Looking for contact manager that keeps history by individual

[ChristyK]

[Lynn Terry]

That sounds interesting - I'd love to see something like this as well. What I do is file emails in sub-directories in my Outlook program (for example, all clients under "Clients" in their own individual folders - all affiliate info under "Affiliate" in their own folders, etc). That way I can go straight to a folder for a person or program... and even do a search through that directory if I am looking for something specific.

[Ravedesigns]

[ChristyK]

[Ravedesigns]

[avrr]

[ElevatingYourBusiness]

I do what Lynn does. However, it sounds like maybe a help-type support software might assisty you. Have you checked into that?

Something like this http://www.helpcenterlive.com/

[Ruud]

I use Outlook as my "place to live in". When I used a contact/client relation manager, since then I collect my data another way, I used Business Contact Manager. It is a plugin for Outlook. It comes for free with certain versions of Office 2003. But when you order the Office trial CD from Microsoft (something like 5 dollar S&H), you can install the plugin and it will keep working. That is, provided you already have Outlook or Office, right?

In many ways better than BCM, but not for me back then, is . This too plugs right into Outlook and lives there. At $150 not expensive but maybe a lot of money for what you're looking for.

Other solutions?

- Get Copernic Desktop Search (free). It gives Outlook that *fast* power search you've been looking for. Email is easily found back, also by contact.

- Use Outlook itself. Go to the contact, hit the Activities tab. Not threaded you say? Right-click, Arrange by -> Conversation ... and now it is threaded.

- Use another folder than Inbox to receive your email. You can setup a rule, for instance. This way you can enable the option in Outlook to save sent mail in the folder you were replying from. Now original & reply are together. Customize your view to be sorted by contact, and then by conversation (threaded).

-

[HowardH]

[webturtle]

I'm using something called Agendus that (amongst other things) can build a history for a contact. It rides on top of Outlook, sort of - kind of makes it like Outlook on Steroids with better tasks, more customizable calendar, integration with a palm device. That, coupled with the free Copernic desktop search, I don't have trouble finding much of anything amongst my gigs and gigs of data

[ramebo]

Another program to toss out there is Goldmine. It has a little bit of a learning curve, but has amazing automation tools and keeps track of every detail for each customer, including e-mail.

http://www.goldmine.com
http://www.contactreview.com (discussion board)
http://www.runaware.com/software_all.jsp (try it out online)

[ChristyK]

[HowardH]

This is sort-of related to the topic of contact management... I have this enormous collection of business cards that I got from various places (one rule of networking, always ask for business cards from anybody you consider interesting; never offer a business card unless asked). Every time I go looking for some contact, I end up spending 15 minutes or so going through the stack.

They are never in the right order. If I arrange them by name, I invariably need to know who is in the business that I'm looking for, and if I have them arranged by business, I invariably need to know what Mr. Jones's phone # is (where did he work?)... So there is no correct sort order.

I have looked at business card scanners, but I have no idea of whether they are any good -- and the prices vary from ridiculously low to ridiculously high. Anybody here actually use one? What did you think of it?

[Todd Sumrall]

ACT! by far is the best CRM history keeping database for the buck. My entire industry is hooked on it. I manage over 1800 contacts in mine complete with histories. What makes it so good is the fact that just about every aspect of it can be customized. Take a look
http://www.paymentprofessional.com/tk.cgi?ACT

Oh yea, works with QuickBooks so you do not have to enter customer info but once. Doesn't matter which program you put the info in first, couple of clicks and it's in the other.

You can view payment history, invoices and more from QuickBooks inside of ACT!

[webturtle]

Oh, this subject has resurrected and I have a scary story for you kiddies

As I said earlier, I use Outlook extensively - and had it optimized and tricked out as far as it could go with various add ons that gave me what I needed. Prior to this week, I had a fairly screamin' system which managed all of my email, email history, contacts, categorization of contacts, to do's and tasks, and so on. You notice I'm saying this is all past tense?

Well - i've been in the computer industry for 20 years now so I'm very paranoid. I have a second internal hard drive, and also an external back up drive, that I automatically back up all data to every Friday night. The outlook.pst file in particular, I maintain weekly - removing email and unnecessary records, and purging the spam and recycle bin files to keep the size down. I also do regular archives and only have six months of data in it.

So - after a few years, my whole computer was just crying from the hard core usage I put on it and I decided that since I just had to spring for a laptop unexpectedly, i'd just reuse this totally fine PC and reformat the hard drive and reinstall all new OS, drivers, etc. Fresh start. I hired a guy to come in for 2 hours for the base installation, Wednesday.

Before he came, I did a massive amount of organization, backing up, printing out of serial #s, and so on. I had the internal drive with data backed up to the external drive. I made sure the OutlookPST file was there. Then, in a fit of extra paranoia, I went out and purchased a brand new $200 back up drive with enormous space and on Tuesday, I did a completely fresh 100% back up of BOTH my two internal drives. Just to be safe.

So, he comes on Wednesday and wipes out my C: drive, and reformats it and puts on XP PS2 and then all my software including Outlook. Then, he says "Okay, let's load your PST file on here" and I told him to take the one off the data drive.

I hear "Um, actually, I just looked on all your drives and I don't see any PST files."



Honest to god, people, my head separated from the rest of my body - it was like I went into some sort of parallel universe.

For two hours, we frantically ran searches all over those 3 hard drives. We installed techie utilities to glean whether there was EVER a file with either Outlook or PST to it.

NOTHING. Alternate reality, here I come!

Er, when will that durned alarm clock go off and wake me?

By that point, I was sick - splitting headache, can't keep food down, nauseous. I mean - come on!! This is the CORE of my business. I've spent 3 years building up this business and ... its GONE?

What do you do now? It hit me that without this data, I literally would need to try to make good on existing clients and close the business. There was too much lost in that one file. Without my contacts, calendar, tasks, history ... I would be finished.

Then he says "You have a Treo. You synched your Treo right?" Of course I did. So we purchased another utility to do a back up of every bit of data on the Treo - and did a synch of data from the Treo back to Outlook.

It moved over the calendar items and contacts. My entire to-do list - which spans both my personal and business life and goes out at least a year in the future - it ATE. Gone. Like it never existed. It also deleted every one of my categories - so in other words, now I know who my contacts are - but not WHAT they are. If I had someone tagged as "business" "lead" "holiday card" for the purpose of filtering for my marketing - its GONE.

Ain't life grand?

Today was spent mostly just in a daze... shell shocked. He was here NINE hours instead of two but had mercy and only charged me $300 more than I had budgeted for. Christimas shopping - out the window.

And, I'm essentially staring at a blank to-do list, knowing that my entire future business depends on recalling who I need to call, invoice, tickle, follow up with, pay hosting for, write an article for... I am staring at my holiday cards, wondering if I've got the heart to manually re-tag everyone of hundreds of contacts that I wanted to send a card to. I have a feeling the repercussions of this will go on for months.

And to think, I was feeling burnt out and ready for a vacation before this happened.

You know, my tech guy and i have been wracking our brains for a day now - how could this be avoided? And we're both stumped, with 40 years of experience between us, and three back up drives (one of which I'm anal enough to take on weekend trips with me to have it off site), it really makes you wonder. Especially because I personally, with my own eyes, looked at the PST file on the back up drive, dated Tuesday night, and verified that it was around 900 MB.

I feel like I am hallucinating.

So - a word to the wise. You might be sure you have back ups - but do you? I am not sure what to say - except - BE AFRAID.

Incidentally, as I've told this story, people have come out of the wood work telling similar tales. There is something terrifyingly wrong with this picture. So be careful.

PS. I'm looking at a stunning system for the anal retentive, called TimeMatters - its HARDCORE but a organization freaks CRM dream. Once I get past Christmas, that's probably what I'll invest my time and money in - I've already demo'ed Act and Goldmine and hated them both