File Attachments in BCM 2007 Accounts

[Brian]

We use BCM 2003 and love it. I see in BCM 2007 that files (I'm assuming Word
docs, .pdfs, .wav, etc) can be attached to contacts (and accounts?). What
limitations (file sizes, types, max capacity) are there? We're looking to
save and share proposals, contracts, conversations, pdfs etc. in the account.
Tips? Hints? Gotchas? Thanks for your help!

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

Brian,

You are not required to have BCM 2007 to do this. You can do this in 2003
also. There is no limitation to the file size or type of documents that you
link to your BCM Contacts and Accounts.

One little gotcha to always remember is that the link itself is the only
thing that is stored inside of the BCM db. The linked files remained stored
either on your hard drive Windows folders or on a shared network server. If
you change the location of a linked file, the BCM link is broken and BCM
won't be able to find the file in the new location where you moved the file
to until you manually re-link BCM to the file again. If you standardize upon
a consistently place where you store your files, it makes linking and
maintaining these BCM connections easy.

-THP

 

[Brian]

Apparently I misunderstood BCM 2007: I thought we could now upload files, not
just post links to them, so there's no improvement there. Darn it! I'll
have to keep looking for a reason to upgrade to 2007 then. Thanks for your
help Tim!

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

The best reasons that I can state for upgrading to 2007 are:

1. Fields customization
2. Server based sharing
3. Offline to Online db sync with either workgroup or server networks
4. Marketing and Project Mgt. Modules
5. Greater operating stability / maturity
6. Nicer UI

-THP

Apparently I misunderstood BCM 2007: I thought we could now upload files, not
just post links to them, so there's no improvement there. Darn it! I'll
have to keep looking for a reason to upgrade to 2007 then. Thanks for your
help Tim!

Brian,

[quoted text clipped - 18 lines]

 

[Lon Orenstein]

Brian:

I'm not clear when you say "upload". If you mean that you want the files
inserted into the BCM database, I'd respond that it's a bad idea. Like Tim
said, you're better off setting up shared folders on your server and
maintaining a consistent structure so that all the files for the XYZ account
are stored in a \Clients\XYZ folder. By creating a link from a contact to a
file, and linking the contact to an account, you'll see in History for the
account (or contact) all the files that apply to that entity.

SharePoint is another option where you can create shared workspaces which is
great if you want to give the client some access to these files also.

OfficeLive is an online version of SharePoint that is cheap but effective.

And, OneNote may be the secret weapon of all the Office modules. You can
create shared notebooks, and send data to/from the notebook to Outlook and
BCM.

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

 

[Eric]

I am confused about the procedure to keep attachements appended to all
e-mails in the contact database. Actually, some present e-mails retain
attachments while others do not? I need to make sure that all attachments
are saved and are retreieveable by me at a later date. How do I do this?

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

Eric,

Here is a hopefully easy way to keep this straight in your mind. Email is
strictly a function of Outlook alone by itself as an application. All email
is stored within an Outlook pst file. Any attachments to an email are also
stored within the Outlook mailbox pst unless you manually separate the
attachment and save it else where outside of Outlook on your hard drive or in
a shared server folder. Not separating your attachments can make the Outlook
mail store grow very large over time so it is an option and a good idea to
save email attachments to somewhere outside of the mail folder store in
Outlook. When you do this, you can attach a link from the attachment an the
Outlook item if you wish for convenient navigation to the attachment for
reference.

Now enter BCM. BCM is an entirely separate SQL database application that
operates within the same Outlook user interface and outwardly "appears" to be
the same as Outlook but certain Outlook data such as email are only "linked"
to the BCM Business Contact or Account records. Email is not stored within
the separate BCM db. It remains within the Outlook pst just like if you were
using Outlook alone without BCM added. Similar to stand alone Outlook, if
you remove an attachment from an email you can still manually initiate a link
from the involved Business Contact item to the now separated attachment that
is stored in your windows folders instead of inside the Outlook pst mail
folder. You can even get rid of the original email if you wish and this link
to the formerly attached document will bring you to the file.

Experiment with doing this directly in order to understand the various
outcomes. It is pretty obvious how this works once you play around with it a
few times.

Best regards,

-THP

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

Additional comment:

You mentioned that "some present emails retain attachments while others do
not." If you delete an email without first separating an attachment and
saving the attachment somewhere else outside of the Outlook pst, the
attachment will be deleted also along with the email. If your email is
attached to a BCM Business Contact, after you delete the email from the
Outlook pst, BCM does an automatic re-write of the email message body only
(not the attachment) onto a generic BCM record item titled "Business Activity.
" This Business Activity record will at first glance look just like the
email did when you look at the list of your BCM Communication History folder
items. You only notice the change when you actually click on this new
Business History item and open it up. You then see that after the email is
gone, the separate BCM db record rewrite remains. This automatically
rewritten Business Activity record containing the text of your old email now
resides within the separate BCM db and NOT in your Outlook pst mail store any
more.

This can be tortuously confusing until you understand exactly WHAT is going
on. Again, this whole BCM / Email / Attachments thing is not very thoroughly
explained any where so you just have to experience it directly by using the
app in order to fully comprehend.

-THP

Eric,

Here is a hopefully easy way to keep this straight in your mind. Email is
strictly a function of Outlook alone by itself as an application. All email
is stored within an Outlook pst file. Any attachments to an email are also
stored within the Outlook mailbox pst unless you manually separate the
attachment and save it else where outside of Outlook on your hard drive or in
a shared server folder. Not separating your attachments can make the Outlook
mail store grow very large over time so it is an option and a good idea to
save email attachments to somewhere outside of the mail folder store in
Outlook. When you do this, you can attach a link from the attachment an the
Outlook item if you wish for convenient navigation to the attachment for
reference.

Now enter BCM. BCM is an entirely separate SQL database application that
operates within the same Outlook user interface and outwardly "appears" to be
the same as Outlook but certain Outlook data such as email are only "linked"
to the BCM Business Contact or Account records. Email is not stored within
the separate BCM db. It remains within the Outlook pst just like if you were
using Outlook alone without BCM added. Similar to stand alone Outlook, if
you remove an attachment from an email you can still manually initiate a link
from the involved Business Contact item to the now separated attachment that
is stored in your windows folders instead of inside the Outlook pst mail
folder. You can even get rid of the original email if you wish and this link
to the formerly attached document will bring you to the file.

Experiment with doing this directly in order to understand the various
outcomes. It is pretty obvious how this works once you play around with it a
few times.

Best regards,

-THP

I am confused about the procedure to keep attachements appended to all
e-mails in the contact database. Actually, some present e-mails retain

[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]

 

[Luther]

Additional comment:

You mentioned that "some present emails retain attachments while others do
not." If you delete an email without first separating an attachment and
saving the attachment somewhere else outside of the Outlook pst, the
attachment will be deleted also along with the email. If your email is
attached to a BCM Business Contact, after you delete the email from the
Outlook pst, BCM does an automatic re-write of the email message body only
(not the attachment) onto a generic BCM record item titled "Business Activity.
" This Business Activity record will at first glance look just like the
email did when you look at the list of your BCM Communication History folder
items. You only notice the change when you actually click on this new
Business History item and open it up. You then see that after the email is
gone, the separate BCM db record rewrite remains. This automatically
rewritten Business Activity record containing the text of your old email now
resides within the separate BCM db and NOT in your Outlook pst mail store any
more.

This can be tortuously confusing until you understand exactly WHAT is going
on. Again, this whole BCM / Email / Attachments thing is not very thoroughly
explained any where so you just have to experience it directly by using the
app in order to fully comprehend.

-THP

Eric,

Here is a hopefully easy way to keep this straight in your mind. Email is
strictly a function of Outlook alone by itself as an application. All email
is stored within an Outlook pst file. Any attachments to an email are also
stored within the Outlook mailbox pst unless you manually separate the
attachment and save it else where outside of Outlook on your hard drive or in
a shared server folder. Not separating your attachments can make the Outlook
mail store grow very large over time so it is an option and a good idea to
save email attachments to somewhere outside of the mail folder store in
Outlook. When you do this, you can attach a link from the attachment an the
Outlook item if you wish for convenient navigation to the attachment for
reference.

Now enter BCM. BCM is an entirely separate SQL database application that
operates within the same Outlook user interface and outwardly "appears" to be
the same as Outlook but certain Outlook data such as email are only "linked"
to the BCM Business Contact or Account records. Email is not stored within
the separate BCM db. It remains within the Outlook pst just like if you were
using Outlook alone without BCM added. Similar to stand alone Outlook, if
you remove an attachment from an email you can still manually initiate a link
from the involved Business Contact item to the now separated attachment that
is stored in your windows folders instead of inside the Outlook pst mail
folder. You can even get rid of the original email if you wish and this link
to the formerly attached document will bring you to the file.

Experiment with doing this directly in order to understand the various
outcomes. It is pretty obvious how this works once you play around with it a
few times.

Best regards,

-THP

I am confused about the procedure to keep attachements appended to all
e-mails in the contact database. Actually, some present e-mails retain

[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]

save and share proposals, contracts, conversations, pdfs etc. in the account.
Tips? Hints? Gotchas? Thanks for your help!

Just a minor correction.

When an email is linked to a BCM contact, the record is immediately
created in the BCM database. However, BCM will continue to open the
linked Outlook email as long as it can find it, using the Outlook ID
stored in the BCM database. You can see this going on by monitoring
the BCM activities table when an email is linked. When BCM asks
Outlook to open an email and Outlook reports back that it can't find
the email, then BCM will display the email information in its
database.

I agree that this could be better explained, but I did come across
this explanation in the Help once. The question is how much
information to present to new users. Most users just want to "get up
and running" (I know I do!) and quickly click past the information
BCM does present in the initial wizard. Part of the problem, judging
by the comments on this newsgroup, is that different users feel that
there's one crucial nugget of information that should have explained
to them upfront, but that item is different to different groups of
users, and if BCM forced that all those pieces of information on users
up front, then BCM becomes too difficult for many new users.

One nice mitigation is that the BCM online Help topics are constantly
being updated, so that when people run into issues they can find the
information they need. If they can't, they can leave feedback on what
they were looking for and couldn't find, and the most requested
information can be added. Sadly, I've heard that of the people
reporting that they could not find the information they were looking
for, only 5% take the time to explain what they were looking for.

 

[mrtimpeterson via OfficeKB.com]

Luther,

Thank you. Yours is a much better and more efficient explanation of how BCM
relates to email and attachments. I agree that many new users are, shall we
say, a bit lazy in searching for Help topics. What is most unfortunate to
read here however is the new BCM user who suddenly realizes after several
months or so that they have been mistakenly deleting emails and related
attachments all the while incorrectly thinking that the email and attachments
are still there because the subject is still showing up in the BCM
Communication History list from the "Business Activity" records. Surprise!! .
.. then comes the angry reactive post from the user to this newsgroup asking
for help and clarification.

It is an easy mistake to make even if one does seek out the Help topics.
Like most new users who just want to plunge in and get going, I made very
this mistake myself until I agressively figured it out reactively vs.
proactively understanding this upfront. Such are the joys of the BCM user
experience.

The accidental loss of data from attachments disappearing is a shocking
feeling.

-THP

Additional comment:

[quoted text clipped - 65 lines]

- Show quoted text -

Just a minor correction.

When an email is linked to a BCM contact, the record is immediately
created in the BCM database. However, BCM will continue to open the
linked Outlook email as long as it can find it, using the Outlook ID
stored in the BCM database. You can see this going on by monitoring
the BCM activities table when an email is linked. When BCM asks
Outlook to open an email and Outlook reports back that it can't find
the email, then BCM will display the email information in its
database.

I agree that this could be better explained, but I did come across
this explanation in the Help once. The question is how much
information to present to new users. Most users just want to "get up
and running" (I know I do!) and quickly click past the information
BCM does present in the initial wizard. Part of the problem, judging
by the comments on this newsgroup, is that different users feel that
there's one crucial nugget of information that should have explained
to them upfront, but that item is different to different groups of
users, and if BCM forced that all those pieces of information on users
up front, then BCM becomes too difficult for many new users.

One nice mitigation is that the BCM online Help topics are constantly
being updated, so that when people run into issues they can find the
information they need. If they can't, they can leave feedback on what
they were looking for and couldn't find, and the most requested
information can be added. Sadly, I've heard that of the people
reporting that they could not find the information they were looking
for, only 5% take the time to explain what they were looking for.