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ACT! Training Document ......................................................................................1
Opening the ACT6demo Training Database .....................................................6
Entering Records...............................................................................................7
Entering a New Contact Record ....................................................................7
Finishing the New Record Entry...............................................................11
Inserting a Note........................................................................................13
Looking Up Records........................................................................................15
The Lookup Menu........................................................................................15
My Record ...................................................................................................16
All Contacts..................................................................................................17
Keyword Search ..........................................................................................17
Searching by Company ...............................................................................20
Lookup Options............................................................................................22
How to Add Records to Your Lookup...........................................................23
Narrow your Lookup ....................................................................................24
First Name, Last Name................................................................................25
Phone ..........................................................................................................25
City ..............................................................................................................25
Lookup by Zip Code.....................................................................................25
Lookup by ID/Status ....................................................................................26
Lookup by E-mail Address ...........................................................................26
Previous Lookup ..........................................................................................26
Lookup for Empty Fields and Filled Fields ...................................................27
Non-Empty Lookup ......................................................................................27
Viewing your Contact Records as a List..........................................................29
Scheduling Activities .......................................................................................31
Scheduling an Activity..................................................................................31
Scheduling Recurring Activities ...................................................................35
Creating a Series of Activities..........................................................................37
Applying a Series of Activities to Contacts ......................................................38
Starting your Day with the Task List ................................................................39
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Working with Groups .......................................................................................41
Understanding Groups.................................................................................41
How to Select a Group from the Contact Window........................................41
Grouping and Its Effect on Lookups.............................................................43
How to Add an Existing Contact Record to a Group ................................43
How to Add a New Contact Record to a Group........................................45
How to Remove a Contact from a Group .................................................45
Mail Merge, a.k.a. Form Letters ..........................................................................47
Creating a Template........................................................................................47
How to Print a Mail Merge from a Template ....................................................48
How to Create Mail Merge Envelopes .............................................................51
Editing the Default E-mail Template ................................................................54
Connecting act! E-mail to Outlook ......................................................................55
Adding ACT! Address Books To Outlook .....................................................55
To Send E-Mail To An ACT! Contact Using Outlook....................................55
Attaching Outlook e-mail to ACT! contact records .......................................56
To Set Up A Default History Option For E-Mail............................................56
Entering Sales Opportunities...........................................................................58
Backup/Maintenance.......................................................................................60
Reindexing...................................................................................................60
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Why ACT!
It differs from standard database programs, such as Access, because it already
has many of the attributes that sales professionals need. For example, it provides
an easy way to set reminders and send letters. ACT! is the #1 best-selling
contact management solution -- used by millions and praised by experts around
the world. Get instant access to every contact detail to better manage and build
your business relationships.
Definitions
To make it easier to understand our training, here are a few key definitions we
will be using.
Contact Record Each person entered into ACT! is called a contact record.
Fields Each contact record in ACT! has many fields into which you
enter data pertaining to that contact record.
My Record In ACT! the first contact record you see when you open the
program is the My Record. You can think of it as the user account for the
database.
Lookup In ACT! when you want to find a specific contact record you
use the Lookup function.
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Menu In Windows, the menus are listed across the top of the
application. When you click on the Menu name, the menu opens on the screen.
Toolbar ACT! has a Toolbar directly under the Menu names. They
are icons that you can click to quickly execute an ACT! function.
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The first record you see is Chris Huffman, the owner and the My Record of this
database.
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Entering Records
• Add notes
1. The first step to entering a new record is open the Contact menu and select
New Contact. Take a look at the opened Contact Menu.
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Select the New Contact item from the Contact menu to begin entering a
new contact record.
When you do, ACT! presents a blank contact record as revealed below.
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At this point you are ready to begin typing. If the person works for a company, go
ahead and enter that information. For example:
1. In the Company field, type ABC Realty.
2. Press TAB to move the insertion point to the next field, which is
Contact.
3. Type Sam Wells. Note that the Salutation field is filled in
automatically.
4. Press TAB to go the Title field.
Because ACT! is designed by non-typists for non-typists, many
fields have drop-down lists that contain the most likely entries for the field.
At the right end of the Title field is a gray box with a down arrow. Click it. The
drop-down list appears with a set of common titles.
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A drop-down list or “pick” list makes it easy to enter data without typing.
As you can see, you can select a title from the list, eliminating a typing chore.
The list is sorted alphabetically, so scroll to get to the Realtor entry.
1. Select the title "President." ACT! inserts President into the Title field for
you.
2. Press TAB. The insertion point is now in the Department field.
3. You might not need this field. If not, you can skip it. Press TAB to move the
insertion point to the Phone field.
4. Enter a phone number by typing 888-555-1212. You must enter all 10
digits.
5. Press TAB and the insertion point moves to the Ext field. Use this field if
the contact has a phone extension.
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Press TAB. The active field is Fax. The same rules apply to this field as to the
Phone field.
6. Press TAB. The insertion point is now in the ID/Status field. For this
example, type C and ACT! enters Competitor into the field.
7. Press TAB to go to the Address field. ACT! provides three fields for the
address, even though you cannot see the field labels for Address 2 and
Address 3. For this example we have no need to make any entries at this
point. Press TAB twice to go to the City Field.
8. Type: San
ACT! assumes you mean San Diego, the best place to live in the United States.
The E-mail field is special. You can enter an E-mail address by typing. Once
entered, the field becomes active, and when you click it, ACT! opens the E-mail
window, assuming that you want to create an E-mail message. Web site
addresses do not change much, but E-mail addresses do, and many people have
multiple E-mail addresses. Fortunately, ACT! enables you to edit the address and
to save several E-mail addresses for the contact.
1. Type: Swells@pabell.net
2. Press TAB. The E-mail address displays in color and is underlined, alerting
you that it is an active field. Once you click out of it, and then click back in,
ACT! will active its E-mail program assuming you want to send an E-mail
message to this contact.
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If you make a web site entry, that entry displays in a color, and is underlined,
alerting you that this too is an active field. Assuming that you can connect to the
Internet from your computer, clicking the entry in this field starts your web
browser and opens the Internet site you have entered.
As pointed out earlier in this chapter, ACT! is a bit unusual in that both the first
and last names of contacts are entered into a single field. So, it is important to
understand how ACT! reads the entry in the Contact field.
If you enter a name as Sam Wells, as in the example, ACT! easily identifies the
first name as Sam and the last name as Wells. ACT! also identifies honorifics
such as Dr., Mr., Ms., and suffixes such as Ph.D., M.D., and Sr., not as names
but what they are-additions to the name. It also correctly identifies last name
prefixes such as Von, de, da, and St. But there are names that can cause
trouble, such as hyphenated names-the vogue of the 80's:like Gloria Wheeler-
Wolf. ACT! tries to guess which of the parts of the entry are the last name that
you would use to lookup the contact. Sometimes it may be right and other times
wrong. Plus, you may prefer to lookup a contact by the last name with which you
are most comfortable-"I never call her Gloria Wheeler-Wolf, just Gloria Wheeler.
Why she married that Wolf idiot, I 'll never understand." In such an unhappy
case, you would want to lookup Gloria by the last name Wheeler, not Wolf.
Anyway, follow the steps here to see how ACT! identifies the name parts.
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The Contact Name dialog box with highlights on the text that ACT!
assumes are the first and last names.
If you can look up a contact record by company or phone number, but ACT!
refuses to find the same record when you use the Lookup menu's Last Name
option, click the contact field and press F2 to check out what ACT! thinks is the
correct part of the name. If it is wrong, use the pull-down the list and select the
correct part.
Inserting a Note
As you are working with the Master database, there will be times when you want
add a note to a particular contact record. To do that, follow these steps:
1. On the new Sam Wells contact record add a note.
2. Click the Notes/History tab. (Make sure there is a check mark in front of
the word Notes to the right of the Filter.)
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Click anywhere in the contact record, and the note appears, as you can see here.
When a note is created, the date and time are inserted for you, plus the type of
entry. You can enter a note of any length that you need. At the right margin, ACT!
wraps the text. You can modify the display of the note in several ways. You can
make the note field longer, for example, by positioning the mouse pointer on the
right border, holding down the mouse button, and then dragging the border to the
right. You also can change the font of a note, the current size being eight teeny-
tiny points, to whatever size your failing eyesight enables you to read.
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Looking Up Records
• Narrow a lookup
• Add to a lookup
If you want to mail a letter to all contact records that are identified as a Customer,
you would use the Lookup menu and select the ID/Status field as the search
field. You then enter Customer and ACT! finds all the contact records that match.
You find a record by using the Lookup menu, which is shown below.
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My Record
When you open the Lookup menu and click the My Record menu option, ACT!
finds and displays the My Record contact screen. Now, try the following steps:
Click the My Record option. The contact record appears. Notice that the entry in
the status bar under Lookup reads My Record. This is to remind you how the
contact was found.
2. Click the Next Contact button. ACT! beeps at you!
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This short example serves to illustrate an important concept in ACT!. That is,
when you execute a lookup, ACT! creates a subset of contacts in the database
based on the lookup criteria you specify. In this example, there is only one
contact record that can be put into the My Record subset, so you can’t move to
the Next or to a Previous record. Expanding this idea a little further, suppose that
you want to work with just the contacts that are in a specific city. Using the
Lookup menu and the City option, ACT! creates a subset of contacts of the
database containing just those contacts living in the city you specified. This is a
subset of the entire set of contacts in your database.
All Contacts
As you might suspect, the All Contacts option accesses the contacts in their
entirety. In other words, if you click the Next/Previous buttons, you can walk
through every contact in the entire database, one at a time. This is a good item to
select when you want to see the total number of contacts in your database.
Keyword Search
Because ACT! includes many user-definable fields, has a note-taking facility for
each contact, stores E-mail addresses, and records sales opportunities,
information can be stored in many places. The Keyword Lookup is the catchall
for information that you need, but have forgotten where it’s hiding in your
database. For example, in a conversation two years ago a contact mentioned a
hot stock pick and you entered the ticker symbol and type of business into the
Notes tab for that contact. This morning you saw a news story on a technology
that promises to be a big winner for companies in that field. You remember that
your contact said the same thing about this hot stock pick, but, you have long
forgotten the name of the contact or anything to do with it except that it is
somewhere in Notes. Relax! ACT! will find the stock information for you. Here’s
how:
Open the Lookup menu and select Keyword. The Keyword Search dialog box
opens.
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The Keyword Search dialog box is your first step to find records based on
the information they contain.
2. In the Search For text box, enter the word or phrase you want to
find.
While taking a moment to look at your search options, consider that a keyword
search is brute-force method for locating the contact record or records. ACT!
looks at every piece of information in each record to match the entry you make.
So, if you have 20,000 records with five years of Notes/History, this search could
take some time. That’s why ACT! has a number of switches, set by the radio
buttons, that you can use to reduce the scope of data to be searched. For
example, you could have ACT! search the Current Lookup in Notes/History only,
by clicking the appropriate radio buttons.
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These are the options in the Search These Records section of the Keyword
Search dialog box:
In addition to choosing what records to search, you can select which fields, tabs,
or even groups you want to search. Here are your options as presented in the
Search In section of the Keyword Search dialog box.
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After performing this type of lookup, you have several choices. Click the Create
Lookup button to see the records in Contact view. You can select a single record
by clicking part of it. To select multiple adjacent records, click the first record,
hold down the Shift key, and click the last record. To select records that aren’t
adjacent, click the first record, hold down the Ctrl key, and then click on the other
records you want. After selecting a record or records, right-click one of your
selections. A menu appears listing these options:
• Clicking Lookup All in List is the same as clicking the Create Lookup
button.
After you create a keyword lookup, ACT! saves the lookup’s settings. The
keyword you entered to match is stored on a drop-down list so you can access it
later.
Searching by Company
Use this option to find a contact or contacts that are identified with a certain
company or with companies that have specific letters in their names. ACT!
assumes that you are entering the name of the company in the Company field of
the contact record.
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2. Click Company. The Lookup dialog box appears with the Company
criterion selected.
The Lookup dialog box lets you search for information by company name.
ACT! prompts you to enter the company name in the Search For field. What
ACT! doesn’t tell you is that you don’t have to know the exact spelling of the
name. For example, if you know that the company name in a hypothetical
database begins with the letters “MULT,” you can type those letters into the field
and click OK. ACT! finds all contacts with company names beginning with MULT:
Multiplexing Systems
Multiple Sources
Multimation
Multiplying Inc.
Multisource
The idea here is to see that the first four letters are matched in the Company
field. In the MULT example, five contacts were found. In the Record Counter,
ACT! indicates 1 of 5. If you enter only the letter “M” as the match, ACT! returns
all companies that have a name beginning with “M,” Which would probably result
in a much longer list
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An ACT! concept that sometimes confounds new users of ACT!: Despite the fact
that the previous lookup assembled matching contacts into a subset of the
contacts, you don’t have to use the Lookup, Everyone, option to “unselect” the
contacts before you can execute another lookup. So, after finding the MULT
subset, you can immediately execute a lookup for contacts Last Name is Smith,
and ACT! dutifully finds that group of contacts from among your entire contact
list.
The reason for the subset creation is to enable you to easily locate specific
contacts for form letters, mailing labels, or a list of calls that you want to direct to
a smaller portion of the entire database. You can perform these actions on your
subset without affecting the larger contact list.
Lookup Options
The Lookup dialog box has switches to refine the lookup. After you create a
lookup, you can add more records or reduce the number of records using the
switches described in the following table.
Switch Function
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Suppose that in your database, you want to find all the records that are identified
as either a Customer or a Prospect.
After executing the lookup, open the Lookup menu and select the Id/Status
field.
Enter Prospect.
Before clicking OK, click the Add to Lookup radio button.
The lookup now contains both sets of contacts. There’s no limit to the number of
subsequent lookups you can perform to get the set of contacts that you want.
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This is a great way to create groups of contacts that you will need to use in the
future. After the lookup is complete, create a permanent group so that you do not
have to repeat the steps.
1. Click the Lookup menu and pick the zip code field to search.
2. Enter the search criteria and click OK.
3. ACT! responds with a set of contacts that meet the criteria. In this
example, you looked up all contacts in zip code “92”. Which means all contacts
that the zip code begins with 92.
4. Click the Lookup menu again and select the second field on which
to search. For this example, choose the Id/Status field, which contains the type
of contact, in this case Customer.
5. Enter Customer as the next criteria for the search.
6. Click the Narrow Lookup radio button.
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7. Click OK.
ACT! executes the second search in only those contacts that were identified by
the first search criteria. So, it will find all the contacts in 92xxx with an Id/Status of
Customer.
Phone
It’s happened to you; it’s happened to everyone. You get a message on voice
mail or from a temporary secretary, and the name is so mangled that you cannot
make out who it is. Never fear! ACT! saves the day by enabling you to look up
the entire phone number or just the first digit and returns the matching contact
record you have in the database
City
The City lookup finds contacts on the same match criteria as the other lookup
options. If you enter the first three letters, such as “SAN,” then ACT! finds all city
names that begin with “SAN,” such as San Francisco, San Antonio, Santa Fe, or
Santiago.
The Add Lookup feature works great in conjunction with this lookup. You can add
cities or whatever you need on-the-fly.
yours with this lookup. Even though this entry is numeric (in the United States,
anyway) you enter the matching data the same way as in the other lookup fields.
For example, for all the contacts in zip 92XXX, enter 92 only. But, if you want to
find all of the contacts in Rancho Penasquitos (a suburb of San Diego) you would
enter the full zip code, 92129.
Here again, the Add to Lookup or Narrow Lookup features make selecting
exactly the records you want quite easy.
Lookup by ID/Status
This option works the same way as the other lookups. Enter the first couple of
letters or the entire entry. A drop-down list is available in this dialog box, too. This
is probably the most important field in each record because you can use this field
with the Group feature to locate contacts in specific ways. For example, you can
enter the level of interest the contact has in a purchase by ranking him with
numbers 1,2,3, or with words such as suspect, prospect, and likely customer.
Combine this ranking with Grouping and you can have a Group of contacts
interested in a specific product, ranked by interest level. Or, you can reverse the
process and use the Id/Status field to indicate the product and then create
groups by interest level.
Previous Lookup
Often, you will want to toggle between lookups, and ACT! provides the Previous
item to do that. You can create a lookup and get the records you want. Then, you
execute another lookup. At that point, you want to see the other set of records
from the previous lookup. Click the Previous item to do so. This tool is useful
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when used with the Narrow Lookup and Add Lookup options in the Lookup dialog
box. If you ran a lookup and then executed a second lookup selecting the Add
option, you might find that you did not want to add the second set of contacts
after all. Fortunately, you can use the Previous Lookup to return to the original
set of records.
Non-Empty Lookup
1. Open the Lookup menu.
2. Select the field you want to locate with an entry. If the field is not on
the menu, select Other Fields and use the drop-down list to select the field. In
this example, you would select the E-mail Lookup option.
3. In the Lookup dialog box, click the Narrow Lookup radio button.
4. Click the Non-Empty Field radio button.
5. Click OK.
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The records that have an entry in the field chosen are displayed. ACT!’s record
counter indicates the total number found, in the format “ 1 of x,” where x is the
total number of matching records.
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2. Open the View menu and select Contact List or click the Contact
List button in the View Bar.
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As you can see, ACT! now displays the contact records with columns and rows.
Each column head is a field from the ACT! contact record.
In this view, you can move, resize, add or delete columns without doing any harm
to your data. Plus, you can sort the contact records by clicking on the column
name-for every field except e-mail address.
1. To add columns to the view, right-click your mouse in the list to open
the popup menu.
2. Select the Add Columns option.
3. From the dialog box, click the field name you want to add and click
Add. The column is added to the far right of the list.
4. To return to the contact from view, open the View menu and select
Contacts.
You can use the List view to quickly verify data in a field or to locate a particular
contact record.
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Scheduling Activities
ACT! is similar to Outlook in the way you schedule. The main difference is that
ACT! activities must be associated with either a contact record or a group record.
ACT! categorizes activities into three areas: Calls, as in Telephone calls,
Meetings, and To-do’s, which is short for any other type of task to be undertaken.
Scheduling an Activity
As is true with most actions in ACT!, there is more than one way to schedule an
activity. In fact, there are three ways to schedule an activity, either with the menu
system or the toolbar or by a combination of keys. The toolbar is the fastest, so
I’ll concentrate on that method in the following sections.
1. Use the Lookup menu to find the contact with which you want to schedule
a call, meeting, or thing to do.
2. With the contact on screen, click the Schedule Call button in the Tool Bar
or open the Contact menu and select Schedule Call.
3. ACT! opens the Schedule Activity dialog box.
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ACT! assumes that you want to schedule the call for the current day at the
current time. You use this dialog box to change these assumptions. Let’s look at
the various settings in this dialog box.
Activity type ACT! inserts the type of activity you have selected from the Tool
Bar. If you decide that a call is not appropriate, click the drop-down arrow and
select the activity you want.
Date By default, ACT! inserts the current date. Click the drop-down arrow to
see a calendar as shown below.
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You can use this calendar to pick a date for your activity
Time By default, ACT! inserts the current time as the time for the call. Click the
drop-down arrow to select a time from the list of times presented. Or, you can
select the Timeless option at the bottom of the list as shown below.
Duration In this window, you can click a single time period (15 minutes by
default), or you can click the start time, hold the mouse button, and drag down
through the time periods until the correct amount of time is blocked. Notice that
the Duration window reflects the time period that you have blocked. ACT! has
default settings for each activity-15 minutes for a call, 1 hour for a meeting, and 0
minutes for a to-do.
Priority With each activity, you can determine its priority. The chief
importance of priority is that you can then locate activities by that designation.
You can designate a certain call as a high priority item, and then narrow your
Task list so it only displays these items. The default for all activities is low priority.
With ACT! inserts the name of the contact you were on when you selected the
activity button.
Regarding Enter a note to yourself as to why you have scheduled this activity.
For example, you might designate some calls as first contacts and others as
follow-ups. A drop-down list is available with a series of standard entries, and you
can add your own by editing the list. Simply scroll the list to the bottom, and
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select Edit List. In the Edit List dialog box, click the Add button and type your
entry. Click OK to close the editing process.
Ring Alarm One of the outstanding features of ACT! is the way it nags you until
an activity you have scheduled is completed, deferred, or erased. A prime
component of this nagging process is the alarm. Adding an alarm to a scheduled
activity causes ACT! to open a dialog box on top of your ACT! screen at the
appropriate time. When you click Ring Alarm, the Before Activity option is active.
You then decide how long before the activity you want to be alerted to the
activity. Later in this chapter, I’ll discuss the options for handling alarms. If you
scheduled an activity and added the Timeless attribute the alarm appears as
soon as you start your computer, or at 8a.m., whichever is the later.
Show Full day Banner If you have a full-day activity, this option makes it very
apparent by placing a banner across the day on the calendar. Some activities
might not consume an entire day, but you want the activity to stand out on your
calendar. Suppose you schedule a partial lobotomy for early morning-you might
need the rest of the day to recover, so clicking this option places a banner on the
day in your calendar.
Schedule For/By Clicking the Schedule For/By button expands the bottom of
the Schedule Activity dialog box. This expanded area is for scheduling activities
for other users on a network. You might decide that one of your coworkers needs
to have a meeting, make a call, or tackle a to-do with a contact in the database.
So, you look up the contact, open the Schedule Activity dialog box, and enter the
requisite information. Finally, you can click Schedule For/By, and then select the
coworker’s name from the Scheduled for field and your name automatically
appears in the Scheduled by field. The meeting then appears on the coworker’s
calendar and Task List. Imagine the time you can save with this one aspect of
ACT!, especially of you are the Sales Manager parceling out leads to the sales
team.
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The foregoing are the basic steps for creating any of the three kinds of activities
with a single contact. Remember, you determine whether the activity is a Call,
Meeting, or To-do by clicking the Activity Type drop-down arrow. Clicking OK
adds the activity to the Activity tab of the contact and to your Task List and
calendars. If you included an Alarm as part of the scheduling process, the alarm
will appear at the appropriate time on your desktop.
Daily Clicking this option lets you set the activity to recur every day, every two
days, and so on until the ending date you specify.
Weekly Click this option to make the activity occur once a week, every two
weeks, and so on, until the specified end date. ACT! also will make sure that the
date is the correct day of the week, as specified by you.
Monthly This setting allows for the scheduling of an activity that might be
regular in terms of the time, that is, the 3rd Thursday of every month, but not on a
specific date. To use it, first select the Every option, which indicates every
month, every two months, and so on. Enter the ending date, and then select the
time value, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and so on. Last, select the weekday on which the event
falls.
Yearly The marriage saver! Yes friends, never again forget your
spouse’s birthday, anniversary, or other significant date. You also can use this
setting to remind yourself of important dates for your contacts, or a yearly
company event for which you want to be reminded.
Custom This setting is used for those activities that do occur on a specific
date. That is, if your club meeting is always the 15th of the month, you can enter 1
as the value for Every and the ending date, and then click the date itself.
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1. Open the Contact menu and select Create Activity Series. The
resulting dialog box presents two choices: You can create a new series of
activities or edit an existing series.
For this example, click the radio button to Create a New Activity Series.
Click Next. The Series Date dialog box asks if the new series has a Start date, or
a Due date. Entering a start date schedules activities from that date into the
future. Providing a due date schedules the activities working backwards from that
date. Select the Start Date option and click Next. The First Activity dialog box
appears.
4. Select from the drop-down lists or enter the Activity Type,
Duration, Priority, and Regarding attributes for the initial activity.
5. Determine the number of days, weeks, or months after the start
date for the initial activity to occur and determines whether a weekend date is
appropriate for the activity.
6. Click Next and the Series Activity Dialog returns.
At this point, add the subsequent activities to the series. To begin, click the Add
button. The Add Activity dialog box appears, in which you can add a second
activity. Enter the attributes for this activity. You can drag the dialog box so that
you can see the previous activities scheduled and determine the date spacing.
Add all the activities you want, and then click Next.
In the Finish dialog box, enter a name for the series and a description so that you
can recall the purpose of the series. Click Finish to close the dialog box.
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Figure: Here’s the Schedule Activity dialog box, from which you can apply
an existing series to a single contact or multiple contacts
3. Lookup the contacts to which you want the series applied. Enter a
start date, and then select the series to apply.
4. Click the Schedule button, and ACT! begins adding the activities to
the contact records you have chosen.
ACT!’s series scheduling ability is an extremely powerful tool and should save
you many hours.
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Rather than respond to alarms, I coach my ACT! students to check their task list
every day at startup:
Click on the Task List icon in the View Bar.
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All the activities that you have scheduled appear, depending upon the filter
settings. If you are on a shared database, click the Select Users button and
choose your name only to see your tasks.
To go to work on the tasks you have scheduled, click the Create Lookup button
in the Tool Bar.
When you do, ACT! creates a lookup or contact record with who you have
activities scheduled. Remember that the lookup is based upon the filter settings.
So, if you want to see only your High Priority Calls for Today, select those
options in the Filter and then click create Lookup and then you can get those
calls made.
It is important that you Clear the activities after taking an action. You can
clear the activity either from the contact record by selecting the Activities
tab and right clicking the activity, or by right-clicking the activity in the Task
List.
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• Understanding Groups
Understanding Groups
A Group is a special kind of record in ACT!, it saves Lookups for us. Earlier we
were able to find a contact record by opening the Lookup menu and selecting
Last name and then entering the name of the person we wanted to find. In order
to find the same record again, we would have to run the same Lookup. With a
Group record, you can execute a Lookup. Locate several contact records and
save those contact records as a Group. Then, when you want to work with those
same contact records later, you do not have to do all the steps to Lookup the
contact records, you simply select the Group and ACT! finds them all again for
you.
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The mouse pointer is pointing to the Groups list from the contact screen
After selecting the Group, the name of the group appears on the Group button-
as a way of alerting you that you are working within a group. Once you have
selected a Group, you can scroll the records within the Group, add or delete
contact records, run reports or use this set of records to print labels and the
record counter reflects the total number of contact records in the group and
which record you were looking at relative to the group. Keep in mind that ACT!
sorts the contact records by Company and then by Last Name, unless there is no
company name in the contact record.
Note: If you want to print labels or run reports, the Run Report dialog choice of
Current Lookup is the same as the Group selected.
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Your contact record looks like this with the Groups tab selected
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This Group Membership dialog box appears when you select Group
Membership from the pop-up dialog box.
This dialog box is a reverse of the Group Membership dialog box that you see
when you are adding members as described earlier. Only a single contact record
is available, but all existing groups are listed.
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5. Scroll the list and when the group name appears, click the Group.
A checkmark appears in front of the group name, indicating that the record has
been added to that group. Click as many groups as appropriate.
6. Click OK. The group name(s) appears in the group tab.
This same process works with importing a record, select the group to which you
want the record added and then import the record.
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In this section, you'll see how to create form letters. ACT! has its own word
processor, but we assume you will be using Microsoft Word for these tasks.
Creating a Template
ACT! includes several preformatted templates for documents. The easiest way to
get started, is to modify an existing template as outlined below:
4. Microsoft Word starts and the template appears. As you can see, the
fields that will be filled in from the ACT! record are on in the document.
6. When you are finished, open the File menu and select Save As.
It is important to note that you cannot print a template using Word files unless
you have entered the text into one of the templates the ACT! provides either by
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typing the text or by copying the text from a word document and pasting into the
ACT!/Word template as outlined above.
2. The mail merge wizard opens. Select the correct set of contact records and
click Next.
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3. To print the document(s) select Printer, to see how the mail merge looks on
screen select Word Processor and then click Next.
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Select a template to use by clicking the Browse button and clicking the one you
want. Click Next.
ACT! asks to annotate the records that are receiving the document. Make an
entry in the Regarding field as to what the document was sent. Make sure you
select Create History so that each record is updated.
To print envelopes or labels for the letters, see the Creating Mailing Labels in the
next section .
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1. Open the File menu and click the Print option. A dialog box appears that gives
you the opportunity to print Address books, Labels, and Reports.
2. Choose Envelopes from the Printout Type drop-down list. When you do, ACT!
lists the common envelope types.
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Click OK.
Next, ACT! presents you with the Run Labels dialog box. Select Current
Lookup and then OK.
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Two things to note at this point: If you are printing envelopes to go with a mail
merge, you should have created the same lookup as when you created the
letters. So, you would naturally choose the Current Lookup as the envelopes to
print.
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Open the Write menu and select Edit Graphical E-mail (HTML) Template
Select e-mailbody.gmt.
Click Open.
The template appears in the word processor. You can add a salutation and a
signature block that will appear in every e-mail you send.
4. To save the template, open the File menu and select Save.
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Now that you’ve told Outlook where to find your ACT! addresses, let’s send an
Outlook message to someone in our ACT! database.
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ACT! 6.0 also allows you to decide the type of information that will be displayed
in a contact's record when you send an e-mail message using Outlook. You can
set up a default history option for how Outlook e-mail messages appear in a
contact’s Notes/History tab. For example, you can choose to record only the
subject line of an e-mail message, or to display the entire message in the
contact's regarding field.
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Date, Time, Subject, And Message Text.: the date, time, subject, and entire
message will display in the Regarding field of the contact's History tab.
Entire E-Mail As An Attachment: the entire message will display as an
attachment in the contact's History tab.
Do Not Save E-Mail To History: No history will be recorded.
If you select the Date, Time, And Subject option, you cannot access the body of
the message from ACT! but you do have a history that the e-mail was sent. If
you select the Entire E-Mail As An Attachment option, the message saves in the
contact’s Regarding field and may take up a lot of space in the Contact window.
And, that attachment might not be available to other users of the database.
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To add a new opportunity, enter a product name and the other requisite
field data. ACT! will calculate the total sales price by multiplying the
number of units by the cost. One of ACT!’s reports adjusts for probability
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The Sales Stages are editable and you should easily enter the steps that
you want to use in your business.
In the future, as the sale moves through the pipeline, lookup the contact
and update the opportunity by changing the sales stage as appropriate.
When the deal is done, complete the sale.
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Backup/Maintenance
On a daily basis, it is important that you reindex the database and then make
sure you have a backup. I recommend that you backup to floppy disks every day.
Also it is important to rotate the disks every day in case the disk goes haywire. In
other words, label a disk for Monday, one for Tuesday and so on.
Reindexing
Reindexing is a process whereby ACT! can quickly and precisely locate the
records in the database. In the day-to-day use of ACT!, the indexes can become
unreliable and therefore need to be corrected.
Open the File menu and select Administration.
3. Click the reindex button in the dialog box. This will take less than a minute on
a small database to several minutes on one that is over 10,000 records.
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