Thanks for the kind words Marc. We look forward to working with you again soon on the next cool project.
Click image to enlarge
(email printed with clients permission)
Thursday, August 12, 2010
ACT! is Cool
ACT! is Cool, and it's even cooler when a client tell us that! It's usually us trying to tell eveyone else :)
Thanks for the kind words Marc. We look forward to working with you again soon on the next cool project.
Click image to enlarge
Thanks for the kind words Marc. We look forward to working with you again soon on the next cool project.
Click image to enlarge
Friday, July 16, 2010
Hoover your leads into ACT! 2011
One of the interesting new features with ACT! 2011 is Sage Business Info Services.
This is basically the ability of your database to reach out and connect with other sources of information or other applications on the Web. If you are familiar with Swiftpage/ACT! e-marketing then you are already aware of a 'connected service'.
Whilst these connected services or as Sage will be calling them, Sage Business Info Services, are a way for Sage to generate additional revenue, they are very useful and effective services to have at your disposal if you are an ACT! user.
One of the Sage Business Info Services that Sage are promoting with the release of ACT! 2011 is a connection with Hoovers. Many Australian businesses are probably not very familiar with Hoovers but they are essential a data or list broker.
By having a connection to Hoovers, you should be able to do a search for a list of businesses that you would like to add to your database and with a few clicks, import those contacts straight into ACT!. Having had to deal with List Brokers on behalf of clients in the past, this looks like a much faster, easier and hopefully more economical way of adding contacts to your database.
The good news for Australian ACT! users is that it seems that Hoovers has a large amount of Australian Company information available. According to Sage we can expect to see 650,000 records to choose from. Sounds promising.
This is basically the ability of your database to reach out and connect with other sources of information or other applications on the Web. If you are familiar with Swiftpage/ACT! e-marketing then you are already aware of a 'connected service'.
Whilst these connected services or as Sage will be calling them, Sage Business Info Services, are a way for Sage to generate additional revenue, they are very useful and effective services to have at your disposal if you are an ACT! user.
One of the Sage Business Info Services that Sage are promoting with the release of ACT! 2011 is a connection with Hoovers. Many Australian businesses are probably not very familiar with Hoovers but they are essential a data or list broker.
By having a connection to Hoovers, you should be able to do a search for a list of businesses that you would like to add to your database and with a few clicks, import those contacts straight into ACT!. Having had to deal with List Brokers on behalf of clients in the past, this looks like a much faster, easier and hopefully more economical way of adding contacts to your database.
The good news for Australian ACT! users is that it seems that Hoovers has a large amount of Australian Company information available. According to Sage we can expect to see 650,000 records to choose from. Sounds promising.
To see a great explanation of how this concept of Hoovering leads into ACT! 2011 I'll leave it to our good friend Napkin Mike to demonstrate to you.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
ACT! 2011 - Coming soon
ACT! 2011 is now available in the U.S. and It won't be long before it's available here in Australia.
There are ome great new features to come and we look forward to bringing you some thoughts on that soon.
In the mean time, the great news is Napkin Mike is back with a great demo on what you can look forward to in the new version.
Enjoy!
There are ome great new features to come and we look forward to bringing you some thoughts on that soon.
In the mean time, the great news is Napkin Mike is back with a great demo on what you can look forward to in the new version.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Getting GoToMeeting To Go Local
Like many companies we use GoToMeeting for doing remote demonstrations and training for clients and prospects.
One issue we have encountered a couple of times from attendees is the fact that they need to make a long distance call to join the conference call.
After talking with GoToMeeting support and liasing with their support team on twitter, it seems that the number provided for conference calls with GoToMeeting is provided randomnly and there isn't anything you can do to specify what numbers you would like associated to your meeting.
This seems to be a lazy feature that can cause problems. For example, if you are based in a city, like Brisbane, and all your attendees are based in Brisbane, it is likely that GoToMeeting will present a phone number for another state such as NSW. So all attendees and the presenter are making a long distance call.
This has come to the attention to some of our clients, who have then brought it to our attention with comments like: 'You mean we paid for the training and now each of my 10 staff are all on a long distance phone call for the next 2 hours - who's paying for that?!" Ouch & thanks GoToMeeting (not).
Now, as GoToMeeting rightly pointed out when I brought this to their attention, there is no charge for the VOIP option. Well, that is true, but we aren't always presenting to early adopters that have a speaker and microphone. And if they did, they've probably not used it before. The last thing we need to be doing with hot prospects or multiple attendeeds is troubleshooting audio issues. Having a convenient conference call they can join via their phone (not computer) is a feature many business like ourselves need.
If GoToMeeting want their platform to be more widely adopted they need to be thinking about functional improvements that will make it easier for the early majority to attend, and for the sake of GoToMeeting, possibly host webinars in the futre.
But since they don't appear to provide any channel for feature requests we need a work-around. I can't claim credit for figuring this out, but in the course of complaining about this problem to someone they told me this simple solution.
What is it?
Well, as it turns out, it doesn't matter what phone number GoToMeeting gives you when it creates your meeting, you can dial any of their numbers and it will allow attendees to join the conference call in your meeting.
This means you could provide the local number for your attendees and they can call in on that number at a local call rate. This should also work if you have attendees in different locales, you can still give them their local number.
At this stage, I only have 2 numbers, but please feel free to use the comments to provide the local numbers for your area.
Australia
Brisbane: 07 3123 6030
Sydney: 02 8014 4934
One issue we have encountered a couple of times from attendees is the fact that they need to make a long distance call to join the conference call.
After talking with GoToMeeting support and liasing with their support team on twitter, it seems that the number provided for conference calls with GoToMeeting is provided randomnly and there isn't anything you can do to specify what numbers you would like associated to your meeting.
This seems to be a lazy feature that can cause problems. For example, if you are based in a city, like Brisbane, and all your attendees are based in Brisbane, it is likely that GoToMeeting will present a phone number for another state such as NSW. So all attendees and the presenter are making a long distance call.
This has come to the attention to some of our clients, who have then brought it to our attention with comments like: 'You mean we paid for the training and now each of my 10 staff are all on a long distance phone call for the next 2 hours - who's paying for that?!" Ouch & thanks GoToMeeting (not).
Now, as GoToMeeting rightly pointed out when I brought this to their attention, there is no charge for the VOIP option. Well, that is true, but we aren't always presenting to early adopters that have a speaker and microphone. And if they did, they've probably not used it before. The last thing we need to be doing with hot prospects or multiple attendeeds is troubleshooting audio issues. Having a convenient conference call they can join via their phone (not computer) is a feature many business like ourselves need.
If GoToMeeting want their platform to be more widely adopted they need to be thinking about functional improvements that will make it easier for the early majority to attend, and for the sake of GoToMeeting, possibly host webinars in the futre.
But since they don't appear to provide any channel for feature requests we need a work-around. I can't claim credit for figuring this out, but in the course of complaining about this problem to someone they told me this simple solution.
What is it?
Well, as it turns out, it doesn't matter what phone number GoToMeeting gives you when it creates your meeting, you can dial any of their numbers and it will allow attendees to join the conference call in your meeting.
This means you could provide the local number for your attendees and they can call in on that number at a local call rate. This should also work if you have attendees in different locales, you can still give them their local number.
At this stage, I only have 2 numbers, but please feel free to use the comments to provide the local numbers for your area.
Australia
Brisbane: 07 3123 6030
Sydney: 02 8014 4934
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
NEW Features for Xact Link for ACT! and QuickBooks
Randy Iskandar at Xact Software looks after the QuickBooks link developments and he has wrapped up the next release with the following enhancements....
- Price Level Selection; allocate the pricing level globally for invoices direct from ACT! to apply discounts for customers or apply reseller pricing margins.
- Quick Template Customisation; we have made it easier to make changes to the html invoice and estimate documents that get saved into ACT! and emailed to the customer. A layout editing tool allows for easier editing and alongside is a preview pane so that you can see the results of the changes.This lends itself to a template library to select a default template for the business in preferences.
- Xact Link for ACT! and QuickBooks is now FULLY COMPATIBLE with ACT! Opportunities from ACT! 2007 through ACT! 2010; just like Xact Link for ACT! and MYOB, the only links that are fully compatible and fully featured for Opportunities integration. So you don't have to worry about which supported version of ACT! your customer runs, the Xact link products integrate completely and No Upgrade fees apply
- ALL these new features delivered: 1 March 2010
More info about the ACT to Quickbooks Link
Click here to buy the ACT! to Quick books Link
Upate on NEW Features Coming Up for the ACT! to MYOB Link
The Xact Software link remains the only MYOB approved product for linking ACT! and MYOB. You are assured of accurate creation of invoices from our products.
Our next release features:
- Very Fast Client /Server operation through .Net Remoting; MYOB can be sluggish to run across a network under certain conditions.. This can be experienced in linking to MYOB data files which have a mountain of accounts history being pulled across a network to run lookups etc. Remember ACT! 5/6 lookups? MYOB operates in a similar manner. With our April 28th release we will be the first link to include modern .Net client/server technology with no need to install the server component on the PC when running locally
- Chart Controls, just like ACT! but better! Xact Software is bringing MYOB financial data charting direct into ACT! We have been working on charting for many months and we are finally able to provide this essential feature. Forget about importing financial data into ACT! Connect direct to the data source and draw the charts...wow!
- MYOB Search direct from the ACT! Lookup menu; lookup Products, Quotes, Invoices, Sales Orders etc...all within ACT!
- Integration of Opportunites will just get better and better....Xact Link for ACT! and MYOB is the only fully integrated link to ACT! Opportunities...You can create quotes in MYOB from ACT! opportunities, email them, attach to contacts with MYOB Product list in ACT! and it's going to get better...
ALL these new features delivered: 28th April 2010
Click here for more information on the ACT! to MYOB Link. (including video demo)
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Make a Dash for it!
Have just been attending a Webinar this morning with Pat Egen from Egen Consulting.
It's been very enlightening to learn how to query the ACT! database with SQL and then build custom dashboards to display the results.
If you are using ACT!, particularly the latest version ACT! 2010, you would be amazed at what information you can display in a dashboard.
Business owners and managers are especially interested in reports. If you are collecting the data you can, in theory, report on it.
With Dashboards, the reports are live data at the time you look at it. So that means no running the report and then knowing it's out of date the minute it's printed. You can have your dashboards display as the screen that you or your sales staff see when logging into ACT!.
We look forward to developing a range of standard dashboards for our clients that will help extract more meaning and understanding from their data.
If you have any requests on for a custom dashboard, let us know.
Follow Pat on twitter www.twitter.com/pregan
Monday, February 8, 2010
ACT! Quick Tip - Using the Relationships Tab
The relationships tab is a new feature that came out with ACT! 11.0.1 and is also included in ACT! 12/2010.
It is an excellent way to record which contacts relate to each other in your database. ACT! is very good at associating contacts with companies and groups. These are helpful for 'many to one' type relationships. I.E Many contacts work for the one company, or many contacts are going to be the member of one group.
The relationships tab captures the 'one to one' contact relationships. IE. this contact is related to that one.
I use this a lot for relating contacts who refer me business to those they referred. This way I can see under a referers tab, all the people they have referred me to. I can also see the relationships they have with those contacts. E.g. I can see they have referred me to a friend, a relative, and a client.
All this information helps to recall the context of the relationship.
The best thing about this feature is that it is fast to connect two contacts together, and it is even faster to click between contacts that are connected in this Tab.
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