allowing the seconadary contacts to be part of activities such as secheduling of meetings, calls, and emails. It makes no sense to me that I should have to duplicate a contact in order to add another primary POC. I deal with architechs in which I can easily have 25 plus contacts for the same firm. Please tell me that this is something that the development team is working on. I happy with the seamless integration of outlook, unfortunitly when emailing a secondary contact cannot be added to the history without going back to type in the information yourself.

Thanks

Re: ACT! 2009 (v11) Update

dflood — Thu, 07 May 2009 23:38:03 GMT

DJ,

The best bet for you is to:

1. Promote all your Secondary Contacts to Contacts

2. Create a Company record for all the companies where there are more than one contact

3. Associate all the Contacts to the relevant Company record.

My view is that secondary contacts should be used sparingly, if at all. By promoting your secondary contacts to contacts and connecting to Companies you get all the benefits of being able to attach emails to them indicidually, associate tasks etc. You can then go to the Companies record and view the history of all the contacts in the one view.

As the functionality you are after is in place I would say that Sage won't be adding the functionality that you are after to the secondary contacts. I have seen demos and some info on version 12 (2010) and it certainly doesn't appear to be in that version so you will have a long wait if they do decide to add it in future versions.

The question is how do you re-arrange your database to use contacts and companies rather than contacts and secondary contacts. It depends on the size of your database. I recently did a project for a client that had to do the same thing. They had about 1200 contacts with an average of 10 secondary contacts per contact. It wasn't feasable to do it manually so we used some 3rd party utilities to do the job. There are a couple of different add-ons you could use. I would check out www.rowcol.co.uk for there bulk secondary contact promotion utility for a start.

Might be worth finding and experience local ACT! Certified Consultant to discuss this project. Although there will be an associated expense for getting them involved it will allow you to hand over the responsibility of getting it done right and getting it done quick.

Cheers, Darren Flood.

Re: ACT! 2009 (v11) Update

DJ2009 — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:12:26 GMT

Darren,

Even though I'm a bit disappointed, I appreciate your quick response and suggested solution