ACT! by Sage 2010 is HERE!

[#1]

ACT! 2010 (English) is now available for customer delivery in North America! We officially released the gold files yesterday— check out our video of ACT! 2010 literally going "out the door"!

If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that I’ve been discussing this significant release for the last several weeks, and now it’s finally here. 

From a development perspective, I am very proud of this release for several reasons. The new ACT! 2010 release includes a wealth of new feature innovations, usability enhancements that make it even easier to learn and use, and technology that improves our ability to provide timely software updates.  A sample of the new features includes:

• New Look: Easier to navigate and better discoverability to quickly accomplish tasks.
• Improved and New reports: More than a dozen new reports, plus a handy favorite’s area.
• Social Media: Track contacts and be better informed with turnkey integration to leading sites, plus you can quickly and easily add your own sites.
• ACT! E-Marketing:  An optional service that helps you better understand your contacts by knowing who is opening and clicking through your e-mail campaigns. Drip campaigns make it easy to set up multi-stage campaigns. And, automated call lists that point out your hottest prospects.
• Customizable Opportunities: Tune your opportunities to precisely fit your business. 
• Improved Dashboards:  12 new components and 2 new Dashboards.  Know in seconds what contacts are newly created and recently changed, and more….

To prepare for the launch, I was in New York and Boston last week introducing ACT! 2010 to Journalists and Analysts.  Given the strength of the feature set, my job was pretty easy, and a lot fun.  Many commented that the capabilities in ACT! 2010 either don’t exist in products costing much more and/or the level of integration and ease of use in ACT! is superior.  I look forward to lots of positive coverage over the coming weeks.

While in Boston, I also met with a number of our local ACT! Certified Consultants. They were really stoked about ACT! 2010, so we captured a couple of impromptu videos:

Karen Rankin, Actability

Joe Norcott, Business Technologies of New England

See ACT! 2010 for yourself.

View our social media release.

That’s it for now.  Enjoy the new ACT!  

Larry

Message Edited by larryr on 09-01-2009 06:38 AM

[#2]

Larry,

Congratulations on connecting to twitter and face book. I guess that makes ACT cool.

It would be nice thought to make the basics work first. Having access to social networks is a double edged sword. Specially if your product is declining in quality.

I've been using act for many years. Before it was purchased by Sage. Some time ago I purchased Act 09 - Version 11.1.183.0 with the Hotfix 1.  The basics have been negatively impacted, I must say. (One should not forget, this is at the core a contact and schedule manager) - Walk first. Marketing tools are useless if you cant schedule a follow up with a customer in less than 200 clicks.

Here are the first 3 problems in a pretty long list. (all free of charge from yours truly. I don't charge for product testing. Heck, I even pay for the products I'm suffertesting): 

1 - This is VERY slow. Its obvious that the database was changed, but the implementation.....

2 - Many problems with the basics. Try to schedule a follow up to an activity for say.... next week on Tuesday. There is no way to know that you have already scheduled for that day. You know there is something scheduled for 2 PM but you don't know if you have to feed the fish or meet with your biggest client.

Called support, etc,etc,etc.(they tried to charge me!!!! LOL) They realized this is a design flaw (it does not even qualify as a bug), told me they would get back to me. Two months +/- have passed. Maybe its a really big problem. Or maybe no one cares. What do you think?

3- Outlook integration.... still not there.

Have many more issues, but lets see if anyone cares about these first.

So, facebook, Linked in and twitter are nice (I guess), but what about the basics? God help us if all these wonderful marketing tools (don't know if they work) get us more customers. We might loose them because we can't properly schedule follow up activities with them!!

[#3]

Hi Larry-

Are you at all concerned by this thread ( http://community.act.com/sage/board/message?board.id=ACT&thread.id=28615 )regarding the posted systems requirements for the Act2010 trial?

The system requirements here ( http://www.act.com/2010/system/act/ ) state that Windows XP(SP2) is sufficient to run the application. But the version of SQL Server Express bundled with the trial causes XP SP2 users' machines to bluescreen and there is no hotfix for SP2.

Is there any reason why you are unwilling to modify the posted systems requirements to reflect that SP3 is required to run Act2010?

[#4]

Thanks for the post and yes, I am concerned about the post as we very much want all users to have a simple and positive trial experience.  I did a little research today and here is what is happening.

ACT! uses Microsoft SQL as it's database and with the trial we include SQL 2005 SP3.  When installing on a users machine, if SQL 2005 is already present we skip the installation of SQL to reduce overall installation time.  If SQL 2005 is not present, we install SQL 2005 SP3 as part of the ACT! install.  We have come to learn, there is an incompatibility between Microsoft SQL 2005 SP3 and Windows XP SP2 that causes a blue screen during installation.  We have brought this condition to Microsoft's attention and they have delivered a hotfix to Windows XP SP2 that corrects this problem.  We have asked Microsoft for permission to distribute this hot fix to minimize the occurrence of this incompatibility between Microsoft products - they have declined.  Microsoft does make the Hot Fix available to Windows XP customer from their support teams.

From an ACT! perspective we want users to proceed with the trial.  Here are 2 methods that should help get past the problem of installing an ACT! 2010 trial on a Windows XP SP2 machine.  Either should get you up and running:

1) Contact Microsoft Support and ask for the Windows XP SP2 Hot Fix to correct the SQL 2005 SP3/Windows XP SP 2 install incompatibility

2) Update your Windows XP Operating System to SP3, this is available via Windows Update.

After completing 1) or 2) ACT! should fully and correctly install on your Windows XP PC.  We are in process of upgrading our system requirements to state Windows XP SP3 is required.  This will be reflected on our website shortly.

I am very sorry for this inconvenience and hope this helps.  Larry

[#5]

I have a question. We are a small, nonprofit office with four users. We would like the ability to access our ACT databases on the web. The only product I see that has that capability is the corporate version, which is cost prohibitive. Do you have any other options for small nonprofits groups?

[#6]

Hi djonespcedc,

Thanks for this.. I can see you want the  flexibility of the web but need it packaged for a business of your size and budget - that's something we at Sage very much want to provide.  One option I recommend is to check out our Hosting options.  We have a number of specialized partners that provide ACT! Premium for Web on a hosted basis for ACT! customers.  They provide a range of services and payment styles to deliver a service and buying experience to fit various needs.  These partners are existing ACT! Partners but provide this specialized hosting service in addition.  Here is the link form act.com, I suggest you check out a couple of these providers.  I  believe one or more of them can help you.  Larry 

http://www.act.com/partners/hosting/directory/

[#7]

I've been an ACT user for over 10 years...just upgraded to 2010 from 2008...

When will the performance issues be fixed in 2010?  8 seconds to change records or go from the calendar to  the contact isn't acceptable...also, why do I have to keep restarting SQL Server?

Outlook integration is a LOT better...

I run my business on ACT...I miss the performance I had in v10.