Save Report Filters - Get Report Faster

If you run reports often, you are very familiar with the window that comes up when you start a report - the “General” tab to choose output format and contact lookup, and the other Note/History/Opportunity/Activites/etc tabs where you need to specify both the date range and type of information to output to the report. Furthermore, if you utilize reports often, you find yourself performing the same clicking/selecting on every tab editing dates and checkboxes to get the same report run time after time.

There’s a shortcut to these options, and it’s in the report editor. Go to Reports>Edit Template…, and choose the report you want to edit. When the report editor loads, choose Edit>Define Filters:

This will bring up the same familiar window you get when pulling a report. However, now when you select your criteria - e.g. Send the report to an HTML file using the Current Lookup for All Users, and only select Notes and History for the Current Week - and save the report, those setting will be your defaults for that specific report. If you want the same report format, just with different selections, save the report template with another name. You can have “Notes/History by Week”, “Notes/History by Month”, and so on.

As a bonus, you can also take the most common reports and put that specific report as an icon on the toolbar:

• Right-Click the toolbar, choose Customize
• click the 5th tab - Custom Commands and choose "New"
• Give the command a name, click Browse, navigate to your reports folder, and choose a report (might have to show all files) This is your "command line"
• Now, go back to the 2nd tab - Commands and choose Custom Commands from the "Categories"
• The name and command line you specified on the 5th tab will be in there.  Click and drag the new command to any spot on the toolbar.

That's it, your custom filtered specific report is now one-click away from running.

Find the steps you seem to repeat over and over on a regular basis, and look for ways to make that process more efficient. Chances are, it can be done in ACT! Hope this helps…

Attach a Web Page to an ACT! Contact

A little known, but very useful feature in ACT! and Internet Explorer is the ability to attach the current web page you are viewing to a specific contact. This can be used to save a specific story about a company, news about a contact, a GMail message, or a blog post from a colleague.

This integration is intalled by default when you install ACT!. You can find it in Internet Explorer under the Tools Command Bar. This is not the menu bar (i.e. File/Edit/View…), rather is usually found towards the right-hand side of the screen, just above the actual web page. If you have tab viewing implemented, it might also be on that same level.

Click on that menu item, choose Attach Web Page to ACT! Contact, which will bring up, from ACT!, the Select Contact window. Choose a contact, and click OK.

Hope this helps, thanks…

Send GMail directly from ACT!

Basically, over the last year, I have received numerous inquiries into integrating GMail with ACT! I have blogged about integrating via Outlook, but often people either don’t want to use Outlook, or don’t have it. This add-on addresses both those issues.

Features:

• send mail directlyfrom ACT! through GMail
• HTML editing window
• supports attachments
• automatically populates To: field from current contact
• HTML Signature - even with images. GMail does not even do that!!!
• save/open messages as templates

More info and screenshots are at http://www.rbrdatasolutions.com/products.htm

The add-on creates a new menu item under Tools called WebMail Sender. It is also a toolbar button. Choosing that option will bring up what essentially is a New Mail Message window, with the email address of the current contact in the To: field. Now, fill in the Subject, the body of the email, (and CC: if desired), and click Send.

After sending, if successful, a new History item will be recorded with the date & time, and the Subject of the email as the “Regarding” line in the History item. Additionally, the Last E-Mail system field in ACT! (on top half of screen, under Latest Activities) will be updated. If selected, the body, and names only of the attachments will be recorded in the same History entry.

Please check it out at http://www.rbrdatasolutions.com/products.htm Thanks!!!

New vCard Utility released

An update to the popular add-on for ACT! 2007 - 2009 (versions 9 - 11), the new vCard Utility not only sends contact information by automatically attaching a vCard to Outlook, it now Saves to File… vCard information, and Imports a vCard into ACT!, creating a new contact record.

More information can be found at http://www.rbrdatasolutions.com/products.htm

Thanks!

Time Zone and Scheduling Activities

Often ACT! users either share, or synchronize information with other users across different time zones. How do you schedule a conference call with 5 people in 3 different zones? What happens when you send an activity email, or calendar invitation to another user?

Luckily, this is something ACT! takes care of automatically, and you don't need to worry too much about it. ACT! stores times in UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), or GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). Basically, ACT! will store the GMT time, and the localization preferences on your computer will determine the time zone (TZ) offset. In short, based on your computer settings, the ACT! program takes the data (date & time in the database), converts and displays it correctly for you, and any other users to see.

How does this work in action? Let say I have a conference call Friday, October 7th at 11:00am. I put that on my ACT! calendar at *my* time, not converting or adding time zones of the other users. However, if you open the hood and look into the database, you will see the time stored as 2009-10-07 18:00:00 So, if I synchronize with a user/server in another time zone, that date is *still* stored as 2009-10-07 18:00:00 ACT's back-end database (SQL Server) does not care what TZ the computer is in, it's up to the ACT! program itself to convert and display the date correctly. Now, when the user accesses that data on their computer, ACT! automatically converts it to their local time. If they are in Boston (go Sox!), they will have a conference call scheduled at 2:00p, on October 7th.

Sending an Activity eMail, or a calendar file invitation works the same way. Although I can't help if someone in Boston schedules an 8:00am (EST) conf call for colleagues in California (5:00am PST), I do hope this helps you use ACT! more efficiently.

Note: There is one caveat to this system. If you are in one time zone (e.g. CST) scheduling *for* someone in another (e.g. EST), you *will* have to take that into account. i.e. If someone in Pennsylvania specifically says "schedule a meeting for 9:00am", you will need to add it on your computer at 8:00am if you're in CST, 6:00am if you're PST, and so on. When ACT! syncs, they will now have an appointment for 9:00am.