Why can't we have more than one email field feed the email History in ACT when sending emails?

[#1]

I run a financial planning practice where each contact record contains a husband email and wife email.  It may also have a husband work email and a wife work email.  I understand that ACT's limited functionality only attaches emails sent to the "Primary" email (for sending email) to the History.  It would seem an easy programming tweak to have sent email attached to "all email addresses" in a record versus just the primary.  With more and more people having numerous email address and record retention becoming more and more mandatory this would be a MAJOR functionality and compliance enhancement to the product.

[#2]

Hello David,

The current versions of ACT! are designed to attach to history based on a valid email address in any email-type field in the contact record, with the exception of email addresses under the Secondary Contacts tab. This was added in the 11.1 update to ACT! 2009.

[#3]

So, adding the functionality to include recording of history in the parent contact of emails to the secondary contacts would be a logical and useful step forward ;-)

[#4]

I recently converted from Goldmine and lost this functionality.  Had it not been for Goldmine's new expensive licensing, this would have turned me away from ACT - it is a serious drawback.  What I would like to see is to be able to select the email address I want to use when I send an email (e.g. mail merge) or send a meeting invitation.  These default to the primary email and don;t currently let me pick one of the other email addresses.  As a result, I am constantly cutting and pasting email addresses throughout the day to enable documents to go out to the address I want.

[#5]

Good feedback... 

I was apparently misinformed by ACT technical support that only the Primary email field was used for History.  It's good that most of the fields are.  With that being said, I think the software could be majority enhanced but adding more and varying email functionality like "kenwiens" mentioned.  I would also suggest that there be an option where you set ACT to "automatically" record incoming and outgoing email to each contact record that has that email contained (in any email field).  Microsoft Outlook has that functionality by default.  Some users might not want that functionality and in that case they could just choose to add email manually like under the current setup.  But, for users who do want all emails recorded it would save an enormous amount of clicks and wasted time attaching manually to each contact. 

[#6]

One of the problems that ACT! still creates is that it includes the Contact's name as part of the email.  If you have created a separte email address for the contact's assistant or spouse, it includes the name of the contact in the Outlook email, ie. John Smith <Jane.Doe@abcinc.com>

The other issue is that ACT! does not easily allow emails or email merging to selected email fields. It only allows email merging to the primary email address. Individual emails to the other email addresses can easily be done one at a time though.

As a result, we use an addon product known as EmailConnect Professional.

http://act4advisors.com/actaddons/ActEmailConnect

The only limitation is that it will only attach emails to contacts in the currently opened ACT! database.  Other than that, it gives more flexibility than ACT!'s current Outlook integration.

[#7]

I have recently posted a "not so...new idea" about the functionality of Secondary Contact email Sept 2010.  I totally agree with Jeff_Granger.  All this discussion is easily resolved by "exposing" secondary fields in the table.  Wow, I'm not a tech person but I have learned that much!

I am also in financial services like David who placed the first post.  For us Act is not totally about maximising your contacts for new business, for us it is about dealing with day to day queries and logging what is required by a regulator.  "if it's not written down, it did'nt happen".  We need to cover the email variables and the logging in the easiest way possible.

I'm sure we are not alone!  Com'on guys Vote Vote Vote...