We have heard more and more from clients who are looking for flexibility in the way they work—hence our new Zebken Forum dedicated to flexible work discussion.   In particular, we are finding our clients want to be able to take ACT! with them wherever they go.  In order to better serve you, we’ve decided to compile a list of possibilities for you to take ACT! with you when you leave your desktop.

1. Remote databases
Use your ACT! database from anywhere, even when you have no internet connection (in your car, on a plane, on a train, underwater, etc). A copy of the entire database, or just your territory, can be set up on your laptop for anywhere access. The laptop will then synchronize changes with your main database when you return to the office, or via internet connection.

2. Smartphone Sync
Clients who are looking for an easy way to have ACT! on their favorite mobile device may be interested in setting up subscription based smartphone sync.  This option allows you to select a limited number of contacts and contact fields to sync over to your phone along with your ACT! calendar.  This option gives you true freedom from your computer by giving you the ability to access your most valuable ACT! info through your phone.

3. ACT! for Web
ACT! for web is an option that allows you to get to ACT! from an internet browser.  All you need to do is install ACT! Premium for Web locally on one computer and configure it to be accessed via browser.  ACT! for web users enjoy being able to access their ACT! data from PCs and Macs everywhere.

4. ACT! for Web—in the cloud
This option has become popular with many of our clients.  Utilizing a remote server, you can host your ACT! database from the cloud.  With no installation necessary, you can use your ACT! for Web database from a browser on any computer.  This saves you space on your computer and gives you plenty of flexibility when accessing your data.

5. Local ACT! installation—in the cloud
This option is generally used when a client is interested in using several applications but doesn’t want any of those applications to live on their computer.  Server space can be rented where you can install your programs and access them via a remote desktop connection.  This option works really well for remote teams looking to share real time data.

6. Sage ACT! Connect
Users of subscription based Sage ACT! Connect can access their ACT! data from almost anywhere.  Like ACT! for web, Sage ACT! Connect has a web portal where you can log in and access database content through a browser.  You can also configure Sage ACT! Connect so that your data syncs with most mobile devices-- meaning you can have your contacts and activities in the palm of your hand. 

Are you thinking of making your ACT! more mobile?  Please call us at 847-520-0860 for more details, and be sure to check out Zebken.com to join the Flexwork discussion.

Do you wish you could work from home?  Do you often visit clients and find yourself wishing you had a better way to access your desktop computer from the road?  Or maybe you run a business that you think could benefit from better cloud computing technology.  Either way, we have a place for you!

Zebken is a brand new community in which workers, employers, and tech people can discuss their current work needs, their hopes, and ideas for new ways to work better, and we would love to have your input.

Zebken.com is a community dedicated to helping the work world shift toward a more flexible attitude.  Working holistically, or prioritizing your work-life balance, is important to living a happy and healthy life and key to producing your best work.  Finding the tools to accomplish flexible working can be a challenge, and there are more methods and tools being created everyday to improve working from home, your car, or anywhere in the world.   We want to talk about these options and your new ideas, which is why we invite you to join us!

Come check out our forums at www.Zebken.com and join the discussion!

Are you looking to add to your staff? We are building a job board with reasonable advertising rates - please e-mail info@zebken.com to find your ideal candidate.

As a kind gesture to friends, networking partners, and clients, holiday cards are a nice way for a company to say they are thinking about the people who make their business possible.  And organizing your database ahead of time can make the holiday card send out a much easier task.

What are the best ways to prep your database?  A few months before you want to send out your greeting cards, assess who you would like to include in your mailing—are you sending cards to networking contacts and gift baskets to clients?  Think about who you would like included in your mailing, and mark them in your database.

How should you mark them?  This is up to you.  We recommend creating a group in ACT! called “Holiday cards 2011” (or similar) to make things easy.  Once you have your list of persons receiving cards complete, it is a good idea to verify that you have their correct mailing info.

Updating records is a smart move everyone should do periodically.  An easy way to accomplish this is to send out a mail merged email template asking clients if the address listed is their current mailing address, and asking them to reply with up to date information only if it is not current (Swiftpage users should note that we offer a premade template in a bundle that does just that.  Click here for details).

Verifying addresses before your holiday mailing means you save money on cards that may otherwise have been returned to sender.  Once you have a list made up, you may choose to send a mailed greeting card or maybe a Swiftpage email template.  If you choose the former, you can set up your labels for printing in advance.  If you choose the latter, you won’t have much more work to do—Swiftpage makes it easy to send out email blasts to large groups of people with only a few clicks.

Prepping your database in advance of the holidays can save you time and money—making it an administrative priority can help.

Do you have any tips for seamless holiday mailings?  Share with us in the comments.

Are you interested in ACT! 2012 and want to do some product scoping?  Here are a few places you can rely on to get the skinny on 2012:

1)  Call our office
Kristi is always happy to talk to you about what ACT! does best.  Feel free to call our office to have a conversation about the new ACT! 2012 features and whether they are right for you.  We can be reached at 847-520-0860. And if you are in need of an ACT! feature that hasn't been incorporated into ACT! yet, let us know that too. We may be able to create it for you through our customization work, or there may be an add-on product that can add that feature to your database.

2)  Check out our website
Our website has been updated with plenty of specs for the new features included in 2012.  Read about it here.

3)  Sign up for a free webinar demo
Kristi is giving complimentary web demos of ACT! 2012.  You can log on and simply watch, or you can ask questions for Kristi to answer in real time as she walks you through the new product.  Upcoming demo dates include:

Thursday, Sept. 8th 1:00pm Central
Tuesday, Sept. 20th 11:00am Central
Tuesday, Oct. 4th 1:00pm Central
Thursday, Oct. 20th 11:00am Central

Click here to register!

Have you ever noticed this icon in your Windows System Tray? Or maybe you know you sent a client an email, but it isn’t showing up in the client’s history record and you don’t know why?

The envelope with the red X icon is an alert informing you that the ACT! Quick Attach process has failed for one or more emails; meaning, you have Outlook emails that failed to attach to a contact record in ACT!.

At times, ACT! is unsuccessful in attaching an email message to an ACT! contact record  - perhaps your network connection was lost or the contact does not exist in your ACT! database or maybe it is a new email address for one of your current contacts.

Unsure of what action to take next, ACT! will hold the e-mails for a period of time allowing you to decide how to best handle them.

To review and clear the Quick Attach alerts:

1. Double-click the Quick Attach Failed icon (envelope with a red X) in the system tray to open the Outlook Quick Attach portal window.
2. Click the ‘Not Attached Messages’ tab at the top of the window.
3. Select the unattached message(s) and choose the action you’d like performed from the toolbar options:
   Retry Attach – The program will try once again to attach to the appropriate contact record.
   Attach to ACT! Contact – Opens the Attach Email to Contacts window where you can manually enter the contact record you’d like the email attached to.
   Attach to New Contact – Opens a New Contact window where you can create a new contact record and have the email attached to that record.
   Remove – Deletes the email message from the list without attaching it to a record.
4. When you are finished, click Close.

If you don’t see the icon in your system tray, then you don’t have any recent messages that failed to attach.

For our final installment of Database Maintenance Month, we will be desperately trying to convince you that practicing good backup habits is essential to protecting your investment.  Why so desperate?  We have had the displeasure of telling clients that they have lost their data and it is completely irretrievable.  We don’t want this to happen to you!

Here are our four steps to backing up your database.  Please note—it is imperative you perform all four of these steps for best results:

1) Know who is making backups
If your organization has several users of ACT!, make sure you know who is responsible for your ACT! backups.  Also, don’t assume your IT people are backing up your ACT! database—talk to them about it.

2) Make backups and make them often
Making a backup is as easy as going to File->Backup->Database when logged into ACT! as an administrator.  We recommend you create backups and store them in a place you can readily locate them. 

How often should you make a backup?  Kristi’s answer? “How often can you afford to lose your data?”  This is why we make daily backups in our office.  Read how to schedule automatic backups using the ACT! Scheduler in the ACT! Help Topics found in the Help menu.

3) Store a backup offsite
In case of disaster, it is in your best interest to store a copy of your database off premises.  Depending how paranoid you are, (not always a bad thing!) you can create a backup to an external hard drive, to a laptop that you take home, or what we recommend—a cloud-based storage system, or you can do all three!

4) Check your backups
We have too often run into the case of clients who think they are running backups, only to find out they were not when it is too late.  To check your backup, keep an eye on the file size.  As you back up your database every day (ideally), the file size should generally get bigger and not vary drastically barring any unusual deleting or importing activity.  If the file size drastically decreases or increases, you will want to test your backup.

We recommend testing your backups once every two to three weeks even if the files appear normal.  To test one, an administrator must go to File->Restore->Database, pull up the backup file and restore it—IMPORTANT—she must rename the database so as not to overwrite the production database.  Test opening the database and logging in.  If everything looks good, the tested backup database can then be deleted.

And that is all there is to it.  Backing up your database is not particularly time consuming or expensive, but it can save you time and money should something happen to your computer.  Losing your data can be a devastating situation—sometimes taking preventative measures can make all the difference.

If you would like our help, please call our office at 847-520-0860, and we would be happy to train you in backup best practices.

You may also want to consider our upcoming group mini-training Backup Bootcamp webinar on September 9th.  This training is free to members of KSC PEAKS, and $25 for all other registrants.  Register now.

Have you got your backup routine down to a science?  Tell us about it.

For the third installment of Database Maintenance Month, we will be discussing duplicates—or records that wind up in your database more than once.

The best way to prevent duplicated data is part user diligence, and part software settings.  Let’s start with the user end.

First things first—you get off the phone with someone you believe you have never spoken to before and you want to add them to your ACT! database.  What do you do?  First, you search for them.  As a rule of thumb, we encourage you to search their last name and then the company name.  If you have a sneaking suspicion you may have this contact in your database already, you could also try searching for the email address.  If none of these three searches pulls up your contact, you know you are probably dealing with a brand new one.  The next step is to go ahead and enter your new contact.

Since no one is perfect, we also recommend you have settings in place that will catch you if you try to enter in a duplicate contact.  This is especially useful for when multiple users are sharing a database.  Betty may be sure that she is entering a new contact and skips doing a preliminary search, however Bob just put the new contact in yesterday.  When Betty enters in the “new” contact, the database will catch her mistake with a pop-up that says “The record you are trying to create is a duplicate.  Are you sure you want to continue?”

In order for your database to automatically scan for duplicates upon entering a new contact, you must have the administrator of your database adjust your settings.  By going to Tools>Preferences>Admin, and clicking the button at the bottom of the box that says “duplicate checking,” your admin can have your database check to make sure you aren’t imputing a contact already in the database.  You can select which fields you would like the database to compare to find matches.  We have our production database set up to check for contact matches on the company field first, and then on the contact field.

These are just some of the best ways to prevent your database from filling up with duplicate entries.  However if you do have duplicates, or even worse, lots of duplicates, we would be happy to assist you in cleaning up your database.  For more info, call the KSC office at 847-520-0860.

How do you keep your database in order?  Do you have a maintenance tip of your own?

In continuing our theme of Database Maintenance Month, we will be focusing on a topic we briefly mentioned in the first entry—Internal processes.  Specifically, we want to discuss choosing one person as your internal ACT! Expert. 

Why have an ACT! Expert?  It gives one person on your team the tools necessary to help maintain your database and direct others in how to use it.  Basically, this person serves as the go-to ACT! person on your team.  This person, in their most basic role, has administrative rights to the database and knows how to change account information should team members need changes made to their settings or user rights.

We often receive calls from clients asking us for help with changing their user rights—and we are more than happy to help.  But having a team member who is equipped to change settings can save your company time and money if that person is properly trained.  Setting up a team member as an ACT! Expert, and then setting the expectation for your team to use that resource is a great way to maintain your database.  What else can an ACT! Expert do for you?

1)      Know where the database is located on the computer

2)      Keep track of install files, hard installation media, and serial codes

3)      Run a monthly maintenance check on the database

4)      Have a working knowledge of how to complete specific tasks through ACT!

5)      Be familiar with basic ACT! troubleshooting

6)      Have knowledge of advanced queries, reporting, and mail merge functionality

7)      Have a detailed understanding of how your company uses your database

8)      Schedule and test backups (More on this in two weeks!)

9)   Serve as the go-between for your team and KSC, should you need further assistance

As you can see, having an ACT! Expert on your team can be very valuable.  It can also make it easier for us to serve you more quickly should you need our help.  If you think you would like to appoint someone on your team as an ACT! Expert, we would be happy to help in the training process.  For more information, call our office at 847-520-0860.

Do you have an ACT! Expert who helps you in a time of need?  What makes your Expert so great?

Despite what you may be thinking, this blog does not pertain to baseball… (go Cubs!)

This month, KSC has decided to focus on Database Maintenance.  As we often learn too late, sometimes a little prevention can go a long way, and we want to provide you with the tools to develop good database usage habits sooner rather than later.  Tune in this month for free articles on internal processes, duplicates, and backups.

For starters, let’s talk about proper field usage.  The fields in your database are the labeled blank boxes into which you input your data.  The first step to making sure you and your team are using your fields correctly is to have a conversation about how to use them.  The goal is to have all database users on the same page about what gets inputted when and where.

For instance, if Bob has been putting secondary email addresses in a field on the notes tab, and Bonnie has been putting them in the important info field, it makes it very difficult to pull this information out in a search, or even for Bob or Bonnie to find each others’ data.

This brings me to my next point.  If you have data that consistently needs to be entered, you should have a dedicated field for it.  If you know you should be recording a contact’s favorite color, but you do not have a favorite color field, collecting that information in a uniform manner becomes a challenge.  You should consider customizing your fields to match your needs, or else your database may become overwhelmed with disorganized data.

Similarly, we advise you to try to limit the amount of fields you include.  It is important to remember that with each field comes the responsibility to fill it.  If you decide you need 100 fields on each contact record, you will also need to decide who is responsible for filling out these fields.  Additionally, with that many fields in existence, the database users may find it difficult to remember where all the data should go, or where certain fields are located, again leading to database disarray.

Overall, the most important thing to remember is that using your database strategically will in turn create a source of data that is also a very reliable tool.

These are just a few ideas to help you keep your database running smoothly.  If you would like an in-depth analysis of how you are using your database, call us at 847-520-0860 for information about our Strategic Business Reviews.  And please don’t forget to check in next week for the continuation of Database Maintenance Month!

Have you added a field to your database?  Which custom field do you find most useful?

Most marketers who are using an email marketing provider are probably wondering how anyone sent out newsletters before the advent of e-marketing software.  For ACT! users, Swiftpage, also known as Sage E-marketing for ACT!, has long been the best all-in-one way to both create and instantly send out company newsletters.  But it has the capability to do much more than that.  This week, we wanted to highlight some of the lesser known powers of Swiftpage:


1.  Follow-up
Have you ever sent a quick follow-up email after a call or visit to thank your client or prospect for their interest and to let them know you will be in touch?  With Swiftpage, once you create a template you can save it and reuse it, making it easy for you to send a very professional looking follow-up note just minutes after a phone call.

2.  Invitations
Want to invite your contacts to your next event?  You can send a single template to one contact or one hundred contacts in one send.  To avoid sending emails that sound like a mass mailing, use Swiftpage’s mail merge fields to pull personal details like names and addresses from ACT! into the template.  Your attendees can then RSVP using Swiftpage surveys.

3.  Surveys
Swiftpage surveys are a tool you can use to create forms for your contacts to fill out.  If you are ever looking to collect and organize information from your clients—be it RSVPing to an event or giving feedback, using a survey is simple and effective.  And just like templates, you can save your surveys for later use.

4.  Field Mapping
Once you have gleaned data from your Swiftpage survey, one of the best ways to store the information you gather is to direct it back into ACT!.  Swiftpage is designed so that you can map survey answers to ACT! fields and then sync that information with ACT!, so you can stay organized automatically.  This saves you time otherwise spend re-typing or copy-pasting.

Are you interested in learning more about Swiftpage?  Call us at 847-520-0860 and ask for Tina Brandts, our Swiftpage Certified Consultant.  And if you want to receive details about an exciting, upcoming Swiftpage offer—be sure to open our upcoming August newletter for more details!  Not registered for our newsletter?  Click here.

Have you come up with a creative use for Swiftpage?  Tell us about it in the comments!