Utilizing Group Membership effectively

Often I run across users that manually add and delete members from a group based on certain criteria. It could be the state they are in, the "type" of contact with which they are working, or the status based on where a prospect is in the opportunity cycle.

If you find yourself performing the same actions, or repetitive actions on a regular basis, that is a signal to look at your program and find out if what you are doing could be automated.

Groups in ACT! can be populated by something called a dynamic query. Here's the quick directions to get started:

1. In the Group window, create a new group called Opportunities, then on the right-hand side, click the Add/Remove Contacts... button
2. The top half of the window is where you may have been manually adding contacts. What we want is the bottom half, labelled "Dynamic Members"
3. Click the Edit Criteria... button
4. Create the following using the drop down boxes: Type: Opportunity, Field Name: Status, Operator: Equal to (=), Value: Open
5. Click Add to list, and if desired, click the Preview button.

You have just created a dynamic group, and any contact where an opportunity is opened will be automatically added, and a contact where an opportunity is closed or removed will not be incuded in this group. There are many options with both the Opportunities and Contact fields to help you manage groups of contacts more effectively.

p.s. it is totally possible to have both Dynamic and manually added contacts.

ACT! Reporting using Excel with OLEDB

Sounds confusing for the non-technical user, but once set up, this functionality can be extremely helpful. Furthermore, if you need data formatted/reported on using specific calculations or parameters, automating with macros or Visual Basic can prove to be an incredible time-saver.

The first couple steps of getting OLEDB setup is a bit different depending on which version of Excel you are using, so here’s a quick start for 2003 and 2007 versions.

Once set up, you can reuse the connection, so this does not need to be done every time!

• 2003: Data->Import External Data->Import Data
• 2003: Click “New Source” button
• 2007: Data->From Other Sources->From Data Connection Wizard
• following are common steps for both versions
• Choose Other/Advanced, then Next
• choose Provider as “ACT! OLE DB Provider for Reporting“, click Next
• choose a database file (e.g. *.PAD file), fill in User Name and Password if necessary
• Test Connection if you want, then click OK

You will now be presented with all the available tables. Choose one specific for reporting, or uncheck the “Connect to a specific table” option, which will allow you to go back and pick other tables using the same connection. Personally, if you are setting this up for automation, you will most likely have one table in mind. Click Next to choose a File Name under which to save this connection, add a description, and click Finish.

Now, here’s the fun part. You can leave the settings of the “Import Data” pop-up as-is, and it will import all the data from the table into a “table” grid in Excel, or choose to create a Pivot Table or Chart directly from the new connection, or Edit Query, limiting the subset of data imported into Excel. The table is pretty straight-forward, and the Pivot Table/Chart creation is outside the scope of this blog (but is inevitably is the end result - so if you aren’t familiar with them, get familiar!) I want to finish by going over the Edit Query option, as that will help limit the extra/excessive data you do not need in a report.

In 2003, on the Import Data pop-up, click the Edit Query button. In 2007, on the Import Data pop-up, click Properties, and then the Definition tab. Change the Command Type to SQL, and change the Command Text to:

SELECT "Contact Contact", "Contact Company", "Contact ID/Status"
FROM "ACT11Demo"."dbo"."VRP_CONTACT"

This limits the data to just Contact, Company, and ID/Status info. Of course, from there we can create a Pivot Table if needed, perform any analysis functions, or whatever else is desired.

Hope this help you better utilize the power of Excel accessing and reporting on ACT! data…

p.s. In Excel 2003, if you go to Data->Import External Data->Import Data again, your saved connection will be there. In Excel 2007, it’s Data->Existing Connections that will bring up the saved connections.

Whitepaper - Relationship Between Social Networking & Business

For those of you who Blog, Twitter, Facebook, and more, a very interesting Whitepaper from Forrester about how social networking is impacting business in a positive way.

Definitely a must read for those of us who are in the technology services, but the some of the main points relate to all avenues of online B2B marketing.

Click to download:
Social Technographics of Business Buyers.pdf

ACT! and Outlook email processing – Behind the Scenes

In this blog, I’d like to review some key characteristics of this feature. It often works behind the scenes with little operator intervention, but occasionally you will need to know what’s happening, and why.

Act.Outlook.Service.exe
First, the Act.Outlook.Service.exe is not technically a service – it is a program that is started on log in. You can verify that it is set to start automatically by going to Start>Run, then type in MSCONFIG in the Run box. When MSCONFIG appears, click on the Startup tab, and look for Startup Item “Act” (there may be more than one) and the Command “C:\Program Files\ACT\Act for Windows\Act.Outlook.Service.exe”. If it’s checked, it will start. [Note: “Act for Windows” may also be “Act for Web”]

So, what does this program do? When you send an email from ACT!, this process takes the email address, matches it with the email address of the contact, and attaches the email to the contact history. Exactly *what* it attaches will be discusses a bit later.

When you receive an email, there are three things that can happen:

1. If you have an Outlook rule setup to attach, that rule determines if the email address of the contact can be matched in the ACT! database, and if so, will attach the message.
2. If you don’t use an Outlook rule, you can either use (manually press) the Quick Attach icon which will match the email address(es) to determine a match, or
3. You can use the Attach to Contact icon which will attempt to match the name with an ACT contact name.

If any of these processes are successful, you may see an icon in the taskbar area appear and disappear quickly. This is good, if it disappears, the process was successful. However, if the process fails, you will see this icon:



This is telling you *something* failed. Right click on this icon, and choose Show Progress. This window has three tabs:
- Progress: these are successfully attached messages
- Advanced: settings for the log files
- Not Attached Messages: this is the tab you want. It will show messages that did not get attached, and tell you why (i.e. “Status” column).

Not Attached Messages
The next item I’d like to discuss is what happens to the emails during and after this process. There is actually a middle behind-the-scenes process that copies the email to a temp file, and if the attach is successful, that temp email file is deleted. If the attach fails, a copy of the email is kept in this temp file, and ACT! will continually attempt to find a match. Well, you can imagine what happens after months go by and you have numerous failed attempts. Not only does the temp directory get filled up with old email files, the Act.Outlook.Service.exe process starts to run longer and longer, eventually causing resource issues.

This directory can be found at “C:\Documents and Settings\%user%\Application Data\ACT\ACT for Web\HistoryQueue”. Under that directory are messages that have not been attached, usually with the name tmp**.msg (where the two asterisks are a number or letter). One more directory down, under Holding, are related XML files. All of these can be deleted if you want. Once they are gone, ACT! will no longer attempt to process them.

Alternately, you can highlight one or more of the messages and click the “Remove” option. This takes care of all the files in the queue. Obviously, this option is preferred, and easier.

Sensitive eMails – what exactly gets recorded
In ACT! under Tools>Preferences and then the E-Mail tab, if you go through the E-Mail System Setup, there are options to keep the messages (inbound and outbound) private, and options to recorded nothing, the subject, subject/message, or subject/message/attachments. These same options are available on a toolbar in Outlook when you are composing a new message. The options in ACT! are database-wide, when set they apply to all messages, the options in Outlook are message specific, so can be used to override the ACT! defaults.

For example, in ACT!, if you have the settings for all messages “Public”, and to record the subject and message body, but are sending something sensitive, when you are composing the email in Outlook, either choose “Private”, or choose to record nothing.

Hope this helps you understand this process better…

ACT! and GMail integration

The ability to keep track of your emails within ACT! is huge, but what if you use a web-mail service such as GMail? Following are instructions for getting GMail messages - both inbound and outbound - connected with ACT!

There are 3 main steps - enable IMAP in GMail, set up Outlook to access GMail, and then set up ACT! to work with the new Outlook/GMail account. The first step is Google specific, the last step is needed for *any* e-mail account setup to work with ACT!, it is not necessarily GMail specific. There is really only one area that is different than other e-mail accounts, and that is the IMAP settings. [Note: Once Outlook is setup, the ACT!/Outlook link is the same for any e-mail account - ACT! does not care if it's GMail or whatever.]

GMail Account setup

1. Set up a GMail account. (I suspect you have already done this.)

2. Enable IMAP in GMail

a. Sign in to GMail.

b. Click Settings at the top of any GMail page.

c. Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.

d. Select Enable IMAP.

Outlook Access to GMail Account

3. In Outlook, go to Tools > EMail Accounts

a. Click radio button “Add a new e-mail account”, then click Next

b. Click radio button IMAP, then click Next

4. You should have a small(er) window open with various “information” boxes. Fill in all necessary fields to include the following information:

User Information

Your Name: Enter your name as you would like it to appear in the From: field of outgoing messages.

Email Address: Enter your full email address (username@gmail.com).

Server Information

Incoming mail server (IMAP): imap.gmail.com

Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.gmail.com

Login Information

User Name: Enter your full email address (including @gmail.com or @your_domain.com

Password: Enter your GMail password.

5. Click More Settings… and then click the Outgoing Server tab.

6. Check the box next to ‘My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication’ and select Use same settings as my incoming mail server.

7. Click the Advanced tab, and check the box next to ‘This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL)’ under Incoming Server (IMAP).

8. Check the box next to ‘This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL)’ under Outgoing Server (SMTP), and enter 465 in the Outgoing server (SMTP) box.

9. Click OK.

10. Click Test Account Settings… After receiving the message ‘Congratulations! All tests completed successfully’, click Close.

11. Click Next, and then click Finish.

ACT! to use Outlook/GMail account

1. Tools > Preferences, then click the E-mail tab

2. Click E-mail System Setup button

3. Choose Microsoft Outlook as your E-mail system

4. Add the ACT! database you would like Outlook to access

5. Choose Microsoft Outlook as the E-mail editor

6. Choose Record History option (I chose to stick with “recommended” settings)

7. Choose Attach to ACT! Contacts options (”recommended” on these as well)

So that’s basically it. I would recommend also restarting both ACT! and Outlook to get them working in sync. To verify it is working, click an email address within ACT!, and it should open an Outlook new message window, then from Outlook attempt to attach an email message to a contact within ACT!