Record phone history after the fact?

[Lew]

I need a dated history of phone calls, emails, and meetings for my
contacts. Dated notes would also be nice. Can someone tell me how to
do this in BCM?

In BCM history, meetings and emails show the proper date. Phone Logs
and Business Notes, however, show the date they were created, not when
they occured. If I talked to a contact yesterday but didn't record it
until today, it will have today's date.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to change the date on phone
calls and notes? Is there another way to record calls in history? If
not, has someone come up with a good workaround? Thanks.

 

[turk54]

I'm glad that someone else posted this question, but I'm disappointed that no
one has answered it. I have the exact same need to be able to add notes and
record phone logs after the fact. Especially when I travel and talk to
people while away from the office. It really is important to be able to
record the correct time & date a phone conversation took place as opposed to
when I entered it. Can anyone help????

 

[Lon Orenstein]

Well, it's not perfect but you could enter the note or phone log whenever
you want and change the Start Date to the real date, or use the Time Stamp
feature to enter a date/time and then modify that. You could customize your
views to show the Start Date instead of the Created Date and you would know
that was the real date.

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

 

[turk54]

Lon,

Thanks for the help, but I'm not sure how to do what you are saying. Once
the phone log record is created, I can't change the Start time (which as you
say is filled in with the created time). I also don't know what you mean by
the time stamp feature, since I can't find it anywhere in the Help. To be
able to do this, must I customize the view? If so, where do I go to learn
how to do this? This brings up another interesting question. If we have to
customize views, I assume we need to propogate these customized views to all
our users. What is the best way of doing that? Subsequently, if we add new
fields, etc. to any particular view, will users be able to go back to contact
records and then subsequently fill in those fields? Obviously, we are
newbies at this, so maybe we need to buy your book..... Thanks in advance
for any help you can provide.....

 

[turk54]

Lon,

I forgot to mention that we are using Outlook 2003 w/BCM if that makes any
difference. I have seen where the 2007 version has some added
features/functions, and maybe what you were saying is part of the newer
package. If that's the case, can we just install Outlook 2007 w/BCM on our
systems, or do we have to get Office 2007 for all of our users?

 

[Lon Orenstein]

Turk54:

Yes, I was using BCM 2007 as the example -- sorry. I would recommend
upgrading to that version since it's so much better than 2003. Yes, you'll
need to get Office 2007 Small Business or Professional for all your users in
order to share the same database amongst them. You can download a trial of
Office 2007 and check it out.

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,

I forgot to mention that we are using Outlook 2003 w/BCM if that makes any
difference. I have seen where the 2007 version has some added
features/functions, and maybe what you were saying is part of the newer
package. If that's the case, can we just install Outlook 2007 w/BCM on
our
systems, or do we have to get Office 2007 for all of our users?

 

[turk54]

Thanks for your help. I'm not sure we want to spend the money to upgrade
everyone to Office 2007 whan we just upgraded everyone over the last year to
2003 Professional. The long & short of it appears to be that we can't do we
want to do with the version that we have. We initially discounted BCM
because we wouldn't be able to share our database properly with all of our
users, but now they have an update to allow it to work with SBS 2003 servers.
Unfortunately, the product is still lacking some bells & whistles which seem
pretty basic, and out the only avenue for us is to upgrade once again. This
is why small businesses such as ours cringe every time we attempt to use some
of the tools avaialble to us. It always seems like the elusive brass ring is
always slightly too far to reach. Any hopes that anyone inside of MS will
view this as a problem or make attempts to package BCM as a separate
purchaseable product?

 

[turk54]

Thanks again. I am curious about the download trial of Office 2007. Once we
download, are we supposed to set up a new database with the 2007 version of
BCM? Can we run 2003 & 2007 at the same time without causing conflicts? I
don't want to lose or destroy what we have already implemented.