A View from the TopLine

As you have probably heard by now, Act! and Saleslogix were acquired by Swiftpage earlier this year.  With the transition to new ownership, the Act! and Saleslogix products will surely be undergoing some exciting changes.

As an Act! user, you may have experienced the following issue when creating an opportunity for a contact.  The history shows that the opportunity was created in the opportunity table; however, it does not appear at the contact level.

As a TopLine Designer, Dash or Alerts user, you are allowed a limited number of license activations to accommodate computer upgrades or re-installs.  Each time you install the TopLine license on a new computer, it counts as an activation against your TopLine serial number.

Email templates can be a great time saver for communicating with your customers.  Many businesses need to email their customers frequently about the same topics such as billing and support issues.  Why waste time creating an email from scratch each time?  If you use a customer relationship management (CRM) or contact management system such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SalesLogix or ACT!, you have the ability to easily and quickly create customized email templates.

One of my favorite features in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is the in-line grid.  In-line grid functionality available in MSCRM 2011 allows you get a full picture of your contacts and customers in one view.  You can embed tables from any view in CRM inside another view or form.

There are still many people using Windows XP.  It is a great operating system (OS).  It was released in October of 2001 and is still in use on 38% of computers as of February of 2013.  As with most software, it will not be supported forever.

Learn how to personalize any of the list views within ACT!.  The list views include Company, Contact, Opportunity, Task or Group.  The list views also appear on each tab at the bottom half of the Contact, Company, Opportunity or Group records.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives you two great options to track your marketing activities:  campaigns and quick campaigns.  Quick campaigns allow you to track a single campaign activity and its success rate.

As most marketers know, a major key to success is the ability to gauge your results against targets.  Without that meter, you are taking a shot in the dark with no real way of judging whether you have hit your target.

If you are an ACT! 2013 user who uses Microsoft Outlook for your email, the following quick tip may be useful for you.  Occasionally a user may inadvertently delete a contact in Outlook and then try to add the contact back into Outlook by synchronizing ACT! and Outlook.