Salesforce-to-ACT!
Salesforce-to-ACT!
Adapted from "The Night Before Christmas"
by Major Henry Livingston Jr. (1748-1828)
Click to hear MID background music versions of
"Twas the Night Before Christmas"
courtesy of Personality-Creations.com
"Twas the Night Before
Christmas" coutesy of MidiTrax.com
* The actual sequence of programs was different, and included
ACTDiag.
So this list of functions was influenced by its syllables and what rhymed.
ACT! - is a registered trademark of
Interact Commerce Corporation
Salesforce.com - is a registered
trademark of Salesforce Inc
FoxPro - is a registered trademark of
Microsoft Corporation
The Sprint Guy - is a service mark of Sprint
PCS
Another major conversion to ACT! has now been completed.. First we
conquered Goldmine, then Maximizer
- now SalesForce.
Each of these contact managers offer a utility to convert from ACT! But ACT! only provides
a .MAP file, which gets the basic Contact data, but loses the activities, groups,
histories, notes, and other important details. So they long enjoyed a one-way conversion
advantage.
SalesForce.com makes it easy to convert the data from ACT! to SF with its Import Wizard and Oakhurst's
ACT!Pak! For
months, one client enjoyed the ability to access their database from any browser with this
web-based contact manager.
But once their database was assimilated into the collective web, they started to feel
stuck. There was no way back, without losing a lot in the translation.
They discovered that some simple tasks became difficult. This client wanted to print
labels to a Lookup for mailing their yearly Christmas cards. They could not find a
reference to printing labels or mailing labels in the Salesforce Help screens.
With time running out, before it would be too late for the letters to
arrive in time for Christmas, they needed to call in a consultant to help do something
they easily did for years with ACT!
Their mailing list needed a lot of clean up to make all the addresses deliverable. Due to
the weak data validation in SalesForce Zipcodes were even in the Street field. It is slow
as molasses to do data cleanup on the web, with its very limited global replace commands.
It would take too much time and expense.
This client had been getting higher and higher monthly bills from Salesforce, over $400
per month - to access their contacts they once did for free. SalesForce could force them
to pay or shut them out - as had happened during web access problems. Their contact
database was not theirs any more.
They unanimously wanted to go back to ACT! But there was no way they could find to even
download the data locally. Synchronization with Outlook would not retain the important
relationships between the tables. Recording the mailing in history would be futile.
After an all-nighter, this problem has been solved. With our new Salesforce-to-ACT!
conversion process, they printed their 2000+ labels and rushed the Christmas cards to the
Post Office. They have "come home for Christmas" to ACT!
To help this client continue to access their data from any browser, they can meet their
needs for free with the suggestions from http://GoToACT.com
or using ACT for the Web - http://ACTWired.com
This is not to say that SalesForce.com isn't good, especially for companies that have ready access to the Internet, and need to work together in real time. The staff of this particular client works 99% of the time on a LAN at the office. Once in a while the manager would go on a trip. So ACT! on the network with the manager synchronizing with a laptop when travelling was just fine for them.
We have developed conversion procedures to convert data to ACT! in a complete and cost-effective way for:
ACTConvert.com/goldmine
ACTConvert.com/maximizer
Unused verses - maybe later, just descriptions of Santa:
And then, in a twinkling,
I heard on the keyboard
the prancing and pawing
of each program keyword
As I slept on my hand
and was winding on down
Down with coffee
Rick came with a round
He was dressed in a suit
from his head to his foot
And his clothes were all
covered with coffee and soot
A bundle of disks
he had flung in his book
And he looked like a peddler
just opening his ACT!
His eyes - how they were
blood shot
his dimples how merry
His cheeks were like roses
His nose like a chery
His droll little mouth
was drawn up like a bow
And the beard on his chin
was as white as the snow
The stump of his pipe
he held tight in his teeth
And the smoke, it encircled
his head like a wreath
He had a broad face
and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed
like a bowl full of jelly