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This issue of our tips & tricks newsletter focuses
on how to get activities on your calendar.
ACT! comes bundled with a
fully-featured calendar, scalable to use as a
personal calendar or as a shared office scheduling
system. With ACT!, you can schedule activities with
any of the contacts in your database.
Because each activity is linked to
a specific contact in the database, it's easy to
create reports that show your activity with a group
of contacts.
Click these links to learn more detailed information
about the the tips outlined in this issue:
As always, if you have any
questions about ACT!, please do not hesitate to get
in touch with me at 866-944-2281.
Best regards,
Michael Kadlub
ACT! Certified Consultant
CRM Coaching
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CRM Coaching
ACT Certified Consultants
29023 Euclid Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44092
www.crmcoaching.com
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ACT! 2006 has recently
released an update patch (8.02) for both Standard
and Premium users. You can download the patch
by going to Help | ACT! Update. Be sure to
backup your database prior to any updates. |
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We
recommend that you purchase: |
 Managing
Contacts
with ACT! 2006
$24.99
$22.49
Click here to order.
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 The specific activities that appear on your
calendar are dependent on the current calendar
filter settings. The Today, Daily, Weekly, Work
Week, and Monthly calendars all share the same
filter, so changing filter settings in one
calendar will apply the new filter to the other
four calendar views.
If you are missing activities, make sure they
haven't been filtered out. It almost goes
without saying, but if you uncheck all of the
options in the Types and Priorities drop-downs,
ACT! will never show any activities on your
calendar. Calendar filters in ACT! 2006 are now
sticky.
In ACT! 2005, you would have to set the calendar
filters each time you launched the product. In
ACT! 2006, the program will remember your filter
settings from the last session.
To filter the
calendar to show just a specific type of
activities:
- Click the Calendar button on the View
bar to open ACT!'s calendar interface.
- Click View | Filter Calendar View. The
Filter Calendar dialog box will appear.
- In the Users area, select up to 10 users
whose activities you'd like to see on the
calendar.
- In the Type dropdown, select whether to
show or hide calls, meetings, and to-dos, as
well as any other activity types you've
created in the database.
- In the Priorities drop-down, select the
priorities you'd like to view. If, for
example, you uncheck the Low option, ACT!
won't display any of the low-priority
activities on your calendar views.
- Select whether to show or hide cleared
activities and private activities.
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 If you're an ACT! 6.0 user, you'll notice
that scheduling activities in ACT! 2006 is now a
lot easier. The Schedule Activity dialog box has
been redesigned to make often-used features --
like the Private Activity checkbox field --
easier to access. You also now have the option
to specify the End Time and End Date for any
activity.
There are about 80 ways to schedule an activity
in ACT!, and each activity scheduling method
launches the Schedule Activity dialog box. Once
in the Schedule Activity dialog box, you can set
basic attributes for the activity.
To schedule an
activity for a contact:
- In the Contact View, lookup the contact
with whom you would like to schedule an
activity.
- Click Schedule | Call, Meeting, or
To-do.
- If you'd like to schedule a custom
activity type, click Schedule | Other and
select the type of activity.
- Enter a Start Date, End Date, Start
Time, and End Time for your activity.
- In the With field, you'll see that the
contact you looked up in Step 1 is shown.
You could change this field to schedule the
activity with another contact in the
database.
- In the Regarding field, type a general
description of the activity.
- Give the activity a priority, and select
a color for the activity.
- If you'd like ACT! to ring an alarm
before your activity occurs, check the Ring
Alarm option.
- If you select to show a full day banner,
the activity will display as the main
activity for the day in the Monthly Calendar
View only.
- Click OK. The activity will appear on
your calendar.
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 You can easily set ACT! to automatically send
an email to each activity participant as a
reminder. When you have this option checked,
ACT! will draft an email to each activity
participant, and the program will even attach
the activity (in both ACT! and Outlook formats)
to the outgoing message. Your activity
participant will be able to double-click the
email attachment to add the activity
automatically to his or her ACT! or Outlook
calendar.
Before using the Automatic Email feature for
activity participants, you'll need to configure
ACT!'s email settings. Click Tools | Preferences
| Email tab. Then, click the Email System Setup
button to set ACT! to work with Outlook, Outlook
Express, Lotus Notes, or Internet Mail.
To automatically
create an e-mail message for activity
participants:
- Bring up the Schedule Activity dialog
box and set the basic activity attributes.
(See the previous tip.)
- In the upper right corner of the
Schedule Activity dialog box, click the
Options drop-down.
- Select the option to send an activity
email.
- Click OK to schedule the activity. ACT!
will automatically draft an outgoing message
for all activity participants.
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