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Chicago ACT! USER GROUP
Meeting Notes
Meeting Date: September 1998
NEWS YOU CAN USE:
The November 10th meeting of the ACT!
User Group will be a joint meeting with the International ACT! Users Group
Association (IAUGA). The meeting will be held at the usual time and place: the Lecture
Hall at the Schaumburg Prairie Center for the Arts at 7 PM. We will explore ACT!’s
Layout Designer.
FYI, the current version of ACT! For Windows is
4.0.2. Patches to update earlier versions of release 4.0 are available from E Tech Systems
(847-352-4770) or via ACT!’s LiveUpdate feature. If you are still using ACT!
3.0, the latest version is 3.0.8.
MEETING FEATURE: Form Letters
Suppose you’ve just completed three sales calls and
want to dash off a follow up letter to each contact you met with. (You do this religiously
because you know that following up each stage of the sales process with written
communication dramatically shortens the sales cycle.) With ACT!, all you need to do
is to look up the contact and execute the command WRITE, LETTER. Tired of typing the same
stuff over and over? Insert pre-written "chunks" of text with the FILE, INSERT
command. One chunk could be the introductory paragraph of your letter. A second chunk
could be "body – product A". A third could be your closing paragraph, and
so on.
To make your own custom chunks, create a new document with
the FILE, NEW command. Type in text or copy and paste some from another document. Then
highlight the text of interest and execute the command FILE, SAVE SELECTION AS. This
technique is a great way to handle generating one or two letters at a time. However it is
inefficient for a mass mailing of, say, 500 letters to trade show attendees.
For larger scale projects, you’ll want to use ACT!’s
mail merge function. There are really five stages of a successful mail merge according to
Alan Lee, ACT! Certified Consultant. They include planning, editing your letter
template, testing, actually doing the mail merge, and printing out your letters. Start by
asking yourself these two questions: (1) who do I want to send these letters to? and (2)
what do I want to send? This will help you to zero in on the lookup you’ll need to do
to select the recipients of your letter and start you on the way to preparing a letter
template with the desired message.
The best way to create a new letter template is to begin
with an existing one. ACT! ships with one template appropriately called
"letter". Start by executing the command WRITE, EDIT DOCUMENT TEMPLATE. Select
"letter". Now type the body of your letter. Save your work using the FILE, SAVE
AS command. Be sure to use a name other than "letter" to avoid overwriting the
original letter template.
TIP: Create several different letter templates for use at
different stages of the sales cycle. For example, you might draft a "first meeting
letter", a "thank you for your business letter", and so on.
The next step is testing. The goal is to produce a
finished letter combining specific contact information (like name and address) with the
letter template you just created. Try "merging" your letter template with just
one contact by executing the command (from the contact screen) WRITE, MAIL MERGE. Select
the "Merge with current contact" option from the dialog box. If the "Send
output to Word Processor" option is selected, you’ll have the option of
previewing the finished product on your monitor before printing. After you’ve made
any necessary changes to your letter template, re-save it, do your contact lookup and
execute the WRITE, MAIL MERGE command once again. You’ll end up with page after page
of letters which can be checked by scrolling up and down your screen (or by using the page
up/down keys). Feel free to make changes or additions to individual letters, if necessary.
At this point, you can print all the letters or save them (FILE,SAVE) for printing at
another time.
To print envelopes or mailing labels, execute the command
FILE, PRINT. Select either envelopes or labels as the type of printout. Finally choose the
"Send output to preview" option to get an idea of how your envelopes or labels
will print out.
Form Letter Tips:
- Add your own letterhead to your letter template using the
FORMAT HEADER AND FOOTER command. Type the appropriate information in these fields, format
fonts as desired, and voila! Note: since ACT!’s word processor does not permit
you to "turn off" the header and footer for subsequent pages, this technique is
best suited for one page letters.
- A better way to add your own letterhead to letter templates
is to convert the artwork for your company letterhead into a font. Then insert at the
beginning of your template. Companies such as www.skillnet.com can perform the necessary
conversion for you.
- To look up all contact records
without names (so you can either eliminate them from your lookup or add in the necessary
information), execute the LOOKUP, BY EXAMPLE command and insert the characters
"<<>>" into the Contact field. These characters represent a
"blank" and can be entered by holding down the Ctrl key and pressing the F5 key
simultaneously.
Remember, form "letters" are not
just for printing. They can be faxed ("form faxes" – better known as fax
broadcasting) or e-mailed.
Save "copies" of specific
one-of-a-kind letters you’ve sent (like price quotes) by attaching them to history
after you’ve printed them. It is not necessary to save "standard" letters
– like the ol’ thank-you letter you sent out to those trade show attendees. This
just needlessly clogs up your hard drive. (ACT! gives you a spot to type in the
fact that you sent this letter anyway.) To attach a letter to contact history, click on
the check box "Attach document to history" in the Create History dialog box
which pops up after you print your letter(s).
OUR NEXT MEETING
…will be Tuesday November 10, 1998. We’ll
explore ACT! 4.0’s built-in layout designer. Layout Designer permits you to
create and modify contact screen layouts, specify the colors, fonts, and graphics used,
change the position and order of fields in your layouts – and more. Steve Stroz, ACT!
Certified Consultant will show us what’s possible and how to get started. Plus, we
will answer your ACT!-related questions during our Open Forum Q&A session.
The meeting will be held at the Schaumburg
Prairie Center for the Arts Lecture Hall located at 201 Schaumburg Court (just off
Schaumburg Road, between Plum Grove and Roselle Roads). The ACT! User Group
(a SIG of the C.C.S.) holds meetings on the second Tuesday of the month, eight months out
of the year.
User Group meetings are free and open to the
public.
E Tech Systems is an ACT! Certified Consulting firm
and Symantec Authorized Training Center. E Tech has installed, configured, and customized
ACT! for dozens of companies and trained hundreds of ACT! users. Alan Lee can be reached
at E Tech at 847-352-4770 or via e-mail to alee@etechsys.com.
© Copyright 1998 by Alan M. Lee. Other nonprofit
computer user's groups may reprint this material providing credit is given the author and
C.C.S. Future rights for publication reserved by Alan M. Lee. ACT! is a registered
trademark of Symantec Corporation.
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