Pat Egen’s Weblog

Time to ACT. What does that say to you? Time to do what you need to do? Now’s the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country? You get the idea. It means time to do what needs to be done. Ok, Let’s take it to another dimension. What if it means having “time enough” to get things done. Hm. Peaked your interest? Good. That’s the topic of this blog.

We are busy people. It’s a busy world. How often do you hear people say “if only I had 2 more hours in the day.” Often. Well, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon. That means we have to take control of our own time destinies to keep them in check. There are tons of time management seminars and tools and I’ve probably taken them all. Their purpose is to help you understand what are YOUR time drains.

Types of time drains are interruptions, emergencies, answering email, reading blogs (just had to say that), answering phones, opening paper mail, responding to people coming into your office, searching for information missing from a project, not having a work process in place and working on your calendar. I bet you spend a lot more time on these processes than you imagine. Many many years ago, I was part of a project that was working on winning a Demming Award. A Demming award is for superlative process management. One of the things we had to do was record everything we did, by hour, by day, for two weeks. We did this on a spreadsheet. We were even given watches to keep track of the time. This was an eye-opening exercise. And this was before email, Facebook, Twitter and the internet. It is extraordinary how you can flitter away time on the littlest things.

You should try this exercise as noted above, and then figure out how can you fix some of the issues. What I am going to show you here in this blog is how you can do that with a contact manager. My contact manager of choice is ACT!. Not all of them do what ACT! can do, so if I talk about something here that your contact manager (if you have one) doesn’t do, then consider moving to ACT!.

Ok, here we go. I’m going to list some common time drains and show you how ACT! can help you manage the time drain demons.

Interruptions.
This one is easy. You need to go into your calendar and put in an activity that says “Busy” or “Door closed” or whatever makes sense to you. If you are more productive in the morning, put it in this timeslot then. The idea is your calendar is flagged as not available so you can work on things that need your utmost concentration. We can’t avoid all interruptions, but we can sure try.

Delegation.
Ever get a project that is missing information? You need to send that project detail right back where it came from to get that data. Open a Todo in ACT!, call it “gather missing data”. Put a timeframe for a week or so and set it so it alarms. Send an email to the person who hasn’t sent you the data. Your Todo will pop up reminding you that you are waiting on information. The good news you should have put that project into the “waiting on details” pile and can now go find it. The better news was by setting the alarm, and “delegating” it back to the person who has the details removed from your work pile. In essence, you moved the “work monkey” back to where it belonged. You can also use Activity Series in ACT! to assign steps to someone else, there by delegating to another and off of your desk.

Work processes.
When you work on a process, you typically go through a standard set of steps. Do you call people asking for detail? Do you send emails asking for more information? Do you do the same steps all the time. Then you have an activity series. In ACT!, you can design an Activity series to remind you of events that need to happen at a set period of time. You can even “delegate” them to other people (one of the best ways to get things off your plate.) You can even design more than one type of activity series. These are very powerful.

Keeping on track:
Your calendar is your most valuable tool in keeping on top of your time. If you earmark times for “busy” or “working on mail” or add an entry that says “follow up on pipeline” you have alarms popping up that tell you where you need to be and when or what you have to do. Someone walks in your door – you get tied up talking to them. You forget you have an appointment. An audible alarm from a calendar entry can get your attention and help you shoo that person out the door. Use this tool to your best advantage. Alarms are an excellent way to keep you on track. One of the things you can do in ACT! is set the priority of your calendar items. Use this – and use it wisely. Make critical appointments High priority. If the entry is a low item, make it a low priority and don’t bother with setting an alarm. ALL HIGH PRIORITY ITEMS SHOULD HAVE AN ALARM. Period.

ACT! is more than just a contact manager. It’s a way to keep track of the who, what, when, where and why of things (but that’s another blog.) It can help you keep on top of your day. Time management doesn’t have to be a nightmare. Use tools to help you. After all, it’s all about having “time to act.”

A leaky truck tire is the impetus for my post today. Last night, while once again using Google to find an answer, it hit me just how vital Google has become to my every day world. I paraphrased a biblical reference, “seek and ye shall find” for the title of this post because, using Google, it’s becoming quite true. Seek and you will find.

My road down the search engine path has been a long one. Doing genealogy research is what first triggered my overwhelming need to travel down the corridors of the web world. I started out with Yahoo as my first search engine tool and it and I spent many many hours going down website ratholes. I remember the first time I delved into some research I was stunned to realize I had spent 5 solid hours reaching deeply into all kinds of links. I was hooked line and sinker. From then on, it was simply a matter of honing in on my searching skills.

As I progressed, I learned about meta crawlers, search engines that used more than one search engine. Soon, my newest best friends were Dogpile and Metacrawler.com. I stayed with them for quite a while until this shiny newcomer called Google came along. It has now become my search engine of choice. I go back to the metacrawlers periodically, but I find them filled with pay for click sessions that I need to wade through to find the real meat.

So, moving on, let me explain about the leaky tire. Once a long time ago, I was driving a car where the back left rear tire came totally off while I was doing around 55 miles an hour. Luck is the only reason my car didn’t flip over. The tire had been improperly mounted after replacing recalled brakes. What this has produced in me is a major case of paranoia when it comes to wheels and tires. OK, you get the picture. Recently, actually for the last several months, one of our Explorer truck tires has had a slow leak. The Sears store could find no holes in the tires they had installed and sent us on our way. That meant Don had to periodically fill it up with air before a long drive or when we were going to put a load on the vehicle. I asked him if there was any way to fix it – it was his comment of “it’s probably a cracked wheel” that sent me into a tizzy. Remember the paranoia statement from before. Alarm, alarm, alarm, claxsons sounding – that was me.

So, I did my normal approach when honey-dos don’t, and said, ok, fine, I’m not driving that vehicle anymore. Period. Then, I decided to go to my computer and do what I find myself doing anytime a business, personal, or house issue comes up – I look for solutions on Google. And I mean I do it all the time. I do at least one Google search a day – always. Even on Sunday.

Here’s where knowing how and what to search for is one of the best tools you can have in your information arsenal. I knew I had a leaky tire. It was a 1995 Explorer. The suspected culprit was a cracked wheel. So, I formulated the following search phrase – “Explorer leaky tire cracked wheel.”

Now, when you do your first search, it’s key to understand you probably won’t find a hit on the first page. If you do, then you’ve entered enough information into your search words to give Google a chance to quickly find what you are looking for. As it turned out, I hit pay dirt with my very first search phrase. It turns out some faulty tire valves were being recalled because an unlucky soul driving an Explorer had died in a crash caused by a overly-low tire. The tire had the faulty valves and a recent court case confirmed this and the valves were recalled. I found the website, saw what I needed to check on the tires, and headed into the garage armed with a flashlight and magnifying glass. Voila, the valves on our tires matched the recalled numbers exactly. Problem found – now it was simply a case of taking them to Sears and saying “see – fix.”

This is just a onetime example of the power of searching on the web. I can’t imagine running my business without this tool. Yes, we’re computer consultants but anyone can exploit this tool. Market research, product comparisons, demographics, business solutions – you name it – the sky is the limit. And now that Google trolls through social networking sites, you can really find some interesting and current information.

As you go down your searching trails, remember you can’t always believe everything you read on the internet. However, what you do find can point you in the right directions when you otherwise were headed nowhere. The secret is typing in as many words as possible to narrow down your hits. Don’t use words like “and”, “or”, etc because Google will just strip them out anyway. If you do need to include these words, enclose them in double quotes – like “Jack and Jill ran up the hill.”

The Google site has all kinds of tutorials on how to use advanced searching techniques. However, I’m typically in a hurry – well, always in a hurry – and I don’t want to bother clicking on the Advanced button. So, I found out there are some cool search operators that can help you zero in on details. You use them directly in the search box. Here’s some of my favorite with examples: note – you need a colon after the operator name. I put the search words in quotes.

- “Pat Egen search engine site:act.com” – this looks for Pat Egen only on the act.com website
- “Excel samples site:.edu” – finds Excel samples only on university domains (usually a wealth of free stuff)
- “related:www.egenconsulting.com” – find similar or related pages to www.egenconsulting.com
- “link:pregen.wordpress.com” – which pages link to a specific site – in this case, my blog
- “Excel tips filetype:pdf” – find only pdf files that have Excel tips

There are some other neat things you can do when searching Google. If you type in a phone number that is not unlisted, you’ll see the phone listings at the top of your search results. A really fun trick is to find out a local time – simply type in “what time is it in Bermuda.” You get back something that looks like this – “5:49pm Tuesday (ADT) – Time in Bermuda.”

I fly a lot and one of my favorite search tricks is typing in the number of a flight – for example DL10. This will show you current tracking details for that flight number. Just enter the right airline code and number. After trolling around for some more ideas for this blog post, I found you can even use search terms like “better than” or “reminds me of” and then add your keywords. This really works. How cool is that. Remember said Explorer referenced earlier in my post here? Since it’s starting to be more problematic that we’d like, and I was showing my hubbie these cool new search terms, he suggested typing in “better than Toyota Tacoma” and lo and behold a “top ten truck” review came up and the Toyota listed number 1. Now that’s nifty.

The moral of this story is to reach for your favorite browser and head to Google.com to search for stuff you need, whether it’s recipes, leaky tire symptoms and simply how to stay sane in an insane world. Really, try that search string.

Ciao for now.

It seems that whenever I’m at a Calconnect event, I come back with several cool new things I learned.  Here’s the list from last week’s adventure.

1.  Doodle.com – I already blogged about it, but I liked it enough to show it again.

2. Quickly identify where your IP address physically is located. Pretty cool. http://www.liveipmap.com/

3.  My friend Guy showed me extraordinarily lovely photos created by taking several images – over and under exposed – and then merging them into one image. It’s called HDR – High Dynamic Range and the photos are spectacular.  They almost don’t look real.  Here’s a link to some stunning images.

http://www.online-photoshoptutorials.com/2008/10/17-of-the-most-visually-beautiful-hdr-images.html

Only three things this time – but they were nifty

Ok, here’s a first.  Two blogs in the same day.  But I just stumbled on something totally cool and it warrents a second post today.

Have you heard of Doodle.com?  This is a super nifty site where you can schedule an event or send out a poll to large amounts of people, quickly, easily and free.  It’s growing at around 10% per month via word of mouth.  I just used it today to send out a poll asking about whether or not people knew you could schedule meetings and send invites via email – see my prior post.  I used Twitter to send out the poll link and yikes, I got three hits almost instantly.   Nifty indeed.

Here’s the link – http://www.doodle.com.  Give it a try.

Well, this blog entry is late because I’ve been doing what most people are doing now. Trying to keep my head above water in lean times. That being said, I figured that would be good blog item to talk about what we are trying to do and what we’ve done in the past to stay in business. Which, by the way, is now 11 years and counting.

Our first requirement to become more nimble was after 9/11. Most of our business was focused around Corporate America. Well, they shut their doors on spending and we ended up looking for business elsewhere quickly. I had spent 9 months managing a team rolling out ACT while still employed in Corporate America. I swore I’d never touch it again. Well, one of my favorite expressions is “never say never.” I took a chance, spent quite a bit of money and went and got certified in ACT. Part of the process of becoming certified meant I was put on their partner website. A client called exactly one month after we were put on the list and that turned into a contract that paid for the certification process three times over. Ok. Good idea. Successful conclusion.

In fact, we haven’t looked back since. ACT has become an integral part of our business. So much so that it has caused my other favorite expression (or better said – Alarm) to go off – “never put all your eggs in one basket.”

We do a lot of things besides ACT but since we train, customize, resell, and develop Addons for the product, it has become our cash cow. Now, though, people are watching their dollars. People are spending but much more reluctantly. This has sent me once again into nimble mode to see what we can do to keep the coffers full.

Ok, so here’s what we’re doing. I took a look at which industries were still calling and looking for ACT. I decided those groups would become the focus of a couple of marketing campaigns. I took some time to research what were the buzzwords and issues for those groups and made sure our campaigns addressed those issues.

As for my ACT clients, I figured they too were all in the same boat as we were. They were doing whatever they could to keep money rolling into their businesses. One thing in their favor was they all had ACT. ACT is sitting there with “gold in them thar hills” – meaning data saying who hadn’t been contacted, who wanted certain products, who preferred what, etc. It was time for my clients to drill down into their ACT data and mine the gold. That became the next focus of our group. We started looking for ways to make it easier to see the data.

I attended a session on a cruise that talked about custom reports (www.crystalclearessentials.com). Steve Stroz, a reporting guru, had a great idea about showing people reports and pointing them at the source. He also had done a few dashboards using a custom tool developed by Sage. I had already had Don working on the dashboard DLL and had dashboards of my own. I saw what Steve had done, and created some similar dashboards kicked up a notch based around things my clients wanted, packaged them up into an easy to install package (complete with our logos) and sent out a email blast about them. The email basically showed people how the dashboards looked and how easy it made it to spot problem areas or potential goldmines. I have since fallen in love with the dashboards because it is immediately apparant that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Case in point. I was at a client site doing ACT training. The group in the audience was less than receptive to the idea of needing to input data. They figured management would never look at it, so why bother. Well, then I showed them a dashboard. This particular dashboard showed activities. One person had been doing a super job of keeping their activities in ACT. Their bar line was 4 times larger than everyone else. Did I mention this group was very competitive. That chart was exactly what was needed to motivate that crew. And it made it clear to me that text is fine, but graphs are powerful. Oh, and management liked viewing them as well. Hm, there went that idea that management wouldn’t be looking at the data.

Which leads me to the next thing we’ve been doing to keep money flowing into the business. Again, I started looking at what people can do to get a better idea of what is going on with their business. Most everyone has Excel in house. Not everyone, though, is well versed in Pivot Tables and charts. I had two customers call for Excel training and that is what we focused on. One of my recent posts talked about showing Pivot tables to a client and it made their trip to our office worth the price of admission. And they were there for ACT training. However, it was the Pivot tables that made their day. Well, ok, Mr. Customer, you want to focus on Excel Pivot tables – we can do that.

That’s where being nimble comes into play. When the economy changes or events arise that drive business away from your door, you need to be nimble enough to change directions or tactics. You need to be aware of what is going on with your customers so you can point them towards things that will help not only them but you as well. It’s not quite the same as “you want me to jump how high.” It’s more of a “well, it was purple last week, it’s green this week.” I guess it’s like being a chameleon. You have to be able to change your colors when necessary. The trick is knowing which color and how fast.

We’re still working on our own color changes. When the phone is not ringing as much, we are using the time to work on the new processes, ideas or campaigns. Use the time to put in place new tools or products to sell. Yes, it’s scary when there is less money coming in but you have to do it. Every time I freak out about the number of calls that day I go back and look at what I was able to accomplish because, indeed, the phones weren’t ringing as bad. Hm. Ok. And we are now starting to see the results. The phones are starting to ring again – in answer to those emails I sent out. Yep, I struck a nerve. People are looking for ways to mine their data. Cool. Guess I better get back to doing just that. Being nimble and working on a new idea.

See ya….

Once in a while, a day comes along where you realize “this is why I do this.”

We are ACT consultants. That is a good thing and somedays a bad thing. ACT is sooo much better now with version 11. However, there have been days where it wasn’t so.

I had two people from a new client in my offices today doing an “Advanced/Power User” ACT 2009 Class. The class was customized for their requirements.

Or at least that is what was scheduled. What happened, as usual for me, is it turned into a “here’s how you can use ACT” to satisfy your requirements and let’s plan what you need to be doing. In other words, it turned into more of a consulting gig than a training gig. That’s what happens a lot. I get started, they jump off their seats, and we’re off to the races.

I had gotten an email from the client with their “vision.” I always ask for these when I do customized training so that I am totally prepared for what they are looking for. They came in expecting an ACT class – well, it turns out they weren’t sure what they were expecting.

This was an interesting client. They drove 5 hours to Chattanooga to meet yesterday with another client of mine. That client is an LTL trucking company meaning they sell “lanes” – Atlanta to New York for example. My client sells trucks. My client is their customer. the new client knew my client was a big ACT user – 65 users in fact, so they met with them to see how they use ACT.

At their recommendation, they then met with me for training. Today they showed up for the training and met with me to see how they could get to where they wanted to be with regards to selling better and using ACT.

That’s where the fun began. Do you know/remember how gratifying it is to show somebody something and they almost jump off their chairs. It was that kind of day. We have all dealt with the “holy s…., ACT is broke” days. So, I really needed a “wow, you mean ACT can do that….” day. When they saw what we could do with Dashboards, I thought they would explode. Those of you not taking Dashboards and making them shine are missing the boat.

When I showed them Pivot tables from the Opportunties to Excel extract, I thought the Sales Manager would faint dead away. He looked at me and said “What are Pivot Tables.” We spent the next hour showing him what he could with some data he had on his laptop. He said “Pat, I have spent 100’s, and I am not kidding, 100’s of hours putting together Excel spreadsheets for reports from our mainframe data and in one hour you just showed me the answer.” He was literally “overwhelmed.” Speechless – almost.

He was one of those guys you try to keep on a path – who will take you on a circle instead. He saw what he could do and was already at the pass waiting on us to catch up. How refreshing is that.

I can’t express enough words to say how much I needed a day like today. There is so much power in ACT. When you get someone in the room (ok, really now, I’m getting goosebumps) who sees what can happen and how it can revolutionize their business ( a business that is 45 years old) it, again, justifies why we do what we do. And again, it justifies to me why I love working with smaller organizations. They just appreciate you so much more.

So, for those of you out there looking for more revenue or more business, take a look at what you know. If you know ACT – you know sales guys. You know how to make it “attractive” to those sales guys. And, you have Excel in your back pocket. Excel is such a powerful tool that simply showing Pivot tables to a client can be business “altering.” And it makes you a vital piece of their business future.

This was the first time they had met me. They drove 5 hours to get here. They said, about two hours into the session, it was worth the trip. They also said “we will want you to come to our offices in 6 months.”

By the end of the day and after the Pivot “epiphany”, it was “can you be at our offices within the next three weeks.”

How such a simple little thing as an export to Excel can totally change the entire session around. Yes, ACT is cool and they are going to do this. But the Excel reporting on their AS400 data – now that’s so much farther down the path than they were thinking that they were out of their seats and almost out of their skins.

Like I said – I sooooo needed a day like today. It was reaffirming – it made me realize I have value to add – always knew that but sometimes when you are trying to fix what’s broke in ACT, you question yourself. Wow, such a good day.

So, here’s hoping you all get one of these days soon. It makes it all worth it…

Today,  I’m sitting in a conference room  at Microsoft attending a calendaring and scheduling event (http://www.calconnect.org/calconnect14.shtml).  I attend these events three times a year.

The session I am in now is talking about calendars on mobile devices.  The issue being addressed is the fact that many mobile devices do not support features, you, as a phone user, would like to have.  Examples are the ability to search for open slots on other peoples calendars.  Other examples are managing timezones where the calendar app is smart enough to know I am setting up a meeting in one timezone but attendees are in other timezones and will need to see times that are relevant to them.  There were other examples as well, but it all boiled down to devices supporting vcalendar, a ten year old specification, instead of supporting iCalendar, the newer one.

I started thinking about whether or not people actually care.  Do you want to schedule an appointment on your phone? And invite people using the same phone?  And search for free time on people’s calendar using a phone instead of a web brower or a computer?  My original thinking was no, because the calendar applications are so limited.  But now there are very smart phones in the wild and why can’t it happen.  Hm.

Taking it to the next level, on my Treo, I should be able to click on a contact in my address book and click a button that sets up an appointment on my calendar and, oh, gosh, sends an email to that person inviting them to a meeting.  Oh, since we’re dreaming here, how about a button that says “check to see if this person has an opening next week.”  Yea, I know.  I believe in the Easter Bunny too.  But why can’t this happen.  If it could, maybe then people would want to use their phone to do sophisticated calendaring operations.

The challenge is convincing the network operators like Verizon and AT&T that this is a good thing.  That it might actually increase their revenues with data traffic.  That it might make their clients happy campers. 

The session I am sitting in is pondering how do we convince the operators that this is a good thing.  The device manufacturers have told us we have to convince the Verizon’s of the world to make a change to an environment that will support enhanced calendar operations.

But this leads me back to my original quandry.  Is it what people really want?

If you think it is, let me know.  Post a comment.  And thanks for doing that.

Ciao from Redmond.

Boy, times are tough.  Companies are hurting and I’ve been working with a lot of clients recently who are looking for creative ways to find new or keep existing clients.  These clients all have customer databases and are trying to figure out ways to mine the data and go after any low hanging fruit.  They tell me “the phones aren’t ringing” and they need to find ways to make that happen.  In the process of helping people run reports and figure out who to contact, we’ve learned a few things about what to do with the names on the reports.  That usually ends up being a logical next question – “have you run across any cool marketing ideas.”  We hear it all the time.

Gee, you know, the same applies to us as well.  Our phones are ringing less as well.  So, I’ve spent the week compiling some tips and techniques that I’ve gleaned over the years so that we can do them within our own business.  I think I’m then going to go out on a limb and create an eBook that compiles it all into one nice document.  It’s turning into a pretty nice document.  Now I’m debating whether I’ll sell it or give it away as a “here kitty kitty” link on my website.  That, by the way, is one of the techniques you can use to draw people to your company website.  Send out an email offering a free download of a document that will help your client in some manner.  While they are on your site, the idea is to have them poke around and see what else you might have to offer.

Regarding sending out emails, it’s getting tougher to reach out to new and current clients.  Spam rules make emailing a nightmare.  “Do not call” options make it equally difficult to make phone calls.  Knocking on doors or sending out real paper mail are coming back in vogue.  Something to try is sending out postcards with updates about your business and suggestions that people visit a website to learn more about special offering or to download a free document like I suggested earlier.  

Speaking of paper mailings, another approach is to keep track of what Jim Cecil (nuturemarketing.com) calls Pain and Passion.  Pain is what keeps someone up at night.  Passion is what gets them up at 6:00 AM.  Once you have kept track of them in your CRM tool of choice, you then do a lookup of a particular topic, find a great article about that topic, and then send it out in paper form.  Attach a note that says “remembered you were interested in ….. and thought of you.”  ‘For example, if you deal with people or organizations in the medical profession, they may be interested in articles on HIPA regulations.   They don’t need to know you sent it out to 50 people.  However, they will hopefully appreciate the fact that you sent the article and also the fact that you knew they were intersted enough to track that. 

They say it takes 7 to 8 “touches” to bring in a new client.  Well, you also need to reach out and touch your existing clients as well.  Sending out articles is one of those touches.  Remember, usually it’s easier to try to get business from an existing client than it is to go find new ones.  And in this economy, even more so.

Continuing down the paper mailing trail, one of the things I suggest is sending out lumpy mail.  There’s even a website that talks about this – www.lumpymail.com.  Research has found that people will open mail if it feels like there is something inside.  If they think it’s a check, they’ll open it first.  That’s why I am not fond of the groups that send out advertising that looks like an IRS check.  That’s just plain nasty.  But, when you send out something cute, that ties into a slogan or marketing campaign, you’re just doing something to make the client open the mail.  I’ve sent out little cocktail monkeys (you know the ones – they hang off the side of a coctail glass).  The inside says something along the line of “are you looking for ways to get the Administration monkey off your back?”  The card inside then suggests you visit our website looking for ways to do just that.  Works pretty well.  Hm, may need to do that again.

So, drill down into your contacts, find the ones you haven’t “touched” in 6 months and send them an article, or a postcard or a really cool lumpy envelope.  Oh, and when they respond, record what it was that got them to call you or email you back.  That way you can keep track of what worked and what didn’t.

 Happy marketing….

It was Calconnect time again, and this October we met at the Yahoo facilities in Sunnyvale CA.  Wow, what a great complex.  Lot’s of purple in evidence.  They have several campuses and all of them look like cool places to work.

Testing at the interop went very well.  There were 8 CALDAV servers, 4 CALDAV clients and 2 iCalendar vendors testing.  What was signicant is all servers were able to do testing with all clients.  That means things are working.  This is a milestone, IMHO. 

At the roundtable itself there were preview demonstrations which were even more exciting.   The previews demonstrated live interoperability in the areas of CalDAV Scheduling, iSchedule Server-Server scheduling, and Free/Busy URL.   These were not fake demos of what “could” be done – they were live demos of working code.  Neat stuff.

The next event will be testing mobile devices and calendaring.  In addition it will be our first event held in Europe.  Kerio Technologies is hosting us in Pilzen, in the Czech Republic.  We will then head to London to do a “Meet Calconnect” event so that European organizations can come and check out the organization.   Calconnect.org has more details.

That’s it for today.  Keep on calendaring.

We’ve been out and about so I’m behind, once again, in posting to the blog.  However, the good news is we’ve been busy working on more ACT Addons.  First off, we’ve upgraded our popular Duplicate Remover for ACT.  It’s still only $69, but now you can check for duplicates using up to 5 fields.  This way, you can really narrow in and get all the duplicates and merge the data.

My programmer, Don, has also improved the speed of the dup removal and we’ve tested this on some pretty large ACT databases.  It works amazingly well.

Other Addon’s in the works are a tool to import product lists from Quickbooks into Opportunity lists.  And we’re working on something that will enable you to share your calendar items in ACT with other calendar programs.

Check out the products page on our website for the current and any new addons.

That’s it for now.

Product page:  http://www.egenconsulting.com/egcproducts.html