Additional Dashboard Functionality - History

[#1]

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 

[#2]

I stated this in a Post for Opportunity but found this a second place to leave it.

Like to add in Opportunity List window (Table) under Process/Stage and in Dash Board Filter to be able to specify by an Opportunity field.

Example select a field called reference that has a code "Mailer01" This way you can in Dash board Filter by fields and the type to see how much was sold or forecasted by mailer campaign. Also have the same added selection under Stage so you can list what you want to export / view not having to go through report or selecting those records and omit them in the list view.

Thanks,

JM

[#3]

As ACT! is a sales and marketing tool, the more sales analysis information we can get out of it the better.  The current features are somewhat limited, and do not provide the common metrics that sales managers need.

Jeff

[#4]

You're right Jeff... adding useful templates to the Dashboard is an easy way to improve the vaue of ACT! without a huge development effort.

The ability to do this is there, but I'd suspect add-on developers wouldn't think enough users would want to pay enough to warrant the work, or might think Sage will add it free and make their work a waste.

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Australia

Join the LinkedIN ACT! Fanatics Group - http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=49896

[#5]

Activity recording for incoming calls is a mess at the moment with scheduled calls in Activity and unscheduled calls in History from Create History. My suggestion is you add a Create Unscheduled Activity to the activity section (Just like create History is in the History Tab). Now all activity is recorded in the activity table so it is 1 place to look,  1 place to report on, would appear in the Dashboard under Activity.  There should be an option to add to history when completed for those who want it but for my money the history area is becoming almost unusable as so many items end up there.

We need far better filters when looking at History as well but whops - that another area.

ACT is very good but could so easily be GREAT