ACT Activities falling on weekends [ Edited ]

[jfgarnant]

Quick question, I hope; we have multiple activities in the office that are set up to recur after a task/phone call is completed. However, sometimes the recurrence falls on a weekend and the event gets missed, unhappy client, etc. Does ACT have the ability to bypass Sat & Sun for events and recurring events?

PS When did the SPAMING on the community page get so bad?

[duane]

Hi Jon,

I agree with your comment on the SPAM stuff, which can diminish the value of this forum.

The best thing to do is report anything you see as inappropriate to the moderator, which is what I do.

In regard to your challenge, I am sure this is not a new one, and you definitely make a good point with your recurring scenario.

I had the same issue when developing my Add-On (Plug-In) for Text Messages. We definitely did not want them sent on

weekends or after hours so we had to develop our own specific workarounds as act! does not seem to deal with this

challenge, even though there is a ability to clearly define the bounds of the Calendar by working days and hours.

With the Calendar Workdays already defined in the Calendar Preferences it should be made near impossible

to schedule activities outside the bounds of this workday Calendar or at the very least warn you when

scheduling activities so that you do not accidentally schedule activities outside these days/times.

In the case of Activity Series or recurring Activities this could be a simple as provided a list

of activities scheduled on weekend or out of hours so that the user can roll these over to

the next available day at the same time or the next day at the earliest time if after hours.

This would be a reasonable simple fix as there is already existing functionality to leverage.

Thats my two cents on the subject.

Kind Regards
Duane

Duane Morrison Smith

ACT Mobile Messenger
+61 (417) 498 635 (Australia)

+1 (213) 347 9200 (United States) 
duane@actmobilemessenger.com

Calendar Workdays.png ‏224 KB

[ch1p]

Not sure this is going to resolve but worth a mention.

If it is an Activity that is being created then in Tools - Preferences - Calendar and Activity - Activity you can set any activity to automatically roll over to Today so even if it was scheduled by the recurring activity for the weekend when the user next logged on the activity would roll over to the day they next opened ACT.

Regarding the amount of spam on this forum it seems there was a substantial headcount exercise last year at Swiftpage and the times moderators log on is rare. I like Duanne always flag spam but it takes a long time for any action - if any at all.

[duane]

Hi Ch1p,

I did consider suggesting what you have recommended, but I was concerned that rolling over activities is always a hindsight perspective.

If you are planning future activities or planing for the next week you may want to see all activities in the Workday Calendar and there is still

the risk that a rollover activity may appear as a surprise particularly if they are scheduled for someone who is not in on a Monday and may

also create a spike in activities if a number of recurring activities are scheduled on the same weekend.

However, I do appreciate that this method is still a catch all and activities are still unlikely to be missed if they are rolled over and not completed.

[jnpurdy]

I would recommend posting that desirable feature in the "Share Your Ideas" section of the forum.

I had asked ACT to allow the user to set in tools the number of days for a follow up.  Likewise, preferences should allow us to define our workday.

[jfgarnant]

It’s nice to know that I’m in the same boat however in regards to the last post you can define your work week and preferences for the Calendar settings. I guess my question would be what exactly does that do in regards to scheduling. It would appear that it does nothing correct me if I’m wrong.

[jnpurdy]

The calendar settings for the workweek I have always understood to allow the week or month calendar to be larger when displaying only 5 days in the week instead of 7.

Not being a programmer, though, it seems to me that there should be a way to link this setting to automatic activity settings.  

[ch1p]

Hi again Duane

I like the idea of putting this as a feature request but given there is normally a 2 year wait for those items that are implemented to come out in new releases it is going to be a long wait.

I think the roll-over option is all that there is at the moment unless an add-on maker like Giles of Expodenciel takes it as a new add-on product.

Here is a link to his current offerings and there are others add-on makers as well -

Sage ACT! add-ons - Sage ACT! plug-ins by Exponenciel

Good luck

Chip