New to Maximizer 8 ? - Joint Tutor ?

Have used Act in the past, but not 2005 so my comments are based on these older versions if I mention Act. A few of the key concepts for me when we implemented Max here :

1) Max Companies/Contacts vs Individuals : With an Individual you can record both Company and personal (name, address, etc.) info. With a Company you can't record personal info, with a Contact you can't record Company info - you first create the Company, then add Contacts for that Company. Advantage of Companies/Contacts is that you can record notes, etc. against individual Contacts, then easily see just the notes for that Contact or the notes for the entire company - sweet if you have a bunch of people from a single company in a meeting. Without this, who do you record the ntoes to so you can find them later? Also, if a Contact leaves a Company you can move them across to a new one but a copy of all their notes stay with the original Company too - very useful indeed. Also, you don't have to maintain an address for each Contact - you can maintain multiple addresses at the Company level and simply select which one to use for each Contact (very useful if someone is transferred). Act didn't have Companies/Contacts, just Individuals

2) Max has really easy UDF (User Defined Fields)handling - it's part of the core of what they do, not a set of add-on categorizations. For instance, the other day our field people were using the system to break down contacts in new ways for a new marketing campaign - with no IT support or involvement of any kind, it's that easy. Last time I used Act the UDF's felt like a separate sub-system built by a different group of programmers and bolted onto the main system, so I would never have felt it was a core part of the toolset, not would I have considered it easy enough for field people to use with absolutely no guidance, not would they have wanted to.

3) Building on (2), Max has really powerful, smooth and easy to use Search capabilities, not just on UDF's. For instance, in 5 minutes last night I figured out 2 ways to figure out how many records were added by a specific person in any given date range. And I had fun doing it.

I'm sure I'll think of other stuff, but those spring to the forefront. Bottom line is take advantage of Companies/Contacts, use those UDF's and try that Searching!

- R.

Rooster - thanks for the insights!

If anyone has an Act 2005 conversion template they would care to share with basic fields that would be great - so far no repies on:
https://maxtalk.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/132605203/m/8621037441

Unselecting contacts took me for a while until explained. (use the edit menu choice)

I'm skipping around to trying different things. I've been experimenting with Time & Chaos product (which I like), but it does not do email mailmerge in the standard product using our regular email client (Outlook Express, in my case). I think that Maximizer 8 does this and places a note on the contact that it has happened, but I have only been able to get this to work with one contact at a time. Is there a secret to sending individual emails to selected contacts on the list?
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Ok, what a difference a day makes and perhaps now that I know how to select records in the list. Emails went out for the 2 selected contacts. Asked several appropriate questions (may look at how to default these if I send to a dozen). Don't see anything in the contact notes that the email had been sent - did I dream this up? Is there a any kind of record of the email being sent in other than the Outlook Express sent items (glad it's there). But worked great!

Dave, there is supposed to be a flag in Max 8 (maybe check under File > Preferences > Logging?) to turn ont he functionality to add an entry to the Max Notes for emails sent out. We use Max 7 which doesn't ahve that but I believe I've seen it in the Max 8 marketing stuff. One email limitation you may find (certainly it's a limit in Max 7) is that you can't take an email saved as a Max Document and then forward it to multiple Max Contacts - you can do it, but you have to manually enter each email address. You also can't email a Max Document (ex - a resume saved against a Max Address Boo entry can't be emailed to anyone directly - would have to save it to a folder in Windows, then compose you email and use the standard Attach/Browse functionality of Outlook Express to locate it in the Windows folder.

Another Max thing you might be interested in is the ability to Relate companies. We deal with a lot of firms where there is a corporate company plus subsidiaries, each with their own characteristics for UDF's, their own company name, contacts, etc. We use the Releate capability so we can easily see shich companies own which other companies.

- R.

Thanks Rooster - the switch is right where you said it would be File / Preferences / Logging / Email. A choice of
- none (my current setting)
- Notes (assume contact notes)
- Journal (assume the general personal non contact specific journal
- Both

Can't ask for more than that, experience should help figure out what to do when - thanks.

I can be dense at times and I think that Maximizer 8 has a lot of great features buried in here, but I wonder how an average person ever figures it out? For me, it will take a message board with persistent patient users - without this board, Maximizer would be gathering dust.

Dave, Maximizer sells a training manual for Max. I wouldn't recommend it to an average user as it talks as much about the setup (File > Preferences) as it does everyday use. However, for someone like yourself who is further ahead than most and trying to decide how to set Max up it might prove really useful.

Also, is the user manual for Version 8 (Maximizer Online Documentation - in PDF format) any good? For instance, in the manual for Version 7 under "Send and Receive email" it addresses the logging of emails when it says "This command does not automatically log a note; add a manual note, if required, in Notes window." - if your manual for Version 8 talks about logging a note automatically, it would have addressed this issue for you and therefore may have other nuggets for you as well. Personally, I read it like a novel - front to back - with hilighther in hand when I was first playing with Max.

Having said that, keep coming with the questions - that way we build the knowledge base here and add another successful user. You do realize, though, that one day I'm going to be asking questions of you, right? <g>

- R.