Integration

Rex

Integration with Microsoft Office
ACT! provides many integration points with the Microsoft Office suite of products in order to leverage their capabilities. Integration with Microsoft Office is achieved in some cases by embedding the Object Models, such as exporting to Excel, or by targeted application add-ons, such as the ACT! add-on for Microsoft Outlook that installs with ACT! and ACT! Premium.

Integration with Microsoft Outlook
Integration with Microsoft Outlook includes calendar, contact, and e-mail integration.
Calendar Integration
With ACT! and ACT! Premium, if users schedule some appointments and tasks in ACT! and some in Outlook, they may find it helpful to view all calls, meetings, and to-dos on a single calendar in either application. Calendar updating lets users synchronize their ACT! and Outlook calendars. Users can view Outlook activities on ACT! calendars, in the Task List, and in the Activities tab. Once activities appear in ACT!, users can associate contacts to the activity records, modify them, and even clear them for complete history tracking.
In ACT! Premium, the calendar synchronization can run as a scheduled task for each user.

E-mail Integration
With integration with Outlook e-mail, users can benefit from Outlook e-mail capabilities while integrating with core components of ACT!. There are four integration points:

1. Sending and receiving e-mails using the ACT! e-mail client – The ACT! e-mail client is an interface that sits in front of Outlook. Users send and view e-mail in this interface, which provides additional functionality over Outlook and other forms of e-mail integration. For example, users can create ACT! activities from e-mails, quickly look up contacts from e-mails received, and attach e-mails to group or company records. The ACT! e-mail client is only available in ACT! and ACT! Premium.

2. Using Outlook e-mail while in ACT! – Users may want to send e-mail from within ACT! using Outlook rather than the ACT! e-mail client. If this option is selected, everything from mail merge5 to clicking on hyperlinks will use Outlook e-mail client.

3. Integrating address books – If users utilize Microsoft Outlook to send and receive e-mail messages, they can add one or more ACT! address books to the Outlook application.
When a user writes a message, they can select ACT! contacts to send it to, and record
it to the contacts’ history. Users can also attach received Outlook e-mail messages to a contact’s record.

4. Attaching e-mail to ACT! contacts – If users don’t want to select a name from the address book, they can automatically attach e-mails to ACT! contacts when sending a message.
The integration silently processes the matching of e-mail addresses and recording of history to ACT! contacts, outside of Outlook, so performance and workflow are not affected. Further, the integration between ACT! and Outlook is designed to support ACT!, ACT! Premium, and ACT! Premium for Web products when any or all of the products are installed.

Integration with Outlook Contacts
With ACT! and ACT! Premium, users can import data from Outlook using the Import Wizard. Outlook contacts import from a user’s Contacts folder and any subfolders of that folder located on the user’s computer. When importing information, like appointments, notes, or journal entries, users can map it to contacts imported from Outlook or to contacts in their ACT! database.

Microsoft Exchange contacts will import from a Contacts folder, subfolders of a Contacts folder, and the Exchange Server’s Public folders, including the Contacts folder stored on the network; however, users cannot import records from the Global Address List.
Further, when using Outlook as the e-mail client, a user can create a contact in ACT! by the simple click of a button.3 ACT! provides an Outlook add-in, which is installed with ACT!. This add-in enables easy contact creation from the Outlook e-mail client. Users can select the target ACT! database “on-the-fly” and ACT! will use duplicate checking settings for the selected database. Contacts that are created will adhere to the database preference for access of new contacts (private or public).

Integration with Microsoft Word
With ACT! and ACT! Premium, users can specify Microsoft Word as the word processing tool for creating or modifying documents and templates. ACT! adds a menu to Word; from that menu a user can attach a document to a contact record, send a document in an e-mail message or fax, and display the mail merge fields.

Integration with Microsoft Excel
A user can export the Contact List, Group List, and Company List data to Microsoft Excel, if the appropriate version (Excel 2002, 2003, or 2007) of Excel is installed on the user’s machine. It’s also possible to export the Opportunity List data to Excel and display pivot table information and analysis automatically. And, before export to Excel, users can customize1 the columns on the list views.
The columns and data shown on the ACT! list view are retained in Excel. Further, ACT! and ACT! Premium adds a menu to Excel, and from that menu a user can attach a spreadsheet to a contact record and even map contact, group, or company fields to Excel spreadsheets.

Internet Services Integration
The integrated Internet Services feature enables access to an Internet browser and provides direct links
to ACT! products, service, and support and other Web pages. To use Internet Services, users need
an Internet account, an Internet Service Provider, and Microsoft Internet Explorer (for version compatibility, see ACT! system requirements at www.act.com).
The Internet Links submenu offers links to several reference and research sites, such as MapQuest® and Yahoo® Search (the reference and research sites will vary according to your country).
Users can also attach a Web page to a contact by opening the Web page and clicking the Attach Web page to ACT! contact icon in the toolbar.3 The details of the attached Web page appear on the History tab for the selected contacts.

Other E-mail Applications
ACT! and ACT! Premium integrate with Lotus Notes®, Eudora®, and POP3 accounts, delivering all the benefits of ACT! e-mail, such as attaching inbound e-mails to contacts, creating new contacts and activities from the e-mail sender, and creating contact history on the contact record when sending e-mails, while still using Lotus Notes.

Accounting Integration
The ACT! Accounting Framework provides the ability to integrate ACT! and ACT! Premium with accounting applications. This integration provides a complete view of all customer interactions for inquiry handling and performing follow-up tasks, and it eliminates duplicate data entry.

Using accounting links, access to accounting information is provided from a tab in ACT!. ACT! users are able to see Estimates, Invoices, Sales, and Payments for any linked contact, giving them a more detailed view of their relationship history.