Fast Tip Friday: Troubleshooting Outlook History Recording #SageACT

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When you configure Microsoft Outlook to be your preferred e-mail client, and also add your Sage ACT! database as an address book to Outlook, you can take advantage of several useful integration features. In addition to creating contacts and activities, you may also attach e-mail messages to contact records in Sage ACT!. As with any feature, it’s great when it works, but what do you do when it doesn’t? This week, I’ll share some tips about troubleshooting this integration when it doesn’t appear to be working.

Troubleshooting History Recording:

There are a variety of reasons history of e-mail messages may not be recorded back in Sage ACT!. This tip will focus on the Attach to ACT! Contacts Progress tool, which can be very useful when diagnosing why a particular message has not attached to a Sage ACT! contact. At the end of this tip, I’ve also included a link to a great KB article that covers additional reasons why this integration may not be working.

Viewing the Progress of E-mail Attachment:

1. If one or more e-mail messages have failed to attach to a Sage ACT! contact, the following icon will be displayed in the lower right corner of your desktop (in the system tray):

2. Right click the icon, and then click Show Progress.

3. The Attach to ACT! Contacts Progress tool opens. There are three tabs:

• Progress: View the current progress of message attachment. If a large number of messages are being attached, the progress bar will be active, and you may optionally click Stop to suspend attachment of messages. You will also see messages that have recently been attached.

• Not Attached Messages: View a list of the messages that have not successfully been attached to Sage ACT! contacts, including information about the message and why it may not have attached. This tab also includes tools for performing actions on the message (detailed below).

• Advanced: View log files of messages within a configurable number of days.

Performing an Action On Messages That Have Not Attached:

1. On the Not Attached Messages tab, select one or more messages and scroll to the right to view the Status column.

2. Often, the cause is that a matching contact was not found in Sage ACT!, either because it doesn’t exist, or the e-mail address that the message originated from is not found on the contact record in Sage ACT!.  To successfully attach messages in this queue and in the future:

• Click Attach to New ACT! Contact and create the contact in the Sage ACT! database.
• Or, click Attach to ACT! Contact, and then manually select the corresponding contact. 
• To ensure future messages from this e-mail address are successfully attached, open Sage ACT!, locate the contact, and add the e-mail address to the appropriate e-mail field on the contact record.

• If you do not want to attach the message to any contacts, click the Remove button.

3. After you have finished managing the queue of messages, click Close.

Using the Attach to ACT! Contacts Progress tool, you can ensure your e-mail correspondence is captured accurately in Sage ACT!, and even periodically verify that your contacts are updated with the latest e-mail address!