SHARE YOUR IDEAS

I just purchased ACT 2010. I am new but am surprised to see that as part of the contact record there is only 1 field for "web Site". I need to add additional urls (web Sites) to each contact record. When I use the Web info tab, I notice this gets added to ALL contacts. How can I add a field (or more) through drop downs or additional fields on top of the contact record that I hopefully can label for other purposes? If this is not possible, how can I add the urls to another tab or area so when I open the contact record, these website urls are easily accessible and labled and do not appear on the other contact records (just the one to whom I apply the url). Surely in a program such as ACT, this can be done. Please advise.

Thanks.

Mark Kolar

What happens when a contact leaves the company? You don't want to delete them as they have a lot of history, but at the same time when you look up a company it gets confusing when there are a lot of ex-staff that are listed there.

There has to be a better way. Perhaps have a field that makes the contact in-active and when they show up in the contact list they are greyed out and their contact record is read only.

This topic is also being discussed in the ACT! Fanatics Linked IN Group

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers&discussionID=15188794&gid=49896&commentID=12934201&trk=view_disc

We are a Temporary Staffing Service. We use ACT to track resources currently on Payroll, Assignment with other employers and those Currently Available. We can invoice directly from ACT as well as complete a multitude of other administrative task.

We leverage the power of the Groups function to quickly narrow the employment category. From there, if a specific skill or set of skills are sought, we need to use the Advanced Look Up query. It works but takes a long time to build.

It's very similar to the Advanced Look Up but is much more user friendly.

Anyone have any ideas?

When you create a Secundary Contact the primary fields of the contact  must be copy to the secundary contact, that way you don´t have to write them another time.

Jose Ignacio Mujica

 ACT - ACC - Peru

Lookup Previous is OK, but doesn't always give me what I want. For example, if I create a new Contact record, then move to another record, I can't use Lookup Previous to find the new one since it wasn't selected from a lookup in the first place. In any case, Lookup Previous requires 2 clicks, and click are precious in a busy environment.

What I would prefer is a list of the last 10 Contact records I have viewed in the Nav bar as hyperlinks. One click and you have the record you want.

The same "Last 10 Viewed" could also apply to Company records, Group records, Opportunities, and Tasks.

Jeff

Having been in sales for over 40 years, I can count the number of times I have spoken directly with a "Prospect" let a lone a client.  Why is the default, "Call Completed" when the 80/20 rule dare I say 95/5% rule should take effect.  Instead of the default being "Call Completed change it to "Left Message".  This would save a hundred mouse clicks a day.  By the way, it's easy to change this hard coded program dialogue box.  Should take abouut 5 minutes.

Paul Onish

ACT User 20+ years.

We use ACT to manage our mailing list.  Is there a way to export the addresses from ACT to mapping software (I currently use MapPoint from MS)?

Imagine a land,  far, far away, where sales people were able to design screen layouts not based on restrictive rules, but where you could design your screen entirely based on function.

They had opening screens which showed a Contact Name field, and Company level address fields all existing in peace and harmony on a single page. When creating a new record, as they started typing the company name, a list appeared showing companies with a similar name that already existed in the database so they didn't duplicate entries, then the contact and company records were automatically linked.

They also had a Year to Date Sales field on the same screen showing revenue from this contact, and there was a bar-chart showing months of the year and sales for each month. Underneath was the same chart but showing the number of touch points, meetings and calls with that customer in each month.

They could also see a list of all the relevant attached documents in a single place irrespective of whether they had been created in ACT! or not.

These sales people were also highly effective because they could monitor not only their revenue figures but also their sales conversion rates at each stage in the pipeline.

I had a dream brothers and sisters. I had a dream.

I would like to be able to assign Limited Access to a security role.

For example, if an organisation has 20 sales people and you want to prevent each sales person from  seeing anyone elses opportunities it would be useful to be able to make all the sales people Standard users and set Limited Access for Opportunities which specified "Limited to whoever is Record Manager of that Opportunity plus the Managers/Administrators".

This is different to assigning Limited Access to a Team. I saves having to individually set Limited Access individually for each of the 20 people.

Jeff

I am in a phase of business where I am picking a lot of new contacts. The biggest time waster is manually entering Contact details when it is sitting there already keyed in an email or on a website contact page or a Word doc I have received, or online business directories I subscribe to, LinkedIn etc etc, the list goes on, you get the picture. (Or a Company or Contact has sent a change of address in any of the above formats.

Obviously one of the problems is that there are as many formats and layouts as listed above. I recall that in Outlook I could copy a whole address and paste it straight into the Contact address and it would manage to get all the address lines, city and Postcode into the right fields. However I don't think it is possible to make that work for all the examples above.

My idea is:

A Contact/Company Name and Address editing window. It would be opened by buttons on the Company and Contact Detail toolbars.

It would look like this:

The window would be divided in half vertically.

The left half would have the following Act fields:

Company; Division; Contact Name; Address lines; Ph numbers; Post Code etc

Option to include any other Company/Contact fields

Company Logo (a new picture field in the company record I just thought of!)

Option check boxes: Add new Contact; Add new Company; Update existing Company/Contact (drop down name selection) and there may be more.

The right hand window would be blank Word style field onto which you can paste the whole name and address info you have copied from the source word or html document/website etc.

THEN I could just highlight the lines or details I need and DRAG them to the right Act field (which applies the Act formating for that field of course). Once completed, I click Apply and Voila, a new Contact and or Company appears in my Act database, or is updated as applicable.

I dream of the days I could be spending on the beach once this incredible time saving process is implemented!!!!! 

As of Version 12.0.409 Hot fix 4 would like to see the following and tested when Preferences Log On settngs has checked Open each view in its own window:

1. Opportunity, From File menu | Export to Excel inlcude Oppt not only Company and Contact tables.

2. Oppt. List view click on a column to sort and have it stick even when jumping between Oppt. Detail, make a change in field and jumping back to Oppt List. loosing sort.

3. Oppt List view show totals at the bottom of list.

4. Oppt Detail window if closed and reopened the next new Oppt record created the Association view in Layout should still work showing and linked to the Contact you created the Oppt. record for.

5. Oppt. Detail view be able to lock during layout design the horizontal position of the Tabs so you can add and see more fields added in the top half of layout.

6. Oppt. Detail view be able to add in Layout fields from Contact or Company tables and or be able to link an Oppt. field to a Contact record field incase there is data on Contact already input that you want carried over into the Oppt. record

7. Oppt. or for that matter all of the Tables who's Field Security (in Premium version) set as read-only still allow you to copy the data with the right-click or Ctrl+C so you can paste into another field or another Tables field.

8. Oppt. or from any other table window view when searching or Add/Remove Contacts be robust with the customization of the Select Contacts dialog window by allowing us to add or change the column view from only Name and Company incase we are looking for a contact to select that has another field we need to look them up by.

9. Oppt. List has like Contact List the Edit field.

10. Oppt. Detail be able to Copy/Replace/Swap fields like Stage and Process.

11. Oppt. Detail Show Products.

As there is no UI to access the custom table in ACT!, the ability to customise and rename the fields in the Secondart Contact are would be a welcome compromise.

If I could rename the fields I could use them for anything I want, Equipment serial numbers, contract expiry dates, whatever.

Jeff

I have recently migrated from a very old version of ACT! to the latest 2010 premium version. Over the years I spent a lot of effort automating my ACT usage by building a whole series of macros for common functions and assigning toolbar buttons to them. Imagine my surprise when I find out I couldn't build a macro anymore with ACT 2010!

Please bring back the ability to record macros and allow them to be assigned to custom toolbar buttons and menu items.

I would like the ability to total up columns of numbers in any ACT table.

So, if I have a Contact fields formatted as a number and I include them in a Contact list, I would like ACT to automatically put the sum of those columns at the bottom (or top) of each numeric column.

I would like this ability in ALL list views, including Task List.

Jeff

Like many others, I have a standard e-mail signature sign off created in Outlook.

This holds a summary of my contact info, legal disclaimer etc. etc. 

For those that have Outlook integration enabled, and have email set-up to "Record Email subject and message (recommended)" it would be useful to have a further option to "do not record email signature to history" 

This way, when I scroll through email messages to a contact, I don't see my long email signature text at the end of each message.