What's new in Act! v21

Question: What's new in Act! v21?

Product Details:
Product Family: Act!
Version: v21

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Answer:

Act! v21 brings you the latest generation of the Act! software. Act! CRM just got better, now including dynamic sales pipeline management and Marketing Automation!

Note: Some features are available in Act! Premium and above only, or require additional subscription

Act! v21 delivers the features and improvements detailed below:


Act! Marketing Automation (requires additional subscription)

• Optimize all the ways you communicate with prospects & customers!
  
  Act! Marketing Automation (AMA) makes it simple to acquire new leads, engage prospects and customers, and build long-lasting, profitable relationships that fuel business growth. AMA replaces separate systems for email, web visitor tracking, lead scoring, nurture campaigns, campaign management and reporting with one solution. Using AMA will allow you to AMA optimise all the ways you communicate with prospects and customers to maximise engagement and drive business growth.
  
  
  • Comprehensive campaign management — blasts, drip, and nurture.
  • Visual workflow designer and interactive template editor.
  • Effective lead management — lead capture, scoring, and nurturing.
  • Time-saving CRM workflow with prioritised sales follow-up.
  • Real-time response metrics and actionable customer insights.
  • Deliverability and best practice consulting.

• Engage prospects & customers
  
  • Optimise your customer lifecycle from initial engagement to retention and loyalty with automated outreach in each step.
  • Let Act! Marketing Automation do the work for you with response-driven nurture marketing campaigns—all sent to targeted lists in Act! automatically.
  • Campaigns are triggered based on criteria you define, leading recipients down a highly personalised path.
    

• Design responsive campaigns & nurture streams
  
  • Create beautiful, mobile-friendly email campaigns with the interactive template editor where you can customise colors and fonts, and add free, high-quality stock photos from a library of over 500,000 options.
  • Start with one of 25 sample templates or import and edit your existing HTML templates with the WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) editor.
  • Setup custom nurture streams with the visual campaign workflow designer, providing a graphical representation of your communication flow.
    

• Attract & nurture prospects
  
  • Grow your audience with effective lead capture forms and surveys that feed contacts and responses into Act! automatically.
  • Advanced forms and surveys allow further actions in Act!—notify Act! users and create Act! activities and opportunities automatically as recipients respond.
  • Identify your most interested prospects with lead scoring based on campaign engagement, survey/web form responses, and website interactions.
  • Prioritised leads are pushed into Act! groups automatically for easy sales follow-up.
    

• Connect your sales & marketing efforts
  
  • Automate workflow between sales and marketing to maximise engagement at every phase of the customer journey.
  • Watch as Act! Marketing Automation turns real-time response metrics into sales actions—alerting you of new prospects, prioritising follow-ups, and delivering a composite view of customer engagement in a single solution.
  • Notify Act! users via email and create Act! activities and opportunities automatically.
    

• Optimise campaigns & marketing assets
  
  • Understand what’s working and how you can improve with real-time metrics covering opens, clicks, and comparative stats per campaign.
  • Individual campaign results automatically push to Act! contact records for a detailed interaction history.
  • Perform A/B tests to pinpoint your most impactful subject lines and content to continually improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.
  • Identify prospects on your website in real-time to engage with them when they are most interested, because web visits feed into lead scoring profiles and create activities for sales follow-up in Act! automatically.
    

• Trust campaigns will reach inboxes
  
  • Rest-assured your campaigns will reach inboxes, because Act! Marketing Automation is backed by an expert delivery team to help you manage your sender reputation and achieve outstanding delivery rates.
  • Get started with ease, because you get concierge service from onboarding experts who help you get set up, logged in, and started right away.
  • Fast-track your success with expert guidance around sender reputation, inbox delivery rates, and more via consulting services.
    

Opportunities Enhancements (requires Act! subscription)

• New Pipeline View
  
  New in v21 is a new look at how to interact and work with your sales pipeline. Act! now has a dynamic sales pipeline feature that will allow users to see how their deals break out into each stage of a sales process, and move deals through that sales process with an all-new drag & drop sales Kanban board.
  
  
  • Interactive sales funnel with the total count and value of all open opportunities.
  • In-context KPIs with an instant roll-up of metrics like Opportunity Close Rate, closed-won value, open deals, and more (8 out-of-the-box or add your own).
  • Actionable sales pipeline with a visual representation of all opportunities organised by sales stage and drag-and-drop functionality.
  • Advanced filters to see data by rep, sales stage, date range, and more.

• Improved Opportunity List View with KPIs & Advanced Filters
  
  New in v21 is a refreshed take on how users interact and work within their Opportunity views. New to the list view are exciting features such as KPIs at the top of the list that will contextually display information, and the addition of the all-new contextual menu which will now display the opportunity filters.
  
  
  • Select between 8 out-of-the-box KPIs.
  • Add your own custom KPIs.
    

Act! Insight with Custom Tables Support (requires Act! Premium Plus subscription)

• Create new dashboards using the unique business or industry data you manage in Custom Tables
  
  A new addition to the Act! Insight view is the ability to create custom charts leveraging data stored in a user’s implementation of Custom Tables.
  
  
  • Custom Insight Views and Charts now allow the selection of a Custom Table entity.
  • Choose to display information from the fields you have created within your Custom Table.

Custom Tables Improvements (requires Act! Premium Plus subscription)

• Features New to using Custom Tables in the Web Client
  
  Driven by customer and partner feedback, these improvements greatly enhance the experience of web and cloud users, which helps customers work quicker and smarter.
  
  
  • Perform advanced queries.
  • Perform mail merges.
  • Manage cascading dropdowns.
  • Specify default columns.

• Usability Improvements
  
  New to Custom Tables in v21 are two additional features; a refreshed take on how users interact and work within their Opportunity views. New to the list view are exciting features such as KPIs at the top of the list that will contextually display information, and the addition of the all-new contextual menu which will now display the opportunity filters.
  
  
  • Quickly Assign Records to an Entity - Previously in order to associate a Custom Table record with a Contact, Group, Company or Opportunity the user needed to have the Custom Table record open. This has been changed in v21 to allow a Custom Table record to be assigned directly when within a Contact, Group, Company or Opportunity record.
  • Nested Child Table Records in List Views - After having created a Parent/Child relationship with two Custom Tables, previously you would only view the Child Table by embedding it within the Parent Table layout. Related Child records can now be viewed within the List View of the Parent table.
    

Improved Outlook Integration Usability

• Attach Inbound Emails
  
  In legacy versions of Act! there was the function to automatically record History entries from emails received to Microsoft Outlook. This functionality was lost from Outlook versions 2013 onwards due the Custom Actions feature being removed from email rules. This functionality has now been re-implemented using an updated email attachment mechanism.
  
  
  • Configure the type of History that will be automatically recorded for inbound emails within the Email setup wizard - exactly like the configuration for outbound emails.
  • Available in both the desktop and web versions of Act!.

• Quick Actions to Manage Unattached Emails
  
  New for v21 are some additional functions when sending emails from Outlook to email addresses that do not appear in the Act! database.
  
  
  • Optional notification when sending emails through Outlook to prompt you to either create a new Contact or attach to a different Contact.
  • Optional notification when using the Quick Attach button to prompt you to Manage unattached e-mails which will give you a list of any emails that have not attached with options to either create a new Contact or attach to a different Contact.

Activation Wizard

• Updated Activation Process
  
  To improve the onboarding experience for new Act! customers, and to facilitate customers growing their Act! implementation, we have made several improvements to the activation process.
  
  
  • Activating a license no longer requires users to ‘run as admin’.
  • Messaging throughout the wizard has been simplified. This now refers to ‘activation’ rather than ‘registration’, and provides clearer guidance through the process.
  • The outdated registration survey has been removed. Note that customers will still need to enter their contact details on first activation.

New Look Welcome Screen

• Enjoy convenient access to feature tours, import options, and customer support resources
  
  The newly redesigned Welcome Page for v21 has Quick Access to Helpful Online Resources.
  
  
  • Embedded introductory video to get customers up and running as quickly as possible.
  • Icon links to take customers to a host of online resources including our Knowledgebase and Community.
  • No more blocks of text for customers to read, the Welcome screen can be easily understood with just a glance.

Additional Enhancements

• Intelligent update notifications for offline clients (Requires a Cloud deployment of Act! with offline client setup)
  When working with an offline client, the offline client will receive automatic notifications that it needs to be updated. This is to ensure synchronising between cloud and client goes uninterrupted.
  

• Manage activity types via the web client
  To improve the experience and customization available to web client users, we have added the ability to manage activity types via the web client.
  

• Privacy and security updates
  Act! v21 includes several technology improvements, helping to increase the stability and security of the software.
  
  • Upgrades to .NET and SQL.
  • SOC 2 compliance.
  • GDPR compliance enablement.

Defects Closed in Act! v21

Note: The list of defects below only cover the defects closed at the release of Act! v21.0. For a list of defects fixed in updates for Act! v21.0, refer to the following knowledgebase article:

What issues have been fixed in Act! updates?

• D-08658 APFW - unable to get bearer key if TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are disabled (Invalid jwt)
• D-08572 AMA - Campaign Dashboard 'Export data' has no effect
• D-08555 BETA - Database Shared Confirmation prompt, appears in English on all Locals
• D-08535 BETA - Opportunity KPIs are appearing in English, on German Act!
• D-08532 AMA loads to blank page if database is opened with .pad file
• D-08518 BETA - PERMISSIONS_MAX64=WEB.API shows in Add Permissions within Manage Users
• D-08514 APFW constantly prompts to install addin for Word and Outlook/Google sync.
• D-08511 AMA - Login sessions stored between separate database logins
• D-08508 APC- ISPA creates duplicates if the first name field in Act! contains a prefix with a period
• D-08496 APFW - Outlook 32/64 bit Add-ins tab is not visible when Act! Integration is installed via web
• D-08458 Inbound email History disregards the preference set by the User for Inbound Emails and uses the preference for quick attach.
• D-08457 Opportunities - Pipeline view not accessible in trial
• D-08456 BETA - APFW - Global Toolbar buttons do not work
• D-08420 Beta - Splashscreen has 2017 Copywright data
• D-08414 Act! Install is corrupt if you install Act! while Act! Web Integration is installed
• D-08399 BETA - Activities - Email Invitations not created with email address.
• D-08397 Object Reference error when clicking Opportunity List view after creating a new Opportunity.
• D-08378 APFW - Outlook Add-in 32 and 64 bit - Option to Create Act! Activity displays no pop-up window
• D-08377 Outlook Add-in 32 and 64 bit - Option to Create Act! Activity displays no pop-up window
• D-08376 APFW - Outlook Add-in 32 and 64 bit - Option to Create Act! Contact displays no pop-up window
• D-08375 Outlook Add-in 32 and 64 bit - Option to Create Act! Contact displays no pop-up window
• D-08350 APFW - Custom Tables - 'Add' button on layout with multiple child tables always adds to last table on layout.
• D-08335 Dashboard displays incorrectly after upgrading to v21 ChartFX License
• D-08319 Custom Tables - Error when entering UK date format in Custom Tables lookup
• D-08306 APFW - Custom icon broken on disabled activity types
• D-08291 Unable to create custom table field containing valid symbols and accented characters
• D-08286 Editing Time in history manually does not trigger a save.
• D-08285 Cannot record history of outgoing emails against My Record.
• D-08273 Custom tables - Time fields values change depending on Windows time zone
• D-08267 Documents - Save file dialog doesn't have a default file or file type
• D-08262 APFW - Deleting lookup entity causes logout
• D-08253 APFW-Outlook Integration-Contact Sync- ISPA will only sync up to 500 contacts in a group, when syncing via web integration
• D-08223 APFW - Custom Tables - Custom tables drop down option, in web, do not load the correct pop windows
• D-08212 Clearing Activities gives blank error box.
• D-08202 APFW - Opportunities - Intermittent fail when adding or removing Opportunities from Contact (Detail View tab)
• D-08193 Premium - Unable to unpack and restore a remote database in version 21.0.88.0
• D-08188 APFW - Opening Documents tab in web causes log-off
• D-08187 PreReq.exe stopping install process on Clean build of Windows 7 and 8.1 on 32 bit machines
• D-08181 Error message when trying to setup Google Synchronization Preferences from Tools>Integrate with Google>Google Integration Preferences
• D-08180 Unable to setup Outlook Synchronization Preferences from “E-mail & Outlook Sync” within the Preferences Window
• D-08146 APFW - Outlook web integration does not add WebAPIURL value if address book already exists
• D-08139 Outlook Addin - History not recording if email subject is blank
• D-08091 FR/DE - Accented characters do not display in Act! Insight
• D-07819 Greek Characters in Activity Regarding Field are not displayed correctly in history when cleared.
• D-07639 Attachment icon does not appear in History List
• D-07526 APFW – Back to log in page when switching the tab in Opportunities
• D-05015 Default Value in Number fields is not retained.
• D-04763 APFW - Certain values in drop down list show as blank in IE when selected.
• D-04242 Calculated field is not updating while clicking the save button in opportunities
• D-02458 Changing field to different drop down list will not sync to remote.
• D-08611 Firefox (Quantum v62) brings up the mobile view of APFW
• D-08599 Act! crashes when closing database if in AMA page
• D-08513 APFW inbound email options ignored and quick attach preferences used instead.
• D-08490 BETA - Emarketing appears as a option, under View menu
• D-08481 Activation completes upon clicking Next on step 2 of the Activation wizard
• D-08480 APFW - The formatting of the prompt to Enable Act! emarketing has no formatting/spacing applied
• D-08421 BETA - Menu flyouts are opening to the right rather than left
• D-08390 Attempting to activate Act! with a serial number where the tolerance has been reached gives conflicting messages.
• D-08357 APFW / APC - Chrome - "Select Date Range" pop window size is too small
• D-08353 APFW - Error in Application when User tries to change own password when 'User cannot change password' is enabled.
• D-08312 Sort order is not retained in opportunities
• D-08311 Custom Tables - When performing a Lookup for a Date Field the results displayed are inaccurate
• D-08275 Ensure remote database sync triggers are generated for Define Fields changes
• D-08261 APFW - Deleting field present in list view of main grids causes grid to format incorrectly
• D-08258 Custom tables – Sequential fields not function correctly, when missing from Layout
• D-08210 APFW - Images don't resize properly in Custom Tables picture fields
• D-08208 APFW - Incorrectly sized modal dialog box prevents login after user password reset
• D-08200 Web Info tab - Open Browser link uses IE and not default browser
• D-08160 APFW - Custom Tables - No scroll bar on Layout Window in Internet Explorer
• D-08145 Browse user unable to scroll memo field window.
• D-08116 DE - The ‘Help’ button is displayed as ‘?’ in Layout Designer dialog.
• D-08114 APFW - Opportunities not gaining correct associations when created via web.
• D-07798 APFW - No response after clicking ‘Exit’ button to exit ‘Act! Word Processor – Internet Explorer’ Dialog.
• D-07659 The “refresh” & ”Stop” & ”Copy link” button in Web info tab does not show obvious icons, the color is too light.
• D-07472 APFW - Work Week Calendar starts on wrong day in some timezones.
• D-07173 Lookup Drop Down displaying buttons
• D-07097 Calculated fields do not update if fields are on different tables.
• D-05848 APFW - Cannot edit data on the Define Fields page or close the page after clicking text box of field name.
• D-04638 Performance Issue - Login delay - stop business care check
• D-08606 Icon for the KPIs settings dialogue is incorrect
• D-08484 Column titles in the AMA Campaign tab are not aligned with the data within the table
• D-07335 APFW - Installing on WIN 10/8 says you can only do 10 network connections instead of 20
• D-04885 APFW- Contact List - When resizing a column in the list view, the data in that column is sorted.
• D-04236 APFW - Yellow 3-D selection header shows up on monthly calendar date for today
• D-03593 APFW - Opportunity Status checkboxes do not get reset.