Open Letter from Swiftpage to Act! customers

Valued Act! Customers,

The software world has evolved rapidly in the past few years, from both commercial and technical standpoints. Commercially, subscription is now the standard for software engagements, whether it be for the Microsoft® Office suite, Adobe® apps, or virus protection solutions, and indeed for Act!.

On the technology front, Cloud interoperability and connectivity is the norm and is the cornerstone of modern software architecture. One of the most visible leaders in this software transformation is Microsoft®. They have fundamentally changed the way Microsoft® Office is delivered to, paid for, and maintained by their customers. 

As Act! users know, the ability to seamlessly interact with various Microsoft® Office software applications, particularly Outlook®, is one of the most critical features in Act!. To this end, I’m pleased to announce we are now in the final stages of producing a next-generation Microsoft® Office Integration solution suite for Act!.

This represents a significant step forward, leveraging the latest Microsoft® technology and adding substantial enhancements to the connected experience between Act! and Outlook®. We are beginning a controlled release of individual elements in Beta format to Act! Certified Consultants and Act! customers, and commit to deliver the entire new solution suite in Act! v20.1 in late Q1 2018.

Details of the next-generation solution suite are below, and I will draw your attention to newly supported popular platforms – Outlook® 365 and Outlook® Exchange – for key feature areas.

Contact & Calendar Sync

• New engine technology
• Support for Outlook® 365 – NEW!
• Support for Outlook® Exchange – NEW!
• 64-bit Outlook® support
• Improved sync performance
• Enhanced duplicate checking

Email Attachments

• Redesigned to work as embedded functionality of the Act! Premium Contact Link plugin for use with Outlook®
• No service installation required (removal of History queue)
• Works on all Microsoft® Office platforms – Office 365, Office 2013/2016, Exchange, OWA
• Install once and use across all Outlook® clients and apps
• Auto-attach inbound Outlook® emails to Act!

Mail Merge

• Rewritten against modern Microsoft® Office API
• Addresses issues related to embedded images
• Maintains support for existing templates

General Improvements

• Removal of legacy dependency of “Redemption” technology
• Future-proofing against the most current Microsoft® Office APIs

Swiftpage recognizes the importance of these next-generation Microsoft® Office Integration solutions to you, our valued customers. As mentioned, the general availability date for all Microsoft® Office improvements is late Q1 2018, although we expect to have the initial deployment of our updated Act! Premium Contact Link plugin with email attachment capabilities in early January 2018. In the coming weeks, more information will be available via our Knowledgebase or your Act! Certified Consultant.

We appreciate your patience as we evolve along with the software application market, adapting to new business and technical standards from Microsoft® and others. We look forward to providing world-class Microsoft® Office Integration for years to come with our next-generation solution suite. We hope these changes along with other recent enhancements such as the Act! Companion mobile app, Act! Insight dashboards, and Ask Act!™ voice integration with Amazon Alexa demonstrate our commitment to deliver the best CRM solution and subscriber experience to businesses like yours.

We thank you for your continued commitment to Act!.

Lorcan Malone
COO and President, Swiftpage
December 2017