ACT! Premium 2008 (10.3.0.0) and Office 365

[Derekius]

I have a customer that currently uses ACT! Premium 2008 (10.3.0.0) in conjunction with Exchange 2003 (Small Business Server 2003 to be more specific) and a mix of Outlook 2003 and 2010.  I know next to nothing about ACT! as this was setup by another company, so I'm not even clear on whether the integration is with Exchange directly or just an Outlook plugin.  Regardless, they want to move to hosted Exchange (Office 365) and I cannot find anything concrete to tell me that they can move all of their mailboxes to "the cloud" to be hosted in an Exchange 2010 environment or if ACT! will not function after this happens.

If ACT! can work with hosted Exchange, are there any feature limitations or other caveats to be aware of before we start this Exchange migration?

[GLComputing]

First, ACT! 2008 didn't support Office 2010... only ACT! 2011 and 2012 does that.

Second, there is yet no full integration to Office 365 ... so, to integrate it with ACT! (or anything else) needs a local copy of Office

[Derekius]

I can't help but feel we're not on the same page.  I called customer support first regarding this and was told that Office 2002, 2003, and 2007 were supported.  When I tried to explain that the Office 365 component in question was hosted Exchange 2010 and not the Office 2010 subscription, I just seemed to confuse the person on the phone even more.

Second, I tried searching the knowledgebase (the phone rep gave me that suggestion after she clearly had no clue what I was asking).  There is nothing on Office 365 anywhere in the knowlegebase and I could not find anything regarding hosted Exchange either.

Next, I trid the live chat, but I was quickly told that my questions would be better answered by calling customer support to talk to a product specialist or searching the knowledgebase.

My last resort was to post here.  I am very familiar with Office, Exchange, and how Office 365 integrates with the customer's existing environment, but I have zero experience with ACT!.  I did not install it and have never had to support it.  Does ACT! just use an Outlook plugin or does it communicate directly with Exchange?  If it's just a client-side plugin, I dont think it would matter if Exchange was on-premises or hosted (or should the version matter).  The customer already upgraded to Office 2010, so when you say ACT! 2008 doesn't support Office 2010, do you mean that it doesn't work or Sage won't offer any help if they have problems?

[Roy_Laudenslager]

ACT! 2008 won'y work with Office 2010.

[GLComputing]

Just a quick point... it's not Sage that you need to hassle.

Microsoft hasn't yet released APIs for Office 365... they have only released beta versions for connecting to Exchange and Sharepoint so far

But, as Derekius points out, as it's a client side Office plugin, it can work, but needs a local copy of Office.

As I said, you need ACT! 2011 or 2012 for Office 2010

[Derekius]

So the Exchange server version and location doesn't come into play at all?  The only thing I need to be concerned with is what version of Outlook they wish to use with ACT!?  Their subscription includes Office Professional Plus 2010, which does get installed locally, so if a plugin is compatible with Outlook 2010, I believe it will work with Office 365's subscription plan for Office 2010 Pro Plus.  It sounds like I just need to confirm the version of ACT! they are using and if it is 2008, look into an upgrade to 2011 or 2012.

Thanks for the info, you guys were much more knowledgeable than the phone or chat reps I reached out to...

[Derekius]

Just to follow up, most of the end users have already upgraded to Office 2010 and said ACT! still works the same as it always has.  They moved from a mix of Office 2003 and 2007 to Office 365's subscription-based Office (the E3 plan includes Office 2010 Pro Plus).  While it may not be supported, they said it works just fine.

[GLComputing]

All it needs is a Microsoft update to Office to kick the connection and it'll stop working with no way to get it back

[Derekius]

If it works now and a Microsoft Update will break it, why do you say there would be no way to go back?  Updates can easily be removed...

I am going to try to get them to upgrade ACT! either way.

[GLComputing]

Because it "sometimes" works on an updated version of Office that still has parts the of the original Office that ACT! talks to in place. That is, it only works if the Office upgrade didn't fully work. When those parts get overwritten, the link is no-longer there and rolling back the update doesn't replace the previous Office files.

But yes, updating ACT! is the best way ... and, if updating, you need to have the version of Office installed first