What Changes Were Made in ACT! by Sage 2008 (10.0.3)
  Question
  You would like to know what changes were made in ACT! 2008 (10.0.3).
  Answer
  The following list of improvements and resolved issues are included in the ACT! 2008 (10.0.3) Service Pack. You can click on one of the links below to go to a specific section in this document.
  1. Compatibility
  2. New Features and Fixes
  3. Known Issues

Compatibility

ACT! 2008 (10.0)

Upgrading to 10.0.3 from 10.0, 10.0.1, or 10.0.2 will require all users to upgrade to 10.0.3 in order to share the same database. All users synchronizing their database with another database will require both databases to be upgraded to 10.0.3. If users are using sync service, they must upgrade to the 10.0.3 version found in the full product download on the website.

Accounting Link Users

  • All current ACT! 2008 compatible accounting link products will continue to work with ACT! 2008 (10.0.3). 
  • To avoid reinstalling Accounting Link product, install ACT! 2008 in the same location as your previous installation.
  • If you are using an ACT! Accounting Link, you must upgrade your database to ACT! 2008.
  • Accounting Link users should not change the startup view preference to launch the Contact List view, as found on the Preferences >> Startup tab. The Contact Detail view must be the first view launched in order for the Accounting tab integration to load.

 

ACT! for Palm OS® 2.0 Users

  • Existed in previous release documents
    • If you are using ACT! for Palm OS 2.0, it will not be compatible with ACT! 2008.
  • New to Release Overview Document
    • A new version ACT! for Palm OS® 3.0 has been released. This version is compatible with all ACT! 2008 Windows® releases.

Existed in previous release documents

  • System Support
    • ACT! 2008 has expanded support and works with new Operating systems and productivity tools
    • Apple® Macintosh® computers that feature a dual boot Microsoft® Windows OS feature can run ACT! 2008 on the Windows OS and are supported as long as the PC meets listed minimum system requirements.
    • All 32-bit editions of Windows Vista® are supported with the release of ACT! 2008 including Microsoft Windows Vista Home Basic, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, Vista Ultimate, Vista Enterprise.
    • Note: Vista Business, Vista Enterprise, and Vista Ultimate editions limit the number of concurrent users to 10.
    • ACT! 2008 integrates with Microsoft Office 2007 including Microsoft Word 2007, Excel® 2007, and Outlook® 2007
    • The ACT! Link for Pocket PC now includes support for Windows Mobile® 5.0 Smartphone Editions.
    • ACT! 2008 integrates with Microsoft Internet Explorer® 7.0.
  • Not Supported
    • Existed in previous release documents
      • 64-bit
        • ACT! 2008 is not supported on 64-bit Window OS’s. We have updated the online system requirements to specify that ACT! only runs in a 32-bit environment.   

Discontinued Support

  • Existed in previous release documents
    •  Microsoft Windows 2000
      • ACT! 2008 will no longer run and are not supported on Windows 2000 OS’s.
    • Microsoft Office 2000
      • ACT! 2008 will no longer run and is not supported on Office 2000.

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New Features and Fixes

 

The following items listed below identify new features and important corrected issues in the 10.0.3 release:

Mail Merge

  • Improved usability when using e-mail mail merge. Mail merge will use the primary email address field and if one cannot be found, it will look the personal email address. If there is not a personal email address, it will use the first custom email address it can find.

Microsoft® Excel Integration

  • The task list can be exported to Excel using a task bar icon or a right mouse button click menu command.

Printing Address Books

  • All contact details are printed on the same page using any address book template.

Report Templates

  • Contact Report template property “HideOnEmptySubReports” now defaults to “No” so that contact details are printed even if the contact does not have activities, notes, history or opportunities.

Activities/History/Notes

  • Activity details were reset to blank when rescheduling an activity from the activity conflict alert dialog.
  • Clear alarm button did not clear all selected alarms, only the first alarm was cleared.
  • Activities scheduled with another user did not roll over.
  • Updating activities with Outlook did not respect date range filter when dealing with recurring activities.
  • You can now reschedule conflicting activities without losing the details captured in the activity.
  • Drag & dropping activities within an activity series prompt to update activities that are within the series.
  • The regarding field saves when clearing an activity.
  • The start times for an activity displays the appropriate 24 hour time when users are on a 24 hour clock.
  • In some cases when updating a previous database to ACT! 10.0, alarms for old activities became active again.

Microsoft® Outlook E-Mail Integration

  • Improved usability when sending e-mail message by clicking into an e-mail address field. A new message is opened which is no longer minimized to the task bar.
  • When using the “Next e-mail” menu item in Outlook with Microsoft Word as the e-mail editor and using the “Attach to ACT! contact” feature, it always attached the first message instead if the current message.
  • E-mail messages that were attached from Outlook to ACT! using the “Entire message as attachment” option could not be opened in ACT! if the Outlook message had a Follow Up Flag set.

Opportunities

  • Users could not use the tab key to navigate to the next field after entering “$” into the opportunity cost or price field.

Database Synchronization

  • Improvements of file synchronization engine to account for conflict checking, 0 byte files and security issues.
  • Synchronization no longer fails with an error message “Synchronization has failed. Server Error Description: Incorrect syntax near ' AS DEFAULT VALUE, '. Contact your administrator for assistance.” when the default field value contains an apostrophe..
  • Reduced the time to synchronize file attachments between an ACT! host database and an ACT! remote database significantly, what used to take hours now takes minutes.
  • Supplemental files like templates and layouts were unable to be removed during sync.
  • Calendar “Global” Events were deleted after synchronization.

Security and Administration

  • Duplicating a contact did not retain a contact’s security setting if it was limited to particular users or teams.
  • The preference for security was not always retained when creating a contact from a company record.
  • Customers were unable to register and activate behind a Proxy server.
  • Some customers were unable to register their Premium software when using a dual access serial number.
  • Users can backup and restore databases which result in a backup files that is larger than 4 GB.
  • In some cases, users were unable to create new layouts in 10.0.2.
  • Setting multiple font settings in preferences caused an error in the application.

Other

  • ACT! no longer loses focus to other Windows applications when certain actions like looking up a company or scheduling a follow up activity from the clear activity dialogue are performed.
  • In some cases, setting the default phone format to include area code caused some numbers from the phone number to drop.
  • Mapping fields to Excel documents in the Documents tab did not work in Excel 2007.

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Known Issues

 

The following items listed below encompass the most frequently encountered items in ACT! 2008 (10.0.3). Unless otherwise indicated, these issues existed in previous Known Issue Documents. Any new issues added to the list or newly introduced in the release have been called out separately.

The known issues include a description along with any identified workarounds or recommendations.

Activities/History/Notes

  • Existed in Previous Releases
    • Activity and History Records cannot be deleted if they have a read-only file attached.
      • Workaround: Make sure that all files users want to attach are not set to read-only.
    • Consecutive addition of histories causes memory usage to rise when hundreds of histories are added.
      • Workaround: Restart ACT! or the computer after adding hundreds of history records.

Reports

  • Existed in Previous Releases
    • The total number of the opportunities shown on the Opportunity by Company report counts opportunities multiple times when they are with more than one contact. However, the totals are correct.

Layouts

  • Existed in Previous Releases
    • Users cannot select Record Manager Field in any layout using a mouse click.
      • Workaround: Users can select the Record Manager Field using the field selector from the property grid. Once selected in this manner, the field can be moved with the mouse, using drag and drop.

E-Mail/Outlook Integration

  • New to Release Overview Document
    • Syncing an ACT! recurring activity to Outlook 2003 doesn't update free/busy information and mini-month calendar for the days that contain an instance of the pattern.
  • Existed in Previous Releases
    • Microsoft changed the design of meeting invitations with Service Pack 2 for Outlook 2003. When a user accepts or tentatively accepts a meeting, either from a meeting request or from a calendar item, the existing calendar item is deleted from the calendar. Additionally, a duplicate of the calendar item is created for the deleted item. Duplicate activities are created in ACT! when a user accepts or tentatively accepts a meeting in Outlook.
      • Workaround: By default, this new meeting acceptance behavior is enabled in Outlook 2003 SP2. However, the behavior can be disabled or re-enabled by using a registry key. Detailed information about how to disable or re-enable the registry key can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/?id=899919.
    • If a user installs ACT! 2008 and immediately performs a mail merge to a single contact, the history is not recorded. However, once ACT! is restarted, all future mail merges will create the history as configured.

Install/Uninstall/Setup/Startup

  • Existed in Previous Releases
    • When uninstalling ACT 2008, users need to uninstall ACT!7 Microsoft SQL Server®  2005 Express Edition from add/remove programs in order reinstall ACT! 2006 (8.x) or 2005 (7.x).
    • If a user attempts to create a new DB from the Getting Started Wizard with another database already open, the system freezes during the creation of the new database. However, the new database is created and is available upon restart of ACT!.
      • Workaround: Use the File >> New Database command when creating a new database when you already have a database open.
    • On Windows Vista operating systems, you must Run As Administrator when performing an ACT! Update, sharing a database, using the Scheduler or Registering the product
      • Workaround: To run as Administrator, right mouse click on the ACT! shortcut and select “Run as Administrator.”

Conversion/Import/Export

  • Existed in Previous Release
    • User can map fields into fields that are ready-only, but data is not imported.

Citrix/Terminal Services

  • Existing Known Issue
    • Users are unable to attach a Web page to an ACT! contact in a Citrix environment using the "Attach Web Page to Contact" feature.
      • Workaround: Save page locally and then attach it as a file.

Groups/Companies

  • Existed in Previous Releases
    • Note: Updating linked contacts for a company is designed to update all linked contact fields with the content of the company record on any change of the company record. That means that the content of ALL linked contact fields is replaced with the content of the linked company fields, including blank fields, whenever any of the linked company fields changes.

Synchronization/Remote Database

  • Existed in Previous Releases
    • On Windows Vista operating systems, you must Run As Administrator when creating a Remote DB
      • Workaround: to run as Administrator, right mouse click on the ACT! shortcut and select “Run as Administrator.”
    • ACT! user must have Windows Administrator rights to successfully create a remote database. A Standard Windows user cannot create a remote database. A Windows Standard user will get an “Access to path {…} denied.” message.
      • Workaround: Grant Windows Administrator rights to ACT! users who need to be able to create remote databases.
    • User gets message “ACT! Network Sync Service is unavailable. Please install the service to run sync server” when the Domain/Workgroup for the machine hosting the Network Sync Services is changed. The Network Synchronization Service needs to be reinstalled.

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