Release Date: March 22nd, 2018

One of the more common feature requests in Act! is the ability to create new customised sections of the program. The existing sections in the navigation stackbar are obviously extremely useful, but customers also want a way to create their own sections, and have the information in these link to existing entities such as the Contacts section or Companies section. This higher level of customisation has been missing from Act! to date, but as of version 20.1 it has been added in under the feature called Custom Tables in Act! Premium Plus.

Using this feature the customer will be able to easily create as many additional sections as they like, each with their own tables, fields and layouts, and all without requiring any specialist development knowledge or skills. Some examples of this in use could be an estate agent that creates a table of the various properties they are selling with as many different customised fields as they want, then they could link these properties to any contacts that are interested in them, or a support team could create sections for customer contracts and support tickets, once again easily linking these with the individual contact records they relate to.

It is possible to add a Custom Table as a new option in the navigation stackbar, as well as adding the information as tabs in the Contacts, Groups, Companies and Opportunities sections. Custom Tables can be used within both the desktop and web versions of Act!.

Why Custom Tables?
This initiative came about for number of reasons:

1. Our customers were hitting limitations with the current Act! product, when they needed to manage data outside of what the existing Act! entities deal with.
2. We commonly lose customers whose businesses have grown or changed, where they need a more flexible and bespoke solution from their CRM.
3. Frequently customers would try to customize areas such as Contacts or Opportunities to store data which these aren’t really designed to manage. This would lead to some interesting support calls as customers realized the limitations of working this way.
4. Custom tables have always been possible via our SDK, but the requirement for developer knowledge puts this out of the reach of most customers and ACCs.
5. There have also been 3rd party custom table solutions available for many years, but customers don’t always trust (or want to pay more for) a solution which we can’t support them with.
6. Customers and ACCs have long desired a custom tables solution with a simple UI, which is supported by us!

What Problem does this Solve?
Custom Tables let customers make Act! truly specific to their industry or work practices. They can create new tables integrated into their existing Act! data, allowing them to manage different types of data such as:

• Projects
• Contracts
• Support Tickets
• Property Management
• Vehicles sales or maintenance
• Software licenses
• Loans

Our sales team are commonly asked whether Act! can store data in areas such as these, and now the answer in most cases is yes! Using Custom Tables, customers and ACCs can now build very tailored vertical solutions, keeping track of all of the data they need to manage in their business in one place.

What Industries does this Work For?
Whilst there are no limits to the custom tables and fields you can create, we’ll be introducing 10 – 12 ‘industry templates’ with Act! v20.1, allowing customers in specific industries to get a fully customized database within just a few minutes. A list of these will be finalized soon, but is likely to include the following industries:

• Support (managing contracts and tickets)
• Insurance (managing policies and claims)
• Real Estate (managing property, contracts, tenants, landlords etc.)
• Mortgage (managing mortgages…)
• Wealth Management (managing loans, investments, policies etc.)
• Vehicle or trailer sales & service
• HVAC

When will this feature become available?
Custom Tables is a new feature that will be added into Act! Premium Plus v20.1 expected on March 22nd, 2018. It will form the major focus of that release.