Change the handling of History

[#1]

I find the current handling of history more difficult to use than the previous version of ACT! I used (2000). I use ACT to record non-ACT activities in a "last results" field that allows me to enter notes about a contact so that I can record things like "met Paul at the EDI show in May" "told me his project was delayed by mgmt until spring".  While the latter might cause me to reschedule an activity, it is helpful to see this stuff independent of the activity when viewing contact data. 

Here is a suggestion for improvement:

1. In ACT 2010 when you set a field to track history, it creates a history record that records both the previous value of the field followed by the new value of the field. This makes it very difficult to read the history. Instead, I would suggest that history simply record any new value. You can look through the history display to see all the previous values. This would make it much easier to read and use the history data and NO information is lost.

2. Alternatively, I could replace the use of historized field data by specifically entering a new history record BUT: I can't display the contents of this kind of history entry on the contact form because their is no 'history enty" field for me to add to my layout. Having to bring up the history tab separately doesn't allow me to view this data while looking at scheduled activities which makes it more difficult for me to decide quickly what immediate actions to give me quick context when processing a new activity with that contact.

Therefore, either clean up the historization of field data (#1 above preferred) or allow me to access the manually entered history records on a layout.

Message Edited by ralphmack on 01-12-2010 08:13 AM