Everyone who reads my blog knows by now that we work with Customer Relationship Software.  It's one of the applications in the aresenal of tools used by businesses to increase sales and customer loyalty.  We use it ourselves as well.  When you are a smaller business, you need every trick in the book to stay on target and generate new business. One of the things that happens to everyone, not just small business owners, is we get caught up in the day to day minutia and work that

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

Years and years ago, I presented a session at a conference and called it My Nirvana model.  The drawing to the left is what I presented at the time.  Basically the premise was having a model to find the proper platform for your business application.  The arrows on the chart meant the price went up based on various parameters. The key point I was making with the presentation though was to not only worry about the platform but to ensure you were asking the right questions in

Patricia Egen Consulting is pleased to announce all our ACT addons are certified and tested to work with ACT V16.  Check out our eStore for more details.  eStore

Recently, two of my customers suffered huge business losses because their applications were unaccessbile on their cloud solutions.  I am not a proponent of putting everything in the cloud for just this reason.  These clients were ones who went down this path because someone else suggested that putting every business process in the Cloud was a “good thing.”  Well, yes, until the cloud is not available. For one customer, it cost them over $50,000 to be down for a day.  A

Here's another Excel tip. Just helped a client resolve a situation and thought it would make a good Blog article.  This client had links to external references that were not resolving and Excel would immediately crash and close whenever they tried to open the spreadsheet in question.  Needless to say they were freaking out.  Here's what I did to resolve it. 1. If Excel is still open, click on Task Manager and close the application. 2. Restart Excel and go to a new spreadsheet

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

Ever wanted to put together a dog and pony show to demonstrate your services and products? Of course.  Did you think it would take lots of time and money?  You would think that setting this up would probably be a major undertaking that would be a huge time-drain.  I thought so as well.  The first time I had an opportunity to put on a roadshow, I only had a 3 week  advance notice.  At the time, I was very busy and needed to come up with ways to make this happen