The ACT! 2010 release is focused on a number of major improvements in ACT! and includes customizable opportunities, a redesigned navigation, a new welcome page, e-Marketing* and much, much more. All this enables you to work more effectively, become more productive, and better serve your contacts. You can select one of the following links to go to the specified section in this document.
*Requires additional subscription


New Features and Functionality
This release addresses functionality that users have requested in ACT! and introduces some new features. The following lists highlights a number of the most significant: A new navigation system, Customizable Opportunities, ACT! E-marketing* , a new Report View, new reporting and dashboard components, iCalendar support, and multiple remote database creation.
*Requires additional subscription

1. Globalization
   • Ability to specify database currency.
     • At the time of database creation, users can specify the currency that will default for all currency values in the database.
       
       
   • Allow users from different ACT! languages share a database.
     • Allow users from different ACT! languages to access the same database. Example: A user has French ACT! and creates a database. A user with German ACT! should be able to access the same database.
2. Opportunities
   • Modify Opportunities in ACT! so that they are completely customizable (like Companies, Groups and Contacts) and users can attach notes, histories, activities and documents to them.
   • Add the ability to associate custom tables to Opportunities
   • Modify the security model of Opportunities to allow users to limit access by teams like they can for Companies, Groups and Contacts.
   • Allow users to create an Opportunity that does not REQUIRE a contact to be associated to it.
   • Allow users to customize the product/services grid in the Opportunities detail view.
   • Navigation
     • Modify the navigation in ACT! to reflect the accordion style navigation in the left navigation pane as well as adding in “Big Easy” buttons along the top row.
     
     
     
     • After extensive user testing, it was determined that the “Look For” box in the list views was confusing to new and existing users. The “Look For” box has been hidden by default in the list views. If users wish to re-surface the box, they can use the “options” button in the list view and choose “show Look For”.
     • Display the Contact List any time the user looks up all contacts. This is in response to usability test feedback in which users were surprised that looking up all contacts did not produce a list.
     • When a menu has sub-menu items that are never accessible in that view, they can be removed (instead of just disabling them).
     • Dynamic lookup menus so that when the menu is opened in a specific view, the menu options are specific to the view that the user is currently in.
     
     
     
     
     
     • Welcome Page
     • A new view has been added into ACT! to help new users get up and running in ACT!. This new view has links to common start-up tasks in ACT! as well as many Help resources. The tasks in this new view are specific to user types in ACT!, so that non-Admins will not be shown admin-only tasks.
     • The new default view for all ACT! 2010 users is the Welcome Page. However, after closing ACT! 2010 for the first time, users will be prompted to change their default view.
     
     
     
     
     
     • ACT! E-marketing*
     • Added e-Marketing capability in ACT! so that users can access the functionally supplied by Swiftpage™ for marketing purposes and track the results in ACT!.
     
     
     
     
     *Requires additional subscription
     • Color Schemes
     Allow users to choose their color scheme for ACT! 2010 – either Sage Green or Sage Silver.
     • Web Info Tab
     • New tab in ACT! that allows users to see context-aware information from the internet in both their Contact and Company views. This tab will come with several ‘canned’ links as well as the ability for users to add links that are specific to their needs.
     
     
     
     
     
     • Remote Database Creation
     • The remote database creation panel has been modified to allow users to create up to 50 remote databases at one time.
     
     
     
     
     
     • Report View
     • New view in ACT! that displays all the reports saved to a Users’ database. In this view, users can specify “favorite” reports, run reports, edit reports and modify the descriptions of reports
     
     
     
     
     
     • New Reports
     • In ACT! 2010, there are 13 new default Opportunity reports included for all users.
       Click here to view reports:
       
       • Opportunities by Record Manager and Process
       • Opportunity Summary by Record Manager and Process
       • Opportunities by Process and Status
       • Opportunities by Estimated Closing Month
       • Won Opportunities and Days Open
       • Won Opportunity Summary by Sales Process
       • Won Opportunities by Sales Process and Competitor
       • Won Opportunities by Sales Process and Reason
       • Won Opportunities by Sales Process and Record Manager
       • Won Opportunities by Sales Process
       • Won Opportunities by Actual Closing Month
       • Pipeline Report by Sales Process and Stage
       • Pipeline Report and Products by Sales Process and Stage
     • New Dashboard Charts Components and Views
     • 12 new dashboard chart components and two standard new dashboard views have been added to ACT! 2010. The new default dashboard views are the ACT! Administrative Dashboard and the ACT! Contacts Dashboard.
       Click here to view dashboard components:
       
       • Recently Created Contacts
       • Recently Edited Contact
       • Contact History Count by History Type
       • Contacts by Country
       • Contacts by Department
       • Opportunities Open by Product
       • Opportunities with Contact Info
       • Opportunities by Products
       • Opportunity Weighted Total by Stage
       • Remote Database Information by User
       • Remote Database Sync Status by User
       • User Status
     • The 12 new dashboard chart components all pull data from the ACT! database using the new OleDb 2.0 provider.
     • New OleDb Provider
     • A new OleDb provider (OleDb 2.0) has been provided in ACT! 2010 that gives users access to Group/Company memberships as well as Activity information
     • iCalendar Support
     • Users can send activity notifications via iCalendar format. If users have scheduled meetings with contacts who have an email address, they can select the item from the schedule activity dialog to “send invitation email” which will send an iCalendar object to the attendees.
     • With this feature, ACT! users who use both Outlook® and ACT! can also choose to create ACT! activities from Outlook meeting requests if they have ACT! and Outlook integration setup completed.
     • vCard export
     • User types “Admin” or “Manager” can export contact info in the form of vCard either by right clicking in the contact list view or using the “Send vCard” item from the Contacts menu.
     • Relationship dialog
     • Users now have the ability to resize the relationship dialog
     • Help
     • Help screen has been modified to use the same design as ACT! by Sage Premium for Web help screen.
     • Registration/Installation
     • Reduce the number of registration questions that users must complete when they register ACT! 2010.
     • Provide an automated answer file to assist in the silent install* process
       
       *Delivered as an MSI package. Software to distribute an MSI package is not included. Silent Activation on machines requires Internet access. Users must be machine administrators in order to activate.