Act! User's Guide Working with Your Contacts

User s Guide (v18)

Act! User's Guide What s Contact and Customer Management Software?... 8 Act! Ownership Change... 8 Starting Your Act! Software... 8 Log on... 9 Opening a Database... 9 Setting Up for Class... 9 Returning to Real Life... 9 Act! Screen Elements... 10 Welcome View... 11 Changing Your Startup View... 11 The Navbar... 12 View Toolbar... 12 Layout Tabs... 13 Layouts... 13 Contact Record Basics... 14 The My Record Contact Record... 14 Our Practice Database... 15 An Overview of Security Roles... 15 Contact Fields... 15 Inserting a New Contact Record... 17 Drop-down Fields... 17 Duplicating Contacts... 21 Assigning Security... 22 Limited Access... 22 Deleting Contacts... 23 Working with Your Contacts Locating Contacts... 26 Browsing Records... 26 Detail View and List View... 26 Sorting the List View... 27 Related Task Pane Another Sort Option... 28 Adding and Removing Columns... 29 Navbar Lookup Pane... 30 Lookup... 31 Wait, We Didn t Tell Act! the Last Name... 34 Fixing a Problem Contact Name... 35 Lookup Variations... 36 Adding to Lookups... 36 Narrowing Lookups... 37 Previous Lookups... 38 Back (and Forward) Buttons... 38 Universal Search... 39 Working with the Results... 40 Lookup, Any fields... 41 Lookup Annual Events... 41 Working In List View Edit Mode... 43 Tag Mode... 43 Lookup and Omit Tagged Records... 44 Printing Lookups... 45 Secondary Contacts... 45 Promoting from Within... 46 Documents Tab... 47 Relationships... 49 Timeline Tab... 51 Social Media Tab... 52 25

3 Connecting Your Contacts... 52 Your Contact s Website... 53 Web Info Tab... 53 Web Info tab - User Links section... 53 Attaching Web Pages From Internet Explorer... 55 Working Your Schedule Act! vs. a PIM... 58 Activity Types... 58 Simple Scheduling... 58 Adding an Outlook Meeting Request to Your Calendar... 63 Scheduling Activities Using the Calendar... 64 Viewing Your Calendar... 66 Calendar Pop-ups... 66 Navigation Tips for the Calendar Views... 67 The Today Button... 68 Filtering the Calendar... 70 Printing the Calendar... 71 Calendar vs. Task List... 73 The Task List... 73 Filtering the Task List... 74 Printing Your Task List... 76 Modifying Scheduled Activities... 76 Clearing Activities... 77 Recording an Unscheduled Activity to History... 80 Recording History to Multiple Contacts... 81 Filtering History... 82 History List View... 82 Filtering History... 82 Filtering by Date... 82 Filtering by Type... 83 Filtering by Keyword... 83 Filtering by User... 83 Excluding Private Histories... 84 Using the History List Icon bar... 84 Printing the Current List... 84 Lookup Contacts... 84 Customise Column Display... 85 Export to Excel... 85 Taking Notes... 86 Viewing and Editing Notes... 86 History vs. Notes... 87 Rolling Over Your Activities... 89 Act! Scratchpad... 90 Advanced Scheduling Scheduling... 94 Scheduling for Other Act! Users... 94 Displaying Multiple Users in Your Calendar or Task List... 96 Adding Scheduled For to Task List View... 96 Mini-Exercise: Viewing Other Users Stuff... 97 Scheduling for Multiple Contacts... 98 Availability... 100 Responding to an Act! Invitation... 103 Activity Colors... 104 Alarms... 104 Responding to an Alarm... 105 Public vs. Private Activities... 107 Attachments... 107 57 93

4 Act! Scheduling Recurring Activities... 108 Syncing Your Calendar and Contacts with Act!... 111 Calendar Synching with Outlook... 111 Contact Syncing with Outlook... 113 Manually Syncing Act! and Outlook... 117 Synching your Google Calendar and Contacts with Act!... 117 Calendar Integration with Google... 117 Contacts Integration with Google... 118 Manually syncing Act! and Google... 121 Accessing Your Data via Act! Premium Mobile... 121 Using Act! Premium Mobile... 122 Working Via E-mail & Letters 125 Act! Can Help You Communicate... 126 Act! s E-Mail Integration... 126 Act! s E-marketing Feature... 126 Setting Up Your E-mail System in Act!... 126 Act! s Integration with Outlook... 130 Sending E-mail from the Contact... 130 Sending E-mail from Outlook... 132 Dealing with Your Outlook Inbox... 133 Adding an Outlook Meeting Request to Your Calendar... 133 Creating a Contact from an E-mail... 134 Attaching an E-mail to a Contact... 135 Using the Quick Attach Feature... 135 Setting Your Quick Attach Preferences... 136 Handling Unattached Messages... 137 Using the Attach to Act! Icon... 138 Creating an Activity from an E-Mail... 140 Sending Contact Information as a vcard... 140 Recording Gmail History... 141 Manually Syncing Gmail History to Act!!... 143 Choosing a Word Processor... 143 New Menu Item in Word... 144 Mail-merge Templates... 145 Creating a Mail-merge Template... 145 Merging the E-mail Template... 149 Creating Letters, Memos, and Fax Cover Pages... 151 Printing Documents... 153 Editing the Attached Document... 154 Envelopes and Mailing Labels... 155 E-marketing For Act! 157 E-marketing for Act! Features... 158 How Is E-marketing Different from Outlook?... 158 View Some Tracking Examples... 159 Creating an E-marketing Account... 160 Creating E-mail Templates... 161 Creating your first basic Swiftpage e-mail template... 161 Basic Template Editor Window... 162 What is [[SpePersonalMessage]]?... 162 Sending the Template... 162 Creating a New Template Using Your Base... 164 What are SwiftWindows?... 164 Editing text... 165 Saving your SwiftWindow edit... 165 Saving your template changes... 166 Getting Results... 167

5 Scoring... 167 Marketing Results Tab... 169 What is Drip Marketing?... 170 Advanced Lookups 171 Queries... 172 Lookup By Example... 172 Advanced Queries... 174 Operator Options... 175 And/Or... 178 Grouping... 179 Working With Groups & Companies 181 Groups... 182 Displaying a Group Lookup... 182 Manually Adding a Contact to a Group... 183 Companies... 184 Creating and Populating a Group or Company... 185 Adding Multiple Contacts to a Group or Company... 187 Advanced Queries for Companies and Groups... 190 Linking Contacts and Companies... 191 Create a Company from a Contact... 192 Automatically Creating Companies and Assigning Contacts... 193 Create a Contact from a Company... 194 Disabling a Company Link... 194 Pushing Company Changes Back to Contacts... 195 Pulling Changes from the Company Record... 196 Divisions and Subgroups... 197 Cumulative Views of Notes, History, etc.... 198 Company Note or History... 198 Changing Companies... 199 Working With Opportunities 201 Creating Opportunities... 202 Opportunities tab... 206 Updating an Opportunity... 206 Creating a Quote... 207 Closing the Deal... 209 Opportunity Management... 209 Opportunity List View... 210 Lookup Opportunities... 211 Export to Microsoft Excel... 212 Opportunity Reports... 214 Opportunity Pipeline... 215 Opportunity Graph... 216 Viewing Dashboards & Reports 219 Using Dashboards... 220 Displaying Dashboard Views... 220 Working in the Dashboard Views... 220 Other Dashboards... 224 Act! Reports... 225 Act! Report Print Preview... 227 Favorite Reports... 228 Working With Synchronisation 229 Synchronising Your Remote Database... 230

6 Act! Appendix Synchronising the Remote Database... 230 Set up a Sync Schedule with the Act! Scheduler... 231 Configuring the Email Settings... 231 233 User Roles and Permissions... 234 What is Lead Capture?... 236 What are Smart Tasks?... 237 Manually running a Smart Task... 237 Pending Smart Task Steps... 238 Index 241

Working With Act! Basics To become acquainted with the basics of working in Act!, you will: Explore the concept of Contact and Customer Management Software. Start your Act! software. Familiarise yourself with the Act! program window. Add new Contact records to the Act! database.

8 Act! What s Contact and Customer Management Software? The purpose of Contact and Customer Management Software is to help you keep track of the people (contacts) and companies you do business with or would like to do business with. Act! is the number one selling Contact Management program in the world. Act! understands that the more you know about your customers, the more effective you can be in doing business with them. Keeping track of all these details could be a daunting task. However, that is one of the reasons why Act! has become so popular. With everything linked to the Contact record, these details are only a mouse-click away. Act! is a powerful, flexible, and above all, EASY TO USE software program that has one goal in mind: To turn your contacts into relationships, and your relationships into results. Act! Ownership Change Swiftpage LLC had been a long-term partner with Sage NA, providing integrated email marketing solutions for Act! customers, when in March 2013, they purchased Sage Act! and SalesLogix (another CRM owned by Sage). The product ownership has now gone from being a primarily accounting-focused company (Sage NA) that sought annual upgrades (aka tax updates in other products) to a company that has made their bones in using marketing to boost your business. To signal the new change in ownership, Swiftpage rebranded the product from Sage Act! to Act! with new colors and logo style. While much of the same development, tech support, and sales teams also made the transition to the new ownership, there is a new feeling of excitement for what is being planned for the product. The product will no longer use a year designation for which version you are using (another indication that Swiftpage is not focusing on forced annual renewals). Instead, the product will be identified by version numbers. The version released in December 2015 is known as Act! Version 18. Starting Your Act! Software When normal installation is performed, the program icon is created in a program group called Act! Pro (or Act! Premium). Installation may also create a desktop icon that you can click to run the program. Procedure: To start Act! 1. Click the Start button, point to All Programs. Click the Start button (usually on the lower left of your screen) and point to All Programs. A menu opens. 2. Click on Act!. Click the program group that contains Act!. Your group might have a slightly different name. 3. Click the Act! icon. Act! starts.

The Basics 9 Log on Depending on the options you selected during the Act! software installation, you can also double-click the icon on the desktop or single-click the icon on the Quick Launch Toolbar to the right of the Start button. You may be asked to log on to your database when you start Act!. If this happens, don t worry about it. Act! is just asking who you are, so it knows what information to display (it may also ask you to input your password, if you have one). Mini-Exercise: Start Your Engines Step What to do How to do it/comments 1. Start Act!. Start, All Programs, Act! Premium, Act! Premium. Opening a Database When the Act! software is installed, a copy of the ACT2016Demo database is also installed and is perfect for our practice exercises. ACT2016Demo is a sample database for a company called CH TechONE, which is run by Chris Huffman. Chris has grown this company (since the early days of Act!) from a small import/export company to a multi-national company. Setting Up for Class We are assuming that you have already installed Act! 2013, so you can easily find the ACT2016Demo database files on your PC. Procedure: To open the ACTDemo 1. With Act! open on your PC, choose File, Open/Share Database If you are in a different database, Act! automatically closes it before opening our practice database. 2. Click ACT2016Demo and click Open Database. 3. If prompted to roll over your activities in our practice database, click Cancel. If you don t see the ACT2016Demo listed, click The database I want is not listed and navigate to your \My Documents\ACT\ ACT Data\Databases folder. or \Users\Public\Public Documents\ACT\ACT Data\Databases. If prompted for a logon name, use: Chris Huffman (no password). Returning to Real Life You can easily move back and forth from the ACT2016Demo to the one you use every day. Remember, in this QuickStudy Guide, review the Procedure section to understand the procedure, and then, go to the practice to Mini-Exercise.

10 Act! Procedure: To open a different database 1. Choose File, Open/Share Database Regardless of the method you use, the Open dialog box appears. 2. Select the database you want to open. If you don t see the database listed, click The database I want is not listed hyperlink. 3. Click Open Database. The database opens in Act!. Act! can only have one database open at a time. If you have a database open and choose to open another, the first one closes automatically before the second one opens. If you constantly move between two or more databases, you can change quickly by selecting the database from the Recent Files list at the bottom of the File menu. The names of the last four databases you have opened appear immediately above the Exit command. If you have not yet started using a working database for your business, you can skip this practice (moving back and forth between the practice database and your real one) and go straight to the Windows Screen Elements section on the next page. Mini-Exercise: Open Another Database Step What to do How to do it/comments 1. If you just opened the ACT2016Demo database, then switch back to your working database. File, click option 2 at the bottom of the menu. This should be the database that you were in before you opened the class database. 2. Enter your name, if prompted. If you share your company database with other users, you need to enter your name (instead of Chris Huffman) in the Enter your user name for this database: area. 3. Enter your password, if necessary, and click OK. 4. Now re-open the practice database called ACT2016Demo. [Tab] to or click in the password area and enter your password. Click OK. File, click option 2 at the bottom of the menu, or you can try, File, Open, click ACT2016Demo, and click Open. 5. If you are prompted to roll over activities, click Cancel. Since the ACT2016Demo has only one active log-on user and the password feature has not been enabled (by default), you should not be prompted to enter a user name or password. Act! Screen Elements The first time you open Act!, the Welcome view displays with options to

The Basics 11 help you learn more about, and better utilise, Act!. Title bar displays the name of the program, (e.g., Act! Premium) and the currently open database name. Menu bar displays the commands that are available for the active window. Menu options change depending on the view you are in. The Global Toolbar with the large easy-to-read (and most commonly used) buttons sits below the menu bar. The Current View name displays at the left below the global toolbar. Welcome View The Welcome View is full of hyperlinks to help you better use Act!. Some links will display help files and feature tour videos. Some are actually shortcuts to common Act! commands. The options that are available will depend on how you log into Act! (For example, if you are not an Administrator, the Add/Modify Fields option will not be available for you.) There are also separate options for new users (Getting Started) and more experienced users (Do More With Act!). Mini-Exercise: Welcome, Bienvenidos, Willkommen, Howdy Step What to do How to do it/comments 1. Display the Welcome view, if necessary. Click the Welcome button on the Navbar. 2. Under Try It, click Manage Users. (This link only displays if you are a Manager or Administrator user.) 3. Under Learn About It, click the Organizing Contacts into Groups link. 4. Check out one of the Featured Video tutorials. Clicking this link is the same as clicking Tools, Manage Users. We will talk about creating new users later on so click Close for now. An Act! Help dialog displays with steps for adding contacts. Click on one of the links to view a quick tutorial on the selected item. Changing Your Startup View When you start the Act! program, the default initial view is the Welcome page. While this is a handy view for locating resources to help you become more efficient in using Act!, you may want to change your startup view to one that gets you working with your Act! data. Act! provides you with four options for a startup view: Welcome, Contacts, Contact List, or Dashboard. We will be looking at all of these views as we go through the book. Procedure: To change your startup view. 1. From the Welcome Page, under Try It, click Change the Default View, or click Tools, Preferences, click the Startup tab. 2. Change the Startup view: to your choice. The next time you log into Act!, your selected view will be the first one you see.

12 Act! 3. Click OK. An Administrator can easily push up this update by clicking the Update button just above the Default View dropdown field. The Navbar The Navbar appears at the left of the Act! window. It contains a Lookup panel, a list of Related Tasks to help you be more productive in your current view, and the Navigation buttons. Act! has so much to offer, you can t see everything on one screen. Clicking a Navigation button will show a different view of your Act! database. When you click the Calendar icon, the display switches to the last Calendar view you selected (the Day, Week, Work Week or Monthly view). When you click the Contacts icon, you are returned to the Contacts view. We ll review each of these functions as we go through the manual. You can easily collapse the Navbar by clicking on << (minimise) next to the Current View label. Mini-Exercise: Playing with the Navbar Step What to do How to do it/comments 1. Notice how clicking on the Navbar buttons at the left, changes your views. 2. Drag the separator bar between Related Tasks and the Navigation buttons down. Notice how the Navigation icons fall into place on the bottom bar. 3. Collapse the Navbar by clicking on the << at the top of the Navbar. 4. Drag the separator bar back up so that you can see all of the Navbar icons. 5. Expand the Navbar and drag the separator bar to the location that works best for your PC. View Toolbar In all views (except the Welcome page), a View toolbar displays directly beneath the Global toolbar. View toolbars change as you work in the different Act! views. When the meaning of a toolbar button is unclear, just point to the icon (don t click it). After a moment, a tool tip appears, and identifies the button.

The Basics 13 Mini-Exercise: What the Heck Is This Button!?! Step What to do How to do it/comments 1. Click on the Contacts button in the Navbar at the left. 2. Notice that there is now a second row of smaller icons (under the Global toolbar). This switches from Welcome page to Contacts view in your database. The View Toolbar changes depending on which view you have selected. 3. What s the name of this icon? Point to the icon, but don t click it. The tool tip appears telling you that it s the Duplicate Contact icon. 4. Find out the names of several other icons on the View toolbar. Layout Tabs Running across the middle of the screen are the Layout Tabs. You can track lots of information about your contacts (far more information than can comfortably fit on your screen at once). Each notebook-style tab provides you with a page where you can record additional data about your contacts. Click a tab to display the information stored on it. The names on the tabs describe the type of information stored on them. If your screen is not wide enough to display all of the available tabs, they may wrap around to a second row. Mini-Exercise: View Layout Tabs Step What to do How to do it/comments 1. What layout tab is displayed now? The contents of its page appear in the bottom part of the window. 2. Display the Secondary Contacts tab. Click the Secondary Contacts tab to see if any additional Contacts are listed for the current Contact. 3. Display the History tab. You can also press [Shift+F9] to display the History tab for the current Contact. 4. Click some additional tabs to view their contents. 5. When finished browsing, click the Notes tab. What kind of information do you think you will find there? Let s all be on the same page, shall we? Layouts At times, you may find it advantageous to see less (or more) information or to see it ordered in a different way. Screen layouts allow you to arrange the information stored in your database in many different ways (the same data, just arranged differently). Act! has two default Basic Contact Layouts: one for a smaller screen resolution (800x600) and one for a larger screen resolution (1024x768). The Layout button is used to switch between available layouts: ones that come with Act! or ones that you design.