Act! 2006

J

JohnParlabane

Guest
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!
 
C

Cuffy_Meigs

Guest
Got ACT 2006

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.
 
J

joeycan

Registered
Stay away from ACT...

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! by Sage 2006/?14@255.3qSca8qGgfl.1@

User reviews on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...-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.
 
C

Cuffy_Meigs

Guest
Act standalone

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.
 
L

luisr

Guest
Avoid Act 2006 unless you have LOTS of hardware

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.
 
J

JohnParlabane

Guest
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
 
J

JohnParlabane

Guest
ACT! 2006 update

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 )

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...
 
D

Doug Walsh

Guest
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.
 
J

JohnParlabane

Guest
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
 
R

RJAUSTIN

Guest
More of the same

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"
 
C

Cuffy_Meigs

Guest
GTD tips for ACT

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...
 
A

alexandregobbi

Guest
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
 
C

Cuffy_Meigs

Guest
ACT & Treo 650

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.
 
A

alexandregobbi

Guest
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,
 
A

alexandregobbi

Guest
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!
 
C

Cuffy_Meigs

Guest
ACT & Treo

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.
 
J

JohnParlabane

Guest
so far, so good

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
 
T

turbo2liter

Guest
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?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top