Act! 2006

[JohnParlabane]

I am currently using ACT! 2000 and about to upgrade to 2006

Has anybody done this lately and what has the switch been like

thanks in advance!

[Cuffy_Meigs]

Yes, I made the switch to ACT 2006. I have been a life-long ACT user (I'm in sales), but abandoned it in favor of Agendus earlier this year when I got a new Treo 650 (older ACT was non-compatible). Agendus does a GREAT job with GTD....but is unwieldy to the point of useless in a 1000-plus sales contact management role. ACT is a superior sales-focused contact manager.

Now that it sychs up with my Treo, ACT 2006 handles both my sales career AND my sales "secret weapon"---GTD.

I feel sorry for all the other sales guys out there who have never discovered GTD---it truly has changed my sales career & productivity.

As far as ACT 2006, it is great & very GTD-friendly. My only complaint is that NA's on your PC-ACT Task List get put on the Calendar in Palm-ACT on the Treo when you hot-synch. Kinda annoying not to be able to see your NA list in one place on your phone...oh well.

[joeycan]

John,

I was an Act 2000 user and liked the product, but my understanding is that Act 2006 has major problems, specially when used in conjunction with Outlook. Take a look at the Act user forums http://webx.act.com/ACT%21%20by%20Sage%202006/?14@255.3qSca8qGgfl.1@

User reviews on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000AP0H6C/qid=1128180805/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_unbuck_1/002-8998992-1329649?v=glance&s=software&n=541966

What amazes me is how some of the PC media reviewers have given ACT 2006 good marks as it does not deserve it as it is still full of bugs.


I looked at upgrading and quickly decided against it. Now I use a great outlook add-in called Avidian Prophet, it is not ACT but it works great with Outlook and provides most of the functionality from ACT in addition if you are an Outlook user it does not make any changes to Outlook.

I recommend you contact Avidian and discuss with the sales rep how you are currently using ACT and they will explain in great detail how Avidan will adapt to your workflow. They are brutally honest about what the software does, and they offer full 30 day no question asked guarantee.

I have been using Avidian for 6 weeks now and am yet to find a single bug...a great improvement over ACT.

Here is a link
http://avidian.com/

Don't worry I have no relation to these guys just a happy customer as it meets my needs.

[Cuffy_Meigs]

fyi, I do not use Act in conjunction with Outlook, so I have not experienced the bugs mentioned above. As a standalone contact manager, it's fine. If I encounter any problems, I'll report.

[luisr]

Act 2006/v8.0 is slow, buggy, and almost unusable unless you have pretty much the fastest hardware going. It uses an unreasonable amount of system resources and memory. Check out the discussion groups at act.com, or the reviews at Amazon and you'll get a pretty consistent message ...

We too were using Act 2000 until recently. Tried Act 2005 (aka Act 7), and it was completely unusable on even our most powerful systems: it turned out to be the buggiest, slowest piece of software I've ever used, and I've been in the I.T. industry for many years. A simple screen change (from Contact to List view, for example) takes anywhere from 1.5 to 3 minutes.

The small workgroup that was using Act 2000 (Act 5.0) upgrade to version 6 -- but we're avoiding Act 2006. Maybe the new owners (Sage) will get it right in version 9, or maybe they'll finally release a patch that fixes some of their speed issues. For now though, version 2006 is an improvement on 2005 but still far from acceptable for every day use.

[JohnParlabane]

we'', I have decided to throw caution to the wind and have upgraded as of this morning. I would keep you informed of my progress, sucesses and failures as I go.

I would like to get a "feel" for the number of people in this forum who are using ACT! as their primary database and organizer, and see if this would be a good place to share tips and tricks in a GTD context

[JohnParlabane]

went from ACT! 2000 to ACT! 2006 and have been using about a week now.

wanted to update everyone on how it is and how it is going.

Overall, everything is very good. Of the things they have added to it, very happy with (VERY, very happy with)

there is some stuff they ripped out (like drag and drop calendars and lists, which I really, really miss <SAGE, why would you take away great features?>)

The reports of being a CPU hog are true, and it runs like a tired DOG and I have a great system I am running it on

have about 2000 contacts and I would be very. very worried of I had 5000 or above

all that being said, there is alot of new customization which makes it perfect for GTD and the overall ease of "tweaking" is great for GTD nuts

for all my complaints, I am starting to use it to organize everyone in my business with daily activity reports (I own a sign shop) and we also use it to track job time

so far, so good...

[Doug Walsh]

I have been an ACT user for about 10 years. The latest release, ACT 2006 is clean with very very little problems. I have about 22,000 contacts. They have added some features back like the group and company tree, which is great. They also have Dynamic Group/Company linking which ties the contact to that particular group and/or company. I need detailed notes of who I spoke to and when, next actions, tie that to companies and list out the sales opportunities.

I'm very pleased with this release. I use the GTD priciples with it. I'm also and Outlook user. I use all three together. I will that there were some tweak to link the emails as an "create an Activity". That I'm sure will be addressed.

Try the free 30 day trial and see for yourself.

[JohnParlabane]

Doug:

Thanks for your feedback concerning ACT! 2006. I am pretty happy with it too, and it is nice to know there is someone else out there using it with alot of contacts and happy. I am a sales guy at heart, (used to be) so I know why you love ACT! I was also a big Goldmine user (old company) but when I bought my own business I decided to go the ACT! route and have been happy

feel free to contact me in "the real world" sometime. I would like to have someone to "shoot the S**T" with in regards to GTS and ACT!, and it would be great to have a person to call and ask "do you have any idea how to do this???"

here is my website www.signsneversleep.com

also, if you have not yet used the ACT! support chat, it is very, very good. I am using my 60 days for the upgarde right now, and I might actually pay for the yearly support plan

OH, and I should point out John Parlabane is just my screen name

[JohnParlabane]

Just another update for everyone

Very happy with using ACT! for my workflow and GTD

Can basically make the program do anything I need to

http://signsneversleep.typepad.com/signs_never_sleep/2005/10/act_screen.html

[RJAUSTIN]

I swore after getting tagged with ACT7/2005 I would never again try another release of ACT, but then came 2006. it is, well more of the same. how can a piece of software that performs relatively simple opperations, scam so much system resources. And lets not forget SAGES fab customer support!

if your spending more time trying to get your "tools to work"...its time to find "new tools"

[Cuffy_Meigs]

John, I did a full-bore "how do I make GTD work in ACT" analysis this weekend and thought I'd share some ideas:

Groups = Contexts
Create a group for each of your contexts (@work, @home, etc.). Then when you enter a new To-Do, associate it with its context. For non-prospect-related actions, create them within My Record (ex: Submit TPS report). Go to Groups, click the @context group, click the Activity tab, and voila, there's your NA list for each context.

Contacts = Projects
This is obvious for a salesperson---each contact/prospect is a project whose successful outcome is "Happy New Client" & you lay out a series of NAs to get them to Client status. For other projects, just create a new contact to represent it (ex: Buy New Car) & fill in the NAs (get trade-in value from Edmunds.com).

The only GTD hitch I've experienced is the hard date you are required to put on your To-Do's. It's just visual, but seeing a hard date associated with Someday-Maybes makes them "appear" as "Nov-1st-Absolutely's"---takes some of the flexibility away from S-M and makes it just another To-Do list. Oh well. Just remind yourself that the dates are rough targets and not deadlines, I suppose...

[alexandregobbi]

Hello Guys,

What do you think about the ACT 2006 + Treo 650. Is it working fine?

What about the ACT 2006 in a network? Does the client stations have also to be a "super PC"?

Thanks!

Alexandre

[Cuffy_Meigs]

I use ACT and Treo 650. The synch works fine. My only complaint (noted above) is that my ACT To-Do's appear as Calendar items on the Treo, not as Tasks. This is annoying for 2 reasons:

1. There's no central to-do list you can run through. If it's not happening today or in the very near future it's hard to find future To-Do's and certainly no way to find them contextually (@home, @work, etc.)

2. Data capture on the Treo is useless because if you enter a Task there, it doesn't reappear as a To-Do in ACT. Moreover, you cannot schedule Activities for Contacts from the Treo and have it show up in ACT.

So, it's pretty much a one-way street from ACT to Treo. Data capture works insofar as you can tap in some Tasks, but it's up to you to manually re-enter it correctly into ACT (associated with Contacts, contexts, etc.).

BTW, this ACT dilemma is common for ALL Palm devices, not just Treo. Blame the ACT Link for Palm OS app.

[alexandregobbi]

Thanks!

But do you know if this problem is something that ACT is working on? Is there a better software to work with Treo? One detail is that I don't use the MS Outlook.

Regards,

[alexandregobbi]

Hi,

Just one more question. Today I have around 6k contacts in my ACT 2000. Can I download all these contacts to the treo?

Thanks again!

[Cuffy_Meigs]

I scoured ACT's discussion boards about the poor Palm link software and found no good news. I did, however, find another 3rd part app http://www.companionlink.com. Have not tried it, but it claims to do what the ACT Palm link ought to do (To-Do's as Tasks, Activities linked to Contacts, etc.).

I currently have 800 contacts which came over to the Treo no prob. Dunno about 6,000...depends on your Treo memory.

[Denver Dave]

I tried to use Act 2005 for over 6 months and finally gave up because of the speed (or lack of). Is 2006 any better?

I'm currently useing Time & Chaos, which does not have all the features, but is fast, easy and tends to get used more. Here is a T & C discussion about applying GTD concepts with Time & Chaos:
http://forum-chaos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=127&start=0

[JohnParlabane]

I am happily using Act! 2006 every minute of my waking day. I did not live through the 2005 difficulties, and was a ver 6.0 user for years.

2006 is NOT as fast as 6.0 (which never hesitated to do what you wanted) and had drag and drop calenders and lists (which I really miss)

However, there are new features to 2006 which are "can't live withouts" for me

On the whole, I am very happy with 2006. am I in love with it? no I have no interest in switching and will stick it our until everything improves

[turbo2liter]

I downloaded ACT 2006 demo Thursday from ACT!'s site, and spent an inordinate amount of time entering in all my contacts, calendar schedule, to-do list, contact histories, etc. I go to get into it last night, and it says my trial has expired!!! I've only had it for 4 days!!! It ran like a remote desktop session over 28k modem on my P4 3.2 1GB RAM system!!!

So now all the changes Ive made since Thursday are lost, because it won't even let me view or export all the information I entered in. The whole reason for this was my old computer crashed, I had to restore everything from an aged printout and update newer information by scanning through emails and postit notes.

Is there any way I can just export all my work into a CSV and move on to better software?

[Doug Walsh]

If your an ACT user, you need to load a free utility call Free XP RAM Pro. Do a google on that world and you'll see it as a free download. It helps greatly with the RAM issues and performance of ACT. It's a lifesaver.

[billjw]

G'day gurus ...

I have tried Goldmine, Act! 6 and Act! 8, evaluated Maximiser and even salesforce.com.

Years ago I discovered Ecco Pro, used it for a long while and kept a copy in my bottom drawer as updating to Office 2003 (and Outlook) seemed just more practical.

I dug Ecco out the other day, installed it and imported all my contacts - effortlessly. Set up some project lists for a couple of my clients, utilised the inbuilt Gantt Charts and got down to business.

I think I'll stick with Ecco for a while now.

Act!6 promised a lot and does do things that Ecco can't (or I'm not aware of) and Act! 7 & 8 just use up all my resources, thus slowing me down.

In the end though, Ecco just works, configures very flexibly and keeps everything in order. Not bad for a program with no development for 7 + years. (And while it looks old, the lack of "glamour" helps with the speed issues).

Just a couple of cents worth.

Bill

[pattyf]

Like a lot of you, I have also tried numerous systems, looking for the one that had everything I wanted. I never really liked Outlook, and after it crashed on me for the 3rd time in 6 months I gave up on it, but missed the GTD system that I had worked so hard to put together.

I tried a new program do-Organizer by GemX, but it was missing a lot of what I wanted and too much of what I didn't need. I also tried Ecco, but couldn't quite grasp how to use it. Franklin Planner for XP was cool for some things, but I used it mainly for the notes section as an outliner. Plus many others, some of which I paid for and others I just used the free trial.

Finally I sat down with my ACT program which I had only used for contacts before and discovered that I could really mesh my own GTD system in with it! I now use it for e-mail, contacts, calendar & tasks and Franklin Planner for an outliner, with a little bit of Evernote thrown in. I am finally at peace with my system and so happy to find that others use GTD with ACT! also.

[Deb Consultant]

Hi all! We just converted a client from ACT!2000 to ACT! 2006. It definately is slow and has bugs. I am hitting one that is stumping tech support - maybe you guys can help: ACT! 2006 is working with Outlook 2000. When you are in ACT!2006 and hit the e-mail icon from the left side of the screen your e-mail opens. Go to your Inbox and choose an e-mail sent to you from a person who is a contact in ACT!. Send a REPLY. Now look for the history of that e-mail. MOST of the time (but not all!) the history falls into your "My Contact" history, when we really want it to show under the contact history. ACT! Support claims this is not a feature. However, I have seen it done once, but can't re-create it. Anyone have any answers? Thanks!

[pengrus]

I looked at upgrading and quickly decided against it. Now I use a great outlook add-in called Avidian Prophet, it is not ACT but it works great with Outlook and provides most of the functionality from ACT in addition if you are an Outlook user it does not make any changes to Outlook.

I recommend you contact Avidian and discuss with the sales rep how you are currently using ACT and they will explain in great detail how Avidan will adapt to your workflow. They are brutally honest about what the software does, and they offer full 30 day no question asked guarantee.

I have been using Avidian for 6 weeks now and am yet to find a single bug...a great improvement over ACT.

Here is a link
http://avidian.com/

Don't worry I have no relation to these guys just a happy customer as it meets my needs.

I tried out prophet from Avidian the past week. And I must say that I am very dissapointed with their product. Their sales reps who called me are very polite and professional, Chris, the best sales I ever dealt with. The follow up support is also second to none.

However, my problems with Prophet is:
1. My system is clean, new computer, new outlook with a couple of addins like skype and google desktop search. Prophet slows down the whole outlook 2003. After I decided to return the product for money back, I was told to upgrade to fix the speed issue.

2. After 3.0 upgrade, the speed is ok. So I thought it is usable given its great support and price. Not so. My outlook contacts won't work like normal. Whenever I made a chance to outlook, it won't change. And it kept asking me if I want to save the change.

Althought it sounded good, I have to return it. It might be simple, but it does not work well.

On the other hand, I heard ACT! is complex, and tried it before, this time, I downloaded ACT! 2006 and start liking it. The speed is very good. I only have 500 contacts. And its really powerful...

Thanks for all the information shared in this thread. I now learned what is GTD.

[smithdoug]

Act has long been the tool of choice for sales people and my recollection is that it is very much oriented toward the sales process, from prospecting for leads up through the point where the customer makes a buy decision and the sale is closed. Ditto for Prophet.

Our customers have pretty well already decided to buy from us by the time they first approach us, so we need something to organize all of the communications, notes, etc. for each customer from that point on. I purchased Intuit’s Customer Manager for that purpose (since we were using their QuickBooks accounting software, and have since upgraded to Premier) but Customer Manager has always been painfully slow. Performance improved when I doubled RAM, but as the customer list as increased, performance has deteriorated. Which is a puzzle. The file size is only 24 MB and there are only 600 customers in it. [Admittedly, performance would improve if I didn’t have so much else running on the system. Outlook is always open and I typically also have QuickBooks Accounting, MindManager, Customer Manager and an illustration program (CorelDraw of Illustrator) open at the same time but I need all of them running to work on customer jobs and handle their inquiries when they call in.]

I wonder if Microsoft’s Business Customer Manager add-in for Outlook wouldn’t be a better alternative, allowing me to dump Customer Manager. Problem is, since the business is in its infancy, I would guess that the number of customers will grow to a couple thousand over the next several months and could easily reach 10,000 within a couple years. That seems like an awful lot to be carrying around in Outlook, but perhaps by then we could put all of that data on a server. Would that help? Or would I always have to carry a humongous file in Outlook? Don’t know.

[RichyYoung]

would anyone recommend any forums for advice on using act2006 other than paying for the tech support we are having trouble recording the fact that we have sent out a mailmerge, wed like to record that we have done it automatically, preferably in with the customers details and that way we can plan to follow up in 1 week with a call ? and also not send them multiple emails

[cbbond]

ACT! 2006 Premium for Workgroups is not compatible with Windows ActiveSync 4.2. Therefore I cannot install ACT! Link for my hand-held device. Does anyone have a solution for this issue?