SHARE YOUR IDEAS

That info is stored in the Contacts, not the Activities.

Yes, it is. But my point is...

If you book an appt for a given contact, the info does not get forwarded to Outlook.  So my call center books an appt, places it on an agent's calendar.  Our only option is to MANUALLY transfer contact info into the "Regarding" and"Location" lines in ACT so they will appear in Outlook.  If you do not, you have an appt that says, for instance, "Presentation" (from the drop down menu) and the Location is blank.  My agent sync's and has no idea what the client's phone number or address are.  The client's name appears in the notes, but buried at the bottom.

Imagine how fun that is when multiple callers are booking for multiple agents.

See my frustration?

ACT doesn't sync to my salespeople's PDA, Smartphones, etc. without Outlook.

I might not be communicating clearly.  The problem is that my salespeople, me included, find themselves in the field with no address and phone number of a client scheduled thru ACT.  If my call center supplies that repetitively for all agents, that's a lot of data entry that could be entirely avoided if a couple lines of code were changed.  All I need is reassignment of the values--- "Contact Name" should appear in Outlook's "Name" box, and "Location" could include both address and phone. 

Then, every user of ACT who books an appt in ACT and sync's it to their PDA would have all the info necessary when they arrive at that appt.

Thanks for listening...

There is 3rd party software that will allow you to sync ACT! calendar and contacts to your PDA.  Once this is synchronized, you can open a calendar event on your PDA, then click on the linked contact to call that person.

Handheld Contact and CompanionLink are two such software.  Both deliver different user experiences.

Handheld Contact gives you an ACT-like UI on your phone.  They've also recently launched a version of their service that syncs to the native address book and calendar on the PDA.  They currently support BlackBerry and Windows Mobile.

www.handheldcontact.com/about.php

CompanionLink syncs ACT! data to the native fields on the PDA (i.e., the native address book and calendar apps on the PDA).  They currently support BlackBerry, iPhone, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Google.

www.companionlink.com/act

It seems counter-intuitive how the info is tranferred into Outlook now through ACT.  Aren't I paying extra for something ACT should have done in the first place?  And am I the only person in America to complain about this?

ACT! syncs activities to Outlook as a means to show other Outlook users when you are busy. It's not really there to sync to PDAs.

What PDA do you use?

I have a Windows Mobile Smartphone, but I've used an HP and a whole bunch of other devices.

 "ACT! syncs activities to Outlook as a means to show other Outlook users when you are busy. It's not really there to sync to PDAs."

Bad position.  Is that ACT's official position or your opinion? In either case, as a consumer, I certainly will lobby to have it changed.

It's not their offical position, but it's how it works. Outlook doesn't have fields to link the activities to specific contacts

 You should have a look at the new Entry or basic versions of Handheld Contact

The Entry level is free (but doesn't do activities), the Basic version is quite economical and might do what you need.

My point is that it isn't how it SHOULD work.  I've programmed, too.  It's an easy fix.  Transfer the variable "Name" to the "Subject" line in Outlook--- transfer addr & ph # to "Location" in Outlook.  A couple lines of code...

I have an enterprise level database and will be expanding licenses as my company grows.  Imagine how many keystrokes are required on our end to fix this.  I can't imagine my company is the only one like this.  

My position is that the purpose of sync'ing to Outlook is toactually synchronize the information--- not just say, "Hey, someone's busy during that time." 

In my opinion, buying 3rd party software just says someone had to fix what ACT did wrong.   I'm not trying to be petty here--- this just seems wrong.