Reporting latest result from ACT contact history

[ruralheart]

Can anyone help. I need to produce a selective report (preferably in excel but report would do) that shows contact details plus only the date and text of latest item in the history for each contact. The standard report shows all the history notes.

Using ACT Pro for Workgroups 8.0

 

[Mscott906]

Act! by itself will not allow that level of filtering.

You can do this with Crystal Reports though if you have a Crystal guru around.

 

[GLComputing]

If you're going to use Crystal, I always recommend starting with

http://www.crystalclearreports.com/

Comes with a bunch of cool reports to start with and they'll even do the customisation for you if needed.

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Aust

http://www.GLComputing.com.au

 

[ruralheart]

Thanks for the prompt response. But...

Does Crystal point to the ACT PAD file; if so, do I need to buy anything to interface to it? It's a problem if it needs to point to the underlying SQL Server database as I don't have a login to that and SAGE won't supply one; how do I get round that?

 

[GLComputing]

Crystal can use the OLEDB engine to access ACT! as per

http://tinyurl.com/2cg85x

Or, you can get an ACTReader account utility to access the SQL directly. Sage WILL supply one -

http://www.act.com/products/large/cl/services/index.cfm/

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Aust

http://www.GLComputing.com.au

 

[ruralheart]

Well, I've tried following the example of how to connect from Excel 2003 to ACT. When I test the connection, I get an error popup with no message; or when I click finish, I get cannot connect to the data source. Any ideas

 

[GLComputing]

Maybe test with the demo database?

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Aust

http://www.GLComputing.com.au

 

[ruralheart]

Same effect.

I've also noticed that the reference on the ACT site to the ACT! Reader Utility says only available in North America, I'm in the UK. Sage UK particularly unhelpful. Anyway, it's not really the SQL database I need to get to, I just need to be able to extract custom reports and spreadsheets with a bit of logic.

 

[GLComputing]

Have you tried

http://www.crystalclearreports.com/

It's what I normally use.

I know we can get the ACT! Reader here in Australia... so maybe try the local office or try an UK ACT! Certified Consultant

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Aust

http://www.GLComputing.com.au

 

[ruralheart]

I'm here again Mike. I've downloaded the Crystal Clear Reports demo but the link to the Crystal runtime installer at

http://adsprogramming.com/downloads/crystalclearruntimeinstaller.exe

retursn an error page. Is there the correct version of the runtime I can install from elsewhere

 

[GLComputing]

I would contact Stan from CCR. He's a great guy and will point you in the right direction

Regards,
Mike Lazarus
ACT! Evangelist
GL Computing, Aust

http://www.GLComputing.com.au