Attaching Documents Quick Tip

If you use Companies (i.e. where the Company Name is it's own record, and Contacts are linked to that Company), and you attach documents, then you've noticed that attaching documents on the contact record Document tab only show up for that contact, and are not shared across the Company record.  Here's how to fix this...

Put those outdated or extra computers to good use

Do you have extra/outdated computers (or just hard drives) in your storage room/garage that you don't know what to do with? Tired of wasting time looking for data, not knowing in which drive it resides? Tired of not having your data accessible to all computers all the time?  Would you like a central location for important files and backups?  NAS - Network Attached Storage - is what you need, and it can be done for little, or no, cost.

Create a Google Map from ACT! Contact List

Creating a Google Map from a Contact List can be done in just a few clicks with two simple ACT! AddOns. Using the ACT2Excel add-on from CRM AddOns ($69*), and a free Excel template from the Batch Geocode website, we’ll do a simple export to excel, where the mapping will take place.

The bulk of the work is actually done in Excel, defining the cells that will hold the address data. The spreadsheet comes with some sample data, which you’ll want to delete, then replace the Address, City, ST, and ZIP fields with the corresponding ACT! field, and save. Then, it’s back to ACT! to create a contact list and export it to the template you just edited. When Excel opens up, you’ll have the list - address, city, state, and zip - in an Excel sheet.

Finally, just a button press in Excel will create the map. The image below is 5 addresses from the ACTDemo database:

Click here to download the Excel file - GMapsInExcel. Of course, you’ll need the add-on to put the whole thing together, but you can experiment with this template. Please contact me with any questions or comments! Hope this helps…

* Note: this ACT2Excel add-on is a must-have for ACT! users. You can perform customized data exports, create invoices/quotes, execute calculations which can then automatically populate fields back into ACT!, and much more. Check out their page for all the details…

ACT! Dialer with VoIP

Back in the "old" days, all you had to do is go to Tools>Preferences, and on the Communications tab click the Dialer button and tell ACT! the modem to use (if it hadn't already), and the dialing preferences, and you were able to dial a contact's phone number within ACT!  VoIP does not use a modem, so here's how to keep (or recapture) that functionality...

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…