Here's another one of our "We love your tips" posts. I have now helped two clients resolve this issue so I thought - hm - let me turn it into a blog article. By now, I think everyone knows I adore the Swiftpage eMarketing tool.  It's what I use for my marketing campaigns and I have dozens of clients using it as well.  Lately, some of my clients have been having problems editing their HTML templates.  In all the cases, it turned out to be an issue with Internet Explorer (IE

It's time for another ACT Tip.  This week, one of our clients upgraded to ACT V16 so they could utilize some of the great new features.  One of their newest sales staff was using the web based version and loved the flexibility.  He could access his details from a customer site and didn't have to carry his "heavy" laptop.  His next purchase is going to be a small tablet, but in the mean time he has been happy with just jumping on a browser when at a client site.  Until

When you hear the term ROI, I am betting you are thinking money.  When I buy this stock, what will be my return.  If I invest in a business, will I get my money back. According to Wikipedia, ROI, or Return on Investment “is the concept of an investment of some resource yielding a benefit to the investor.”  Basically it means whatever you invest, be it money, time or effort, you are expecting some form of benefit. Often I am asked by clients to help them get across

We will periodically get calls from customers complaining that ACT syncs run forever or their ACT database is running too slow.  Before killing the computer, as the graphic alludes to, instead it's better to look at what is the root cause of the problem.  Usually, at this point we ask a couple of questions then we logon to their database and start checking a few things.  One of the things we look at is the size of the ALF file. An ACT database is a SQL database and is really two

Recently, I read a great article talking about calling prospects.  The main point of the article was that not all leads were equal - you needed to mix it up when reaching out to potential clients.   One of the questions people often ask is how many times should a prospect be called before you give up and call it a dead lead.  The article said it depended on the size of the business.  Smaller business owners were able to make decisions quicker while larger organizations had "

By default, ACT will return 50 results whenever you do a search using Universal Search.  To increase or decrease this number, do the following: Close ACT!. Open Windows® Services screen and locate ACT! Service Host. Right click on the service and select Stop. Using Windows Explorer, browse to the Sage ACT! installation directory. 32-bit operating system default: C:\Program Files\ACT\Act for Windows 64-bit operating system default: C:\Program Files (x86)\ACT\Act

You do a search using the Universal search box in the uppr right corner,but it nevers finishes.  Here's what to do. Close out of Act! on all machines accessing the database From the server, press the Windows key + R on your keyboard In the Run dialog, type services.msc and press enter Right-click on Act! Service Host and select Restart Launch Act! and test Universal Search If you are using a Remote database, do the same thing above as the index files reside on the same machine as the

One of my favorite features added to ACT CRM is Universal search.  This capability allows you search anything inside of ACT, including attachments.  You can filter the results as well.  But, hidden, tucked away in help manuals no one ever reads, are some tricks to further define your searching. This blog article will show you those tricks. Using Special Characters and Operators You can use special characters and operators with your search term. Special characters are a symbol