Today we are joined by Doug Wolf of Wolf's Byte Productions.  Not only has Doug been an ACT! Certified Consultant (ACC) for 19 years, he is also the author of the first book ever written on ACT! in 1992!  Doug, we're honored to have you here today to enlighten us on the Relationship Tab.

 


Relationship Building or Six Degrees of Separation in ACT! 2010

 

By: Doug Wolf, Wolf's Byte Productions

 

While you are getting your mind around the social networking aspect of ACT! 2010, a feature that you should also consider using was added to version 2009, the Relationship tab.

The idea is that you can look at a contact and see how other contacts in your database are related. The benefit of creating relationship links is being able to see in ACT! contact connections that you might have forgotten or did not fully recognize until you followed the links.

You can leverage the social networking tab in ACT! with the Relationships tab. While viewing the information in LinkedIn on a contact, you might see that person is connected to people who are already (or maybe should be) in your ACT! database. At that point you can start building your network within ACT!.

To create a Relationship link:
1.    Lookup a contact in ACT!
2.    Click the Relationships tab.
3.    Click ‘Relate Contact’.
4.    Open the drop down list to select a contact.
5.    In the Define Relationship field open the drop down list and select how the current contact is related.
6.    In the Related Contact field enter the other side of the relationship.

Note: If the current contact uses the related contact as a Vendor, then the current contact is probably a Client so in the top field select Client and in the bottom select Vendor. If the relationship is simply Friend to Friend, that entry would be put in both fields.

7.    Enter any amplifying text as needed: What type of vendor or where the friends met.
8.    Click OK.

 

Now the Relationship tab shows other contact and you can click the name to jump directly to the related contact record and from there—jump back.

Cruising around in ACT! you can effectively use this feature to create a more rich network of contacts and see how true the concept of Six degrees of Separation really is!
 

Great information Doug, thank you!