ACT! Tips and Tricks - July 2003

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My company sends out a lot of quotes and the process is taking me too long. Then I have difficulty finding my existing quotes.  I want to create reports showing all the quotes my sales reps have done, including how much profit these quotes will earn.  Do you know of any products that work with ACT! that will do this for me?

QuoteWerks 3.0 from Aspire Technologies may be just the add-on you're looking for. QuoteWerks integrates seamlessly with ACT!, enabling you to create detailed quotes with speed and efficiency.  Advanced ACT! support includes the linking of quotes to contact records as attachments, automatic creation of sales opportunities, automatic scheduling of follow up calls, meetings, and to-dos, and more!  Click Here for more information.

 

I've a group of people that I want to schedule a call with so I can tell them about my company's new product. Is there a way to schedule a call for multiple people at one time?

ACT! has a feature that makes this easy to do, but you've got to dig into the Schedule Activity dialog box to find it. This is what you do:

  1. Select your Group or create a lookup of the people you want to call. 

  2. Press Ctrl+L to open the Schedule Activity to schedule a call.   

  3. Choose the activity's details, i.e. Date, Time, Regarding, and so on. 

  4. Click on the Contacts button and choose the Select Contacts option.

  5. When the Select Contacts box opens, choose the Current Lookup option.

  6. Click the Add All button.

  7. Check the Create Separate Activity For Each Contact button.

  8. Click the OK button.

Now ACT! will schedule an activity for every contact in the lookup.

 

I want to be able use Check Boxes and Radio Buttons on my ACT! layout, but I can't find how to specify a field as being either of those.  Can I get check boxes and radio buttons in ACT! 5 or 6?

Yes.  While ACT! does not offer these "field types", there is a very inexpensive "enhancement" to ACT! available called "CheckMarkRadioButton" that lets you use ACT! fields as if they WERE defined as CheckBoxes or as RadioButtons.   You create CheckBoxes by:

  1. Install the CheckMarkRadioButton software.

  2. Open ACT!

  3. From the ACT! tool bar, choose Edit > Define Fields. 

  4. Select the Field to be modified or create a new Field.

  5. Set the field to be Character, length 1.

  6. Click the  "Drop-Down" tab and uncheck all options (make sure NONE are "on").

  7. Click the "Triggers" tab and set the Entry Trigger to "c:\program files\tnhg\a2kcmrb.exe".

  8. Close the Define Fields dialog box, saving your changes.

  9. From the ACT! tool bar, choose Tools > Design Layouts.

  10. Add the new field to your layout.

  11. Make it look "square", and set the font to "bold", and the justification to "center".

  12. Remove any "entry order number" that may be automatically assigned by the layout designer.

  13. Close the Layout Designer, saving your changes.

Now, when you click into the field while it is blank, it will change to an "X". If it shows an X when you click into it, it will change to a blank!  You can put RadioButtons on your layouts too. Click here to download a Trial Copy.   Click Here to download the User Guide.