Product Description

ACT! has dominated the contact management software market for almost 20 years and is the current leader in small office contact management software, boasting more than 4.5 million registered users and more than 30,000 corporate accounts. The success of ACT! can be partially attributed to its incredible flexibility in all aspects of contact management. ACT! incorporates a database, a letter writer, an email client, an activity scheduler, a notepad, a report writer, an Internet research tool, and much more-all in one easy-to-use package. Reading this book is the first step toward integrating the awesome potential of ACT! into your business. Filled with simple step-by-step tasks to help you learn the basics as well as the intricacies of the software, this reference manual will take you from installing or upgrading ACT! 2006, to scheduling activities and using the mail merge feature, to customizing the interface and creating your own custom database. In addition, "Managing Contacts with ACT! 2006" covers integrating ACT! 2006 with Internet and Outlook software and provides helpful troubleshooting tips and support.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #928714 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

About the Author
Edward and Timothy Kachinske are leaders in the ACT! and CRM industries. In fact, just after selling ACT! to Interact Commerce Corporation in May 2000, Symantec -- the former owner of ACT! -- turned to Edward and Tim to train their sales staff and set up ACT! synchronization for their corporate licensing sales group.
Edward and Timothy run Innovative Solutions, a CRM consulting company that has been ranked in the top 1% of ACT! resellers worldwide by sales volume for the past four years. Innovative Solutions is a Platinum Level ACT! Partner, the highest level attainable. Edward and Tim authored the Official ACT! 2005 Training Manuals, published by Thomson Learning and branded as an official Sage Software product. They have written 34 course manuals covering ACT!. In 2003, their course manuals for ACT! 6.0 were rated the #1 selling ACT! Add-on product in any category by the ACT! Add-On Store. Edward has served on partner advisory councils for ACT! 6.0, ACT! 2005, ACT! for Web, and ACT! for Palm. Edward was elected to a two year term to the peer-elected ACT! Advisory Board in 2004. In partnership with Best Software, Innovative Solutions produces the Advanced ACT! eNews. Over the past six years, Edward and Tim have published more than 150 ACT!-related articles in various magazines and trade newsletters. Edward and Tim also produced the Innovative ACT! Training Series, a multi volume CD-ROM ACT! training course. The series has sold over 10,000 volumes.

Customer Reviews

The Most Complete, Easiest to Use Book on ACT
When you get right down to it, ACT is a fairly simple little database program. You put in information about something and it comes back when you want it. If it's so simply you might ask, why buy it at all, why not just use one of the free shareware databases and write your own.

The answer is the thinking that has gone into setting up exactly what a salesman needs as he works with his customer base. The original concept defined the things that the programmers thought you would need: Name, Address, Phone Number, etc. Then the customers started saying things like grouping customers, wife's name, children's birthdays, making a mass e-mail, reminder calendars, schedules. Revision after revision of the software followed, each having more information available, but retaining the basic ease of use of the initial release.

The first couple of chapters of this book cover the new features that are included in ACT 2006, installing the software and converting the files from earlier versions.

The remainder of the book covers every aspect us using ACT from entering your first contact's name to setting up new opportunities, from mass mailings to mass e-mails, and a very neat chapter on add on products that work with the basic ACT package. This includes other software products as well as hardware such as specialized printers for printing labels.

This is the most complete book on ACT that there is. It is also easy to read, easy to find what you are looking for when you need something.

Average
The information throughout the book was very beginner level. I consider myself to be a pretty savvy and intensive user and was looking for more details, particularly relating to database migration, and it didn't even get into that area. My overall impression is that someone simply copied all the Help topics and placed them in a book. It may be of use if you've never used Act before.

Good for beginners, I guess
The last version of Act! I have used was Act! 2000 and would consider myself an expert user of that product. I joined a new company that was using Act! 2006, so I thought I would get a reference book for the product and chose this one. This book is "just OK". Good for someone who has never used Act, I suppose.

As I looked to design a new layout for my recruiting needs and worked to figure out how to intergrate Outlook, I could not find ANY of the answers I was looking for in this book. I'm not kidding. Literally, anything I looked for an answer on was not included in this book. Considering the title of this book, I would expect more.

It's OK as a basic explainer of the features, but for depth, one shoud look elsewhere.