Filtering History & Linking Folders

[dcruce]

First time posting and new ACT user. I'm a project manager for a local general contractor; we are trying to kill two birds with one stone with ACT. Our estimators use it to track correspondence at bid time and the PM's will use it as a document management tool for ongoing projects. One of our estimator's and me are the guinea pigs to see if ACT will work the way we want it to. We're using ACT 10

We have 3 divisions, estimating, plant div. & line div. Our DB has 3 Groups (estimating, plant & line). Contacts are added (or history is updated) in the estimating phase. Once the project is awarded we take the contacts that we will be using on the project from the estimating group and added them to the awarded project group. All documents on the project are then tracked in ACT based on the contact.

Question 1 - Is there a way I can filter the contact history for only a specific project? It's common for us to use a company (contact) on multiple projects at the same time. I don't care to see the global history including estimating and other ongoing (& completed) projects; only the history for the specific project I'm working on.

Question 2 - Is there a way to link to a "folder" in the "Documents" field? Certain contacts will have numerous types of correspondence over the course of the project. Good example, the engineers; I'll have requests for information, numerous types of transmittals, pay requests and on and on. I'm trying to organize the linked docs.

Sorry so long winded but thanks in advance for any help. David

 

[GLComputing]

1. Have seperate groups or sub-groups for each project and attach the contacts to the project group. Then the history can be identified and filtered accordingly.

2. Yes... but it's better to attach each document

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Aust

http://www.GLComputing.com.au

 

[dcruce]

I currently have 2 groups (estimating & awarded projects) set up with several subgroups under each. It's pulling in the history from the estimating group to the awarded projects group. Do I have something in the setup wrong?

One more question if you please. It looks like I've got the wrong version of ACT. Running standard but looks like we will need one copy of ACT for web (for the server) and everyone set up with ACT premium for sync purposes. From my understanding ACT for web will not allow MSWord for word processing, only ACT word processing. ACT premium allows both. Can I set my templates up in MSWord in ACT premium then store these on the server in ACT for web (in the Documents folder on the master db)? ACT for web will never actually be used, just used for storage of our db's and to sync.

 

[GLComputing]

1. You can tell ACT! to filter the histy that's only attached to the group or to show all the history from the contacts you have attached (which is the default)

Why do you need ACT! for Web?
ACT! for Web is a Premium version only if you need to access ACT! from a web browser

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Aust

http://www.GLComputing.com.au

 

[dcruce]

About half of us will be syncing remotly over the internet without direct access to the server. Some of us have been using GotoMyPC to access the server. If ACT premium will sync direct without having to log into something like GotoMyPC then great. Will it?

 

[GLComputing]

Yes, it will.

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Aust

http://www.GLComputing.com.au