OK, not to beat a dead horse here - so please clear this up - there is
absolutely no way to transfer my contact history from BCM? No workarounds,
no exports, I"m just screwed?
Somehow I'm not surprised as I was very disappointed with how difficult BCM
was to work with.
As for Entourage, funny, I was reading about Entourage's beginnings just
yesterday.
http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/2007/05/in_the_beginning.html#more
i really prefer Entourage over Outlook and especially BCM, even though it is
much, much more limited and is also set up more as a project center and email
application, rather than as a CRM. I was able to modify it for what I needed
- to create a project I called "calls" and then to view contacts in that in a
viiew that passes for a phone log, and to set categories for follow-up and
link items to create a phone log similar to the contact history in BCM.. But
I wish it had more of the functionality of Outlook. It lacks a lot of basic
things such as being able to drag your tasks into order, nest your folders or
projects, etc. It does have a bit of customizability that if you are
creative, you can come up with workarounds. But even with its limitations
it kind of grows on your and I find that I prefer it even over similar apps
that would do more, such as Daylite (which also seems pretty cool).
What I love about Entourage over Outlook/BCM is its simplicity and
intuitiveneness. The interface is much more colorful and pleasant and -dare
I say it - fun. In the project center, you can manage projects although it's
only a baby step project manager - hopefully they will integrate more
functionality into future versions.
I had a hard time getting it together with Outlook and BCM to follow up with
customers and manage my call lists. I would get lost and it just never felt
intuitive or very real-world. I would end up cursing it in frustration and
not being very productive. Entourage has a long way to go, as it's a
relatively new application, but the foundation is much more suited to the way
I operate - I want it simple, fast, iintuitive and it never hurts if it's fun
and colorful and pretty on top of that. I'm working with a lot of
complicated production and graphics software and just don't have the patience
to fight with my contaact manager too.
Chalk it up to the graphics person in me but it's true what they say - once
you go Mac, you never go back.
EDIT -- can I just say I'm gettting a lot of problems posting here. Looks
like all the test posts yesterday eventually posted, though. I try to post
and the window goes balnk, goes nowhere.
