ACT! Notes vs. Histories – You May be Wrong

Are you using Notes to track your day to day correspondence with your contacts?
Are you on ACT! 2005 or newer?
If yes to both, may I ask WHY?

Maybe you upgraded from ACT 6 and didn’t realize you now have a Notes tab AND a History tab. Or perhaps you use Notes because it’s the default tab on the layout. Or maybe you just think, “Let me make a Note of that.”

Whatever your reason, you’re wrong.

Yup. WRONG.

Here’s 5 reasons to use ACT! Histories instead of Notes when tracking contact communication:

1. Drop Downs – How many times have you had to type “Left message…” or “Met with…”? Too many! In Histories, ACT! gives you fields to track the Type as well as the Result, saving you Time and Effort while producing better data. (I’m all about the laziness, erm, effectiveness).
2. Follow-Up – Most correspondence has a next step to keep the ball rolling. If you are just putting in a Note, you lose out on the chance to schedule your Follow Up call / to-do / etc. Sure you could do it after you hit ok, but chances are you’ll be interrupted before you get a chance to and then you’ll forget. (more on getting distracted at work here).
3. Email Integration – Provided you’ve setup your Email correctly, your Outlook emails will automatically record on the History tab (way up there on the Laziness / Effectiveness scale). So why check two tabs for a running log of the relationship when ACT! has set it up to use one? Also, when you clear your tasks on your ACT! calendar, do you know where the record goes that you completed the task? You, you guessed it. History!
4. Reportability – I think I made the word up, but it doesn’t make it less true. Those drop downs from point 1 work to your advantage when trying to report on user productivity. ACT! has a few built in reports, but I really like Topline Dashboard – you can group / filter / sort / count your History by type / result / regarding / duration / user – you get the picture. Contact us for your free trial.
5. Effective Notes – “Wait. I thought I wasn’t supposed to use Notes?” Notes is a great place to store miscellaneous account information (personal tastes, login info, etc.). This time stamps it, so can serve more useful than just a general Memo field. And now that you’ve cleared out all your Histories, this important info isn’t buried in the back and forth communication!

So maybe WRONG isn’t the right word. Perhaps misguided suits you better. So Ctrl+H away (that’s the keyboard shortcut for record History) and enjoy your additional time and peace of mind.

Care to comment?

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