ACT! by Sage 2010 is Now Available!

In classic Sage Software form, the annual release of ACT! by Sage 2010 (v12) was just released.

Like most new releases, defects (bugs) have already been discovered and 2 (yes two) hotfixes have already been released.

Over the years, we have instructed our customers to inquire from us before upgrading their ACT! software. ACT! 2010 is the poster child for the reason behind our madness. Initial releases are always buggy.

Let’s talk about what is exciting about the new features:

Social Networking via a Web Info tab (sound familiar?). Act4Advisors has had a WebInfo tab since August of 2003!!! Finally, ACT! has its own and Sage happened to name it the same thing we have always called ours….Web Info. The Social Networking integration allows direct access to your contact’s LinkedIn, Plaxo or Facebook info from within ACT!. There are a number of other sites that have integration built in including a Google Map inside of the tab. This is a cool feature but not a ‘gotta have’.

A new and updated interface has made changes to the sidebar and toolbars. You can search for a contact now via a box on the left hand NAV bar. The buttons on the toolbar are larger and easier to read and access.

Swiftpage Email is now incorporated (for an additional fee) with ACT! by Sage 2010. ACT! Email Marketing feature allows you to create web based email and drip marketing campaigns without having to leave ACT!. The software also gives you immediate action items based on when an email is read and how many times.

Opportunities are now their own entity and are more customizable!!! Now, you can manage Opportunities like you would contacts, groups or companies.

New Dashboards give you quick an immediate access to fields that weren’t available in previous versions.

The New Reports interface allows you to save a list of your favorite reports without having to browse the reports folder.

ACT! now supports the iCalendar format giving you the ability to send your calendar to other iCalendar apps such as Google Calendar.

New ACT! OLEDB Provide is available for external report engines such as Crystal Reports.

Now includes native integration to the iPhone.

vCard compatibility is new in 2010 giving you’re the ability to easily bring in contact data from a vCard format.

The question for all is, “Should I go ahead and upgrade?” The answer is…yes but not now.

There have been various inconveniences (bugs) noted in the new version that Sage will hopefully fix with its first service pack. We suggest you wait for this and then call Allied Financial Software to upgrade.

Customers that purchase their ACT! upgrade from us will received free updates to Act4Advisors making it work with the new ACT! Customers that purchase ACT! upgrades elsewhere will have a small fee for the update.

Also, if you decide to try or subscribe to the Email Marketing module, please add Allied Financial Software as Reseller.

Scott Abboud



CRM for Financial
ACT for Financial

ACT! by Sage 2010 Hot Fix 4

Click on link for the full article including ACT! by Sage 2010 hotfix 4 download:

Click here for full details >

Who Should Install This Hot Fix?

---

Note: Apply this hot fix to all machines that are involved in database synchronization to avoid issues surrounding renaming layouts, queries, and reports. This includes all machines that contain the Main Synchronization Database, Main Remote Database, and machines that have the ACT! Network or ACT! Internet Sync Services applied.

---

ACT! hot fixes are cumulative, so hot fix 4 also resolves issues fixed in hot fixes 1, 2 and 3. If you have already installed hot fix 1, 2 or 3, you can safely install hot fix 4.



Hot Fix 4 for ACT! version 2010 may resolve your issues if:

• You are an ACT! Premium for Web user and are unable to print from the address book.
  
• You cannot replace the contents of the Record Manager using Edit > Replace.
  
• You are using a Microsoft® Outlook® rule to automatically attach incoming e-mail to ACT! contacts and see Microsoft Outlook stop responding when you received e-mail.
  
• Your installation has advanced queries or dynamic group/company membership that is based on contact access (contact is private) and have problems after upgrading your database from ACT! by Sage 2008 (10.0) or ACT! by Sage 2009 (11.0) to ACT! 2010.
  
• You see slow performance when switching views or looking up records.
  
• You are an ACT! Premium customer whose installation includes customized databases, have upgraded from ACT! by Sage Premium 2008 (10.0) or ACT! by Sage Premium 2009 (11.0), and are now seeing generic application crash errors when viewing Group, Company, or Opportunity views in ACT! by Sage 2010
  
• You are an ACT! Premium customer whose installation contains fields set to “No Access” that reside in the Contact Spillover Table (spillover tables are created with customized databases). Since upgrading your database to ACT! Premium 2010, the schema update fails and corrupts the upgraded database.
  
• You are an ACT! Premium customer whose installation contains fields set to “No Access” that reside in the Contact Spillover Table (spillover tables are created with customized databases). Since upgrading your database to ACT! Premium 2010, you are unable to build a remote database.
  
• You are using a certified add-on application with faxing capabilities and have problems when doing a Mail Merge direct to Fax when your word processor is Microsoft Word.

Blue Stop Error and System Crash When Installing ACT! by Sage 2010

	Question
	You are installing ACT! 2010 and receive a blue stop error and the system crashes and loops indefinitely.
	Answer
	This issue has been reported to occur in a VMware® specific virtual environment if the host machine is Windows® XP Service Pack 2 (SP2). The issue will occur when installing SQL Server® Express 2005 Service Pack 3 (SP3), which is a component of the ACT! install. You can resolve this issue by updating your Window XP VMware Session to Windows XP Service Pack 3 and the issue should not persist when attempting to install ACT!. For more information on making changes to VMware sessions, please refer to your VMware documentation or visit VMware.com. This issue also has been reported to be resolved with applying a Microsoft Hot Fix. Bypassing the system crash will first require booting the computer into Safe Mode. Please use the following steps to resolve: Boot Windows into Safe Mode (use F8 during system boot and scroll to that selection). Once Windows has successfully booted, disable the service for the ACT7 instance: Click the Windows Start button, and then click Run. The Run dialog box appears. Type services.msc into the Open field, and then click OK. The Services panel appears. Locate the SQL Server (ACT7) service. Right-click the SQL Server (ACT7) service from the Name column, and then click Properties from the shortcut menu. The SQL Server (ACT7) Properties (Local Computer) dialog box appears: Click the Startup type field, and then click Disabled from the drop-down list. Click Apply, and then click OK. Restart the computer in normal mode and uninstall the SQL Server ACT7 instance. For more assistance on manually removing the ACT7, please refer to the following Knowledgebase Answer: How to Manually Remove the ACT7 Instance of SQL Answer ID: 23401 Download and apply the Microsoft Hot Fix from HERE. Attempt to install ACT! NOTE: This issue has also been reported to occur outside of VMware virtual environments. ACT! 2010 installs with SQL Express 2005 Service Pack 3 (4035). The installing components of SQL include Microsoft®  VSS Writer. This service installs as a function of the SQL install and the VSS Writer Service is set to Automatic (started) during the ACT! 2010 installation. On certain Windows XP Service pack 2 environments, this can trigger a blue screen booting loop. To correct this, boot into Safe mode and set the service to Disabled. You will still want to either apply the Microsoft offered hot fix files and or apply XP Service Pack 3.

Top 20 Smartphones report with the various sync options with ACT!.

Top 20 Smartphones report from Mav 2010 provided by CompanionLink: http://www.companionlink.com/whitepapers/top-smartphones.pdf

CompanionLink Presentation: http://companionlink.wordpress.com/2009/10/12/mav-2010/

Is there a way to set security for tabs? That is, to allow or not allow certain users to see certain tabs?

ACT! Premium allows you to restrict specific fields to specific users.

How to Manage Field Level Security in ACT!

http://kb.sagesoftwareonline.com/cgi-bin/sagesoftwareonline.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=19185&site_ID=


ACT! does not allow you to restrict specific tabs in ACT! but you can work around this.

1. First, make a copy of the layout for one set of users and another for the other set of users. Remove the tabs accordingly from the desired layout.
   
2. Next, use your Windows file permissions to restrict accesses to specific users for each layout file. On the server, open the databasefiles\Layout folder and right click on each layout. Choose Properties > Security. Define which user has access to the selected layout file.

If you do this, you should also restrict field access since fields are accessible via the Contact List view otherwise.

More information to review: Security Levels in ACT!

http://kb.sagesoftwareonline.com/cgi-bin/sagesoftwareonline.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=15284&site_ID=