ENEWS > WINTER 2009

Bonus Article
Technical Considerations for Contact Relationships in
ACT! 2009 (11.1)

For over 20 years now, ACT! has been the leading Contact Management system allowing you to manage and track important information about your relationships. The latest release of ACT! provides even more tools for effectively managing relationships by giving you the ability to identify, search for, and report on relationships between contacts. This new feature is available in both the Windows® and Web products.

This article discusses some technical considerations including adding the Relationships tab to your layout, reporting on contact relationships, and security rules for contact relationships.

Adding the Relationship tab to your Contact Details layout
It is important to note that if you are upgrading from a prior version of ACT! (prior to version 11.1), the new Relationship tab will need to be manually added to the Contact Details layout. This is an Administrator task that can be performed by selecting the Tools > Design Layouts > Contact. Once in the Layout Editor, select Edit >Tabs from the menu to invoke the Edit Tabs dialog. Next, double-click Related Contacts on the Hidden Tabs list so it appears on the right-hand side:

You can then move the tab up or down in the display order as desired. Be sure to save your changes once completed. If your database is setup as to synch to other ACT! databases, these changes to the layout will synchronize in the subsequent session, so there is no need to manually copy or send the new layout to other users.

Generating custom reports for Contact Relationships
You can generate custom reports for Contact Relationships using the included ACT! OLE/DB Reporting Provider which exposes the new table thru the View “VRP_CONTACT_CONTACT”. To create a report which includes a reference to both Contacts in the relationship, you will need to JOIN (or LINK in Crystal Report terms) the Contact table “VRP_CONTACT” twice via the CONTACTID fields:

As you can see, the VRP_CONTACT_CONTACT view contains the CONTACTID keys, Role, Create, and Edit field values, thus requiring JOINs to the Contact view twice. The Relationship From field, as depicted in the above screenshot, contains the Role value for the Contact joined on field CONTACTID1, and the Relationship field the Role for CONTACTID2. You’ll also need to set the Details field property to RTF-style text so that it renders properly.

Contact Relationships and Security Rules
As with all other features, Contact Relationships data adheres to the ACT! security model and rules. The ability to add, edit, and remove Relationships is based upon the user's permission to edit Contacts - if the user can edit the contact then any of the relationships can be added, modified, or removed. Additionally, both contacts must be accessible to the user for the relationship to be visible.

So take a look at this new feature - we think you'll agree on the great new functionality that Contact Relationships will provide!

Bill Blakey
ACT! Architecture Group
Sage Software

Did you find this article useful? Let us know: angie.stuart@sage.com