Who do I have to call today?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Who do I have to call today?

You would think that in a contact management system that would be a very
easy question to answer. But in Business Contact Manger 2007 (BCM2007) it is
either very well hidden or I am being very dim. See which way you call it:

My aim is to have a list each day telling me for each task that is due the
contact name, their telephone number and the description of the task.

I add a contact to BCM2007. I go into that contact and add a task of
something I would to follow up and set the date for the follow up. I know the
task is associated with the contact, because if I look in the history of the
task there it is.

However, if I go to my task list in Outlook it lists the task and its due
date, but not which contact it relates to. No problem, I think, I will bring
up the field chooser and put the name of the contact and their telephone
number on the list of fields. Only none of the fields I have tried has any
information in. You would think that “contacts†under Frequently-used fields
would do it, but no, it is blank. You would think that some of the fields
under the section contacts would have something, but no, all blank.

I know the task is linked back to the contact, because if I double click to
open it there is the “Link to Record†button on the top left and if I go into
that, it shows the task is linked back to the contact.

So not only are the contact’s details not on my task list, they are two
clicks deep away on each item. Like everyone else I want to scan my list of
calls and decide who I call first, I do not want to have to open each one
just to work out who they are.

Am I missing something or has BCM2007 got a great big hole in the middle?

Ratbat
 
Ratbat,

You need to enable the "contact linking on all forms" option. This
workaround will make this easier for you. Go into Outlook and click on
Tools>Options>Contact Options. In the Contacts options dialogue check mark
the box under Contact linking to show contact linking on all forms. This
used to be the default setting in previous versions of Outlook but 2007
requires this optional setting. Maybe this attempt to hide this feature in
native Outlook is a clever way for MS to encourage Outlook users to use the
BCM add-in based on the mistaken notion that you can't link items to regular
Outlook Contact records. Anyway, once this display option is enabled, click
on the contacts button at the bottom of each task record and scroll down the
displayed folder list to the Business Contact Manager folder. Expand this
folder to display the BCM folders and then highlight the Business Contacts
folder. This will allow you to now manually select the Business Contact that
you wish to create a hotlink to and will display in the contacts field of the
task record. You can now navigate to this hotlinked Business Contact record
from the task record because you have manually "reverse-linked" from the
native Outlook data record (Task) back to the BCM data record.

This is a bit kludgy but it does work. As for your displayed task list of
phone calls to make, I would just type out in more detail on the Task Subject
line. Ex: "Call Jerry Smith to follow-up @ (XXX) XXX-XXXX."

BCM is a separate added in application to Outlook. It is not seamlessly
integrated however and these kinds of oversights remain unchanged after
almost 4+ years running now.

Best regards,

-THP
 
Hello again, Ratbat! You have a not so wonderful ability to hit on all the
flaws in BCM in the same week!!!

Search this discussion group for BCM Nexus -- a guy wrote some code that
will allow you to put the contact's name and phone number on the task list.
It's a PITA to configure but Yes, it's another design flaw. FYI, one of the
constraints the BCM developers have to live with is Outlook -- MS is very
protective of Outlook and some of the results are flaws like this.

HTH,
Lon

___________________________________________________________
Lon Orenstein
pinpointtools, llc
(e-mail address removed)
Author of Outlook 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies
Author of the eBook: Moving from ACT! to Business Contact Manager
800.238.0560 x6104 Toll Free (U.S. only) +1 214.905.0401 x6104
www.pinpointtools.com
 
Lon & Tim,

I do admire your perseverance. You have jumped through some tough hoops to
make the product do something basic it should have done out of the box.

I am coming to the end of my evaluation of BCM now and I think I will not be
rolling it out to my team. The reason I looked at BCM is that I wanted a
something that worked in the Outlook Universe. Outlook is so pervasive that
everything knows how to work with. Every piece of software can import or
export to it, every phone works with it straight out of the box.

However, what I have found with BCM is a product that sits uncomfortably
with Outlook. Like a badly tailored suit, it fits were it touches. I looked
at some other products that performed CRM inside Outlook, but they did not
inspire me. I assume they do not have the level of investment they could
because there is an 800 pound gorilla in the room in the form of Microsoft.
Even if Microsoft’s offering is weak it is still on the table and that will
make investors shy of attempting to create and market something better. So
unless BCM improves, this market will go nowhere.

The upside of this is that in conducting the evaluation I have learnt a lot
of new tricks about Outlook itself and found that I can fit our business
processes very neatly into the basic version of Outlook, without BCM. It all
replicates to every device and all works as one would expect.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

Ratbat
 
Ratbat,

Glad to see you sticking with Outlook (which I too love and admire). Check
back here once in a while and maybe in a few more years you'll see enough
positive change to come back to.

-THP
 
Back
Top