Relationship Building or Six Degrees of Separation in ACT! 2010 - Guest Blog by Doug Wolf

[#1]

Today we are joined by Doug Wolf of Wolf's Byte Productions.  Not only has Doug been an ACT! Certified Consultant (ACC) for 19 years, he is also the author of the first book ever written on ACT! in 1992!  Doug, we're honored to have you here today to enlighten us on the Relationship Tab.

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Relationship Building or Six Degrees of Separation in ACT! 2010

By: Doug Wolf, Wolf's Byte Productions

While you are getting your mind around the social networking aspect of ACT! 2010, a feature that you should also consider using was added to version 2009, the Relationship tab.

The idea is that you can look at a contact and see how other contacts in your database are related. The benefit of creating relationship links is being able to see in ACT! contact connections that you might have forgotten or did not fully recognize until you followed the links.

You can leverage the social networking tab in ACT! with the Relationships tab. While viewing the information in LinkedIn on a contact, you might see that person is connected to people who are already (or maybe should be) in your ACT! database. At that point you can start building your network within ACT!.

To create a Relationship link:
1.    Lookup a contact in ACT!
2.    Click the Relationships tab.
3.    Click ‘Relate Contact’.
4.    Open the drop down list to select a contact.
5.    In the Define Relationship field open the drop down list and select how the current contact is related.
6.    In the Related Contact field enter the other side of the relationship.

Note: If the current contact uses the related contact as a Vendor, then the current contact is probably a Client so in the top field select Client and in the bottom select Vendor. If the relationship is simply Friend to Friend, that entry would be put in both fields.

7.    Enter any amplifying text as needed: What type of vendor or where the friends met.
8.    Click OK.

Now the Relationship tab shows other contact and you can click the name to jump directly to the related contact record and from there—jump back.

Cruising around in ACT! you can effectively use this feature to create a more rich network of contacts and see how true the concept of Six degrees of Separation really is!
 

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Great information Doug, thank you!

Message Edited by tmergel on 03-18-2010 11:38 AM

[#2]

Perhaps I am blind... but missed this feature in ACT 2009 (v11).  Is there anyone who can show a screen shot or a hint as to where the Relationship Tab is located or how it's accessed.

SBZ

[#3]

First, make sure you are on 11.1, which is when the Relationship feature was introduced. In ACT!, click on the Help pull-down menu and select About ACT!, then check the Version. It needs to be 11.1.183.0. If it's not, then click Help | ACT! Update. If an update is available, you will see it in the lower right corner of ACT!, or you will get a polite little message that you already have the latest version of ACT! NOTE: If you are in a multi-user database, ALL machines need to be updated, including the server hosting your ACT! database, at the same time. Because once you apply the update, it will update the database too. 

If you are on 11.1, but are not seeing the Relationships tab, you might have to display the tab through the layout controls. Click Tools | Design Layouts | Contact. Then click on the Edit pull-down menu and select Tabs. The column on the left shows Hidden Tabs. You should see a tab called Related Contacts there. (Why isn't it called Relationship? Don't ask me... ) Double-click on that tab name and that should move it over to the right column, which is the list of tabs displayed, and in what order. Once the Related Contacts tab is in that right column, you can click on it and then click the Move Up button to change the order of the tabs and place the Related Contacts tab right where you want it. Then click File | Save and then File | Exit.  

You should now see the Relationship tab!