Summer is normally an excellent time for us to work on larger projects because the market is quieter during the vacation season. The summer of 2023 was no exception as we embarked on a number of extended development sprints in preparation for the fall market, and the expected buzz around the release of Act! 25.1.

Here is a summary of the new products we either released or updated in September, and those scheduled for the same through the month of October.

CloudAdmin:  CloudAdmin is the admin tool Act! Administrators have been waiting for. Act! Premium Cloud is a great tool, but many of the batch-edit features available in the desktop are not available on the web. That's where CloudAdmin comes in. CloudAdmin connects to your APC database via the Web API and allows you to complete the following functions:

• Contacts
  • Change the record manager of all Contacts in a group, as well as edit access permissions for Contacts in a group
  • Remove Contacts in a group
  • Delete blank Contacts, with no Company, Contact, Phone, and Email fields.
• Activities
  • Schedule an activity for all contacts in a group, and reassign activities for all contacts in a group, to another user
  • Remove Old Cleared Activities and Clear Alarms for Activities
• Groups & Histories
  • Create and delete a Group
  • Remove histories based on Type and Date Range
• Database
  • Lock and Unlock a database
  • Create and Delete Field

Release Status: Currently in production

Attachments4act: The purpose of Attachment4act is simple. It migrates all the database attachments to your Dropbox account and replaces them with a URL shortcut to those shared files. If the Dropbox account is configured properly, all Act! users for that database will be able to open them from that shared public storage.

The advantages of using Attachments4act before migrating to APC are as follows:

1. Cost savings: Drobox charges $120 USD/year for two Terabytes of data storage, whereas the same cost in overages with APC would only provide 12GB of data storage initially, with the promise of it likely increasing over time.
2. Improved Ease & Speed of Deployment: Smaller databases are easier & faster to upload to APC, and then distribute RDBs to new users after the initial deployment. Users with 15GB databases or more could end up waiting until the next day to have their database provisioned because of the longer upload and processing time. Also, databases under 2GB can be much more successfully created autonomously from the APC web interface due to memory limits inherent in their hosting technology.
3. Real-time access: Shared attachments stored in Drobox are managed in real-time. Any changes made to them would instantly be available to the other users, which is not the case in a sync environment.
4. Data Security: By storing attachments in Dropbox, users have the security of a trusted infrastructure, but also the comfort of knowing they're being synched to the account holder's computer, as well, for additional fault tolerance.

Release Status: Currently in beta, with an expected release date late October, or early November

Link2surveys:  Link2surveys allows you to easily craft custom-branded surveys to harvest the customer insights you need to make more intelligent business decisions. For instance, with Link2surveys you can create decision trees that present relevant questions based on their answers.  By trimming out irrelevant questions, the participants are more likely to be engaged and complete the survey faster and with more honesty, and less abandonment.

What makes Link2surveys different is it is the ONLY online survey program to harvest this data into Act!, and store the customer feedback under the contact records. New contacts are added to the database and their History appended, and existing contacts updated accordingly.

Link2surveys also delivers fast and comfortable results because they can be consumed on all platforms - mobile, PC, and Macs. In fact, it is not unusual for mobile responsive data collection to generate results in as little as one day, and sometimes it can be even less than that depending on the scale and reach of your questions.
Release Status: Currently in production

The Knowtifier API: The Knowtifier API offers almost all the features of the original Knowitifer version, save for field triggers and a few complex query operators. The Knowtifier API connects to the cloud database via the Act! Web API, and can still be configured to send one or more notifications to contacts based on date fields in the Act! contact & opportunity table, as well as custom tables.  The Knowtifier API can also record the Histories of these notifications, as well as create follow-up activities in Act!. 

Here are some fast facts on the Knowtifier that every Act! user should know:

• You only need the Knowtifier installed on one computer for one database, where it runs as a service. This means if your computer is unexpectedly restarted, the Knowtifier will continue to work at the Windows login screen.
• The Knowtifier can trigger off Contact & Opportunity fields or Custom Table Fields. It also supports OAuth for Office 365 and Gmail accounts
• It can be configured to provide multiple notifications that countdown toward a date field. Great for contract renewals or warranty expiries.
• It can be configured to ensure you never miss another customer's birthday or anniversary again.
• Create your own beautiful HTML emails without subscribing to a service provider for delivery. Our built-in HTML Editor is as easy to use as MS Word, and can be used to copy in source HTML code, or create from scratch. Easily embed graphics or company logos into HTML emails that allow you to merge customer data from the contact or custom tables.
• It can be configured to send internal summary reports to managers, alerting them to upcoming renewals

Release Status: Currently in beta, with an expected release date of October 16th

Qsales Classic & API:  Keystroke's Qsales is a popular add-on that seamlessly integrates your Act! and Quickbooks applications together to give your whole team the account visibility they need to be more productive and informed. Having the data to see contacts as customers allows users to understand the value of an account in an instant, including their account status, product preferences, payment patterns, and even the volume of business from year to year.

And while it's obvious this product is not new, we are expanding the utility of this addon to see Contacts not just as Customers, but as Vendors, as well. Historically, Qsales has provided the ability to see customer transactions inside of Act! and provide features like creating invoices, sales receipts, estimates, and such, however little functionality for vendors. Sure you could identify contacts as Vendors, These new updates to Qsales API & Classic corrects that by better identifying each contact as either a customer and vendor and then dynamically providing them the appropriate QB features. For instance, instead of invoices & sales receipts, vendors will be able to add bills and purchase orders.

Release Status: Currently in beta, with an expected release date of October 16th

Assorted other product updates:  As noted with Qsales, not all updates involve a major commercial release, but are nevertheless noteworthy. For the following products, each have undergone minor updates, and have involved a new version versioning. Anyone with current licenses will receive these updates at no additional charge: 

• MailManager & MailMerge: With the release of Link2surveys, we identified a customer need to send forms & surveys out to customers directly by email, and provide them a unique link that would identify the contact and question, and complete the registration part of the form & survey immediately. This saves the respondent the time of having to enter their contact details and fast-tracks them to the questions you want their feedback on. 
  By removing this unnecessary step, the rate of feedback completion goes up, and abandonment goes down. Contacts will have both the delivery of the form/survey recorded to History, as well as their feedback details, where applicable.
  
  
• We also converted the remaining list of add-on products to 64-bit that were the only ones left with strictly 32bit compatibility:
  • Act4Realty
  • Company-Group Limited Access (CGLA)
  • Company-Group Limited Access Extended Edition
  • Secondary Contact Deleter
  • Group Launcher
  • Keystroke Company Deleter
  • Keystroke Group Deleter
  • Layout Switcher
  • Secondary Contact Promoter

Please visit www.Act4work.com of find updates to products you're currently licensed to use, or go to our Keystroke Shopping Cart to trial or purchase products of interest. For Link2surveys, you may also visit Linktivity.net for more information on that online product.