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?