Working with Act! again

It has been a few months since I last posted on the status of where I am with Swiftpage and the direction of the product. In that time, I have received numerous requests for an update.

After a call back in March from John Oechsle, Swiftpage's CEO, and Rowan Koons, SVP and GM, followed by four months of detail discussions on how to continually improve the product and user experience, we have reached an agreement for how I can best continue to serve Act! and the broader Act! Community.

Swiftpage has recognised my expertise and passion, and as part of this working together, Swiftpage has endorsed me as an “Act! Certified Expert, sanctioned by Swiftpage” as at 1 August 2017.

I have also been fortunate, during these conversations, to have had a look at the future direction of roadmap for Act!. This has made me more excited to be working with them to try and bring these to market for you.

My Current Focus

It does have elements of the position of "P.O.P.E" as originally suggested as a comment in this LinkedIn thread from four years ago - https://www.linkedin.com/groups/49896/49896-214593198 by Paul Marentette, of Uptime Solutions in Canada, and seconded by many others including Bob Ogdon, Chairman and Founder of Swiftpage.

We have highlighted the following ways to work together:

1. Initially examining areas of the current build (19.2 Update 3), with a focus on MS-Office integration and other areas that users might suggest.

2. Become active again in the Act! Community Site and my Linkedin Act! Fanatics Group. Not just in supporting users, as I have done for many years, but also creating an analysis of the posts to identify the areas that users have the most issues with (usability or flaws).

3. Assist Swiftpage in updating and enhancing Act! Knowledgebase articles.

4. Alpha and Beta testing v20 as soon as it is available.

After this, I hope to assist Swiftpage in improving Act! eMarketing, WebAPI, Mobile Companion, and other areas. I also intend to help them enhance their relationships with the Act! Certified Consultants and other resellers channel.

Help Me To Help You

I have some requests for you, the Act! Fanatic community (users and the resale channel alike):

1. I would like to examine any systems where Act! v19 is having issues with Outlook integration. At this time, I would be happy to take on about three sites per week.
NOTE: This is a NO CHARGE offer - No charge to the user or reseller.

2. Could you please post, as a comment to this blog article, or in the LinkedIn Group, or via private communication to me, any bugs or areas where you think I should allocate additional time. If I do not understand your point, I may contact you to see it remotely on your system.

3. Please also comment in the forums above with any subjects that I could generate a blog article that you think could improve your use of Act!. I do have some ideas that I have not seen done before, but I would still value your opinions.

The Future

This agreement is a great opportunity for me, for the product and for the community of users who have been behind the product for up to 30 years.

Those of you who know me know that I will throw everything I have into testing every function I can - as a user. I will work with other users in the forums, via email or phone, to find the issues that matter most in keeping you productive. Then I will work to try and replicate the issues so that I can report them accurately to QA and Development so they can work on fixing them.

Once this is underway, I hope to also have a small say in helping them prioritise their resources so that they can deliver the best possible solution for us all and make Act! as great a product as we all know it can be.

About four years ago, a user asked me what I would do if the vendor put me in charge of the product. At that time, I described a roadmap over two-three years that I thought would be necessary without the funds of an Apple or Google. I still believe that, over a similar time-frame, we can have a leading solution again.

Please feel free to post any questions or comments you have on this.

Regards,

Mike Lazarus
Act! Evangelist

Office 2013 integration in #ACTCRM 2013 SP1–Updated

13th July 2013: I have updated the information on the issues and options for the Click-To-Run version of Office
Also added links to new/updated articles re IMessage errors

I was watching this video by Will Ingleby of BluebirdCRM on the integration of ACT! and Office 2013 and, as I’ve fielded quite a few questions on this, I thought it worth reposting as well as adding a couple of comments below.

Sage ACT! 2013 and MS Outlook 2013 Compatibility Overview by BluebirdCRM

Some points to note:

Office 2013 isn’t formally supported, but I’ve found it works well with the following provisos.

• One correction to Will’s video: ACT! 2013 needs to be installed as 15.1, not 15.0 then adding the service pack update. If your install CD or download is 15.0, contact ACT!, your ACT! Consultant or GL Computing to obtain the later 15.1 full install
• As with previous versions, Office must be installed as 32-bit (even if running on a 64bit operating system. This is Microsoft’s recommended way also as per this post (check the links in the comments):
  Office 2010 support with ACT! by Sage #SageACT
• As Will says, History is not recorded when replying from the Preview pane … this is due to Microsoft not providing the same controls to track the sending that way.
  You don’t need to open the email first in order to send the History – from the Preview reply, click “Pop-Out” before sending will work. 
• Some users might get an error related to “IMessage” – Act! have two possible articles on this:
  http://kb.sagesoftwareonline.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/36024
  http://kb.sagesoftwareonline.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/23848
• Most important – you need to have the full install of Office 2013, not the Office 365 with the Click-To-Run install that doesn’t include all components for the full API needed to connect. Some info on this issue:
• You can tell if you have the CTR version using these links: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/office-2013-click-to-run and
  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff864733.aspx
• Microsoft identifies the issue with add-in support for their CTR versions on pages such as:
• http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982431/en-au
  Act! needs “hybrid” support for the full range of functions – and Microsoft hasn’t added those in the CTR versions. There are many add-in developers who have hit this problem, including Google Apps.
• http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fp161015.aspx
  The main APIs need the full “rich” client or an Exchange server
• Possible Workarounds:
• Depending on your edition, you might be able to download a full version as per:
  http://www.solutions-outlook.com/2013/06/how-to-get-full-installation-of.html
• If not, I have found that, while Microsoft don’t recommend it, it can work by first downloading and installing the trial of the full Office 2013, then installing the CTR version over the top … this has kept working (for me at least) after the trial period expired.
• One Microsoft support person suggested that if there are enough users complaining about this, they might reconsider adding the extra APIs back.
  One place to add this feedback is here:
  http://g.microsoftonline.com/0BX11EN/135

Other than these points, it should work the same as for previous versions of Office … please let me know in the comments if you find anything else worth noting

 

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