Ini File Settings - Reporting4Act!

In addition to changing the location for storing Reporting4Act! reports and other files, Reporting4Act!'s data.ini file can be used to change some other settings. These settings are listed below, along with information on the exact behaviour for each, and the available settings to be made in data.ini. The changing the location topic has instructions for locating and editing the data.ini file.

Disabling Reporting4Act!'s SDK connection to Act!

Reporting4Act! does most of its interaction with Act! through the Act! Data Providers, but it also connects directly to the Act! program through the Act! SDK. A variety of issues can cause problems with this SDK connection, and since Reporting4Act! only uses it in minor ways, it's possible to simply disable the SDK connection. To do this, add a ConnectSDK=No item in the Options section of data.ini.

[Options]
ConnectSDK=No

Forcing the Swiftpage History table to appear

Swiftpage is an Act! add-on e-mail marketing tool. Swiftpage stores its data as history records, and encodes several pieces of data into the details of these history items. Reporting4Act! is able to decode this information, and this is made available for reporting through the Swiftpage History table. Normally, Reporting4Act! only makes this table visible to the user if it is able to detect that Swiftpage is installed. If you wish to have this table displayed regardless of whether or not Reporting4Act! is able to detect Swiftpage, use a Swiftpage=Yes item in the Options section of data.ini.

[Options]
Swiftpage=Yes

Maximum time allowed for generating "Contact In Current Lookup" information

Reporting4Act! provides a Contact In Current Lookup field in the Contact table for Act! 2005 and later databases. This field can be used in report filters, so that reports only display contacts in the currently active lookup in Act!. For this Reporting4Act! function to work, Act! must be open, and Reporting4Act! sends a command to Act!, retrieving the list of contacts in the current lookup. By default, Reporting4Act! will wait up to 120 seconds for Act! to generate this information. After that time has passed, Reporting4Act! assumes that some problem has occurred. If you wish to use a different maximum time, use a Timeout item in a CurrentLookup section in data.ini.

[CurrentLookup]
Timeout=300

Selecting the fields for use with Google Maps

Reporting4Act! includes an option for linking reports to Google Maps. This is possible with Act! versions 2005 and later, for records from the three main Act! entities: Contacts, Companies, and Groups. For each of these three, and for each Act! data provider, Reporting4Act! has a default list of fields to send to Google Maps. For example, with a link on a contact record, Reporting4Act! will have Google display a map using the fields Address 1, Address 2, City, State, Country, and Zip. However, you may wish to use a different set of fields, such as the Home Address fields.

To make this change, several items are available to be used in Reporting4Act!'s data.ini file. There are six available items total: one for each of the three entities, under each of the two Act! data providers. The items ContactFields, CompanyFields, GroupFields, 2010ContactFields, 2010CompanyFields, and 2010GroupFields are used in a GoogleMaps section of data.ini. The example below shows setting the ContactFields item to use the Home Address fields. There are a few important notes about this:

The first item in the list of fields must be the ID field for the record type in question. For this contact example the ID field is VRP_CONTACT."CONTACT CONTACTID"; it is VRP_COMPANY."COMPANY COMPANYID" and VRP_GROUP."GROUP GROUPID" for companies and groups, respectively, under the Act! 2005-2009 data provider. The ID fields for the Act! 2010+ provider are CONTACT.CONTACTID, COMPANY.COMPANYID, and GROUP.GROUPID.
The fields are listed using their real database names, rather than their English captions. To see these database names in Reporting4Act!, select the Options item from the Tools menu, and turn on the Display real table and field names checkbox.
In the example, the list of fields is broken into several lines for formatting reasons. In practice the ContactFields list must be a single line only.

[GoogleMaps]
ContactFields=VRP_CONTACT."CONTACT CONTACTID",VRP_CONTACT."CONTACT HOME ADDRESS 1",
VRP_CONTACT."CONTACT HOME ADDRESS 2",VRP_CONTACT."CONTACT HOME CITY",
VRP_CONTACT."CONTACT HOME STATE",VRP_CONTACT."CONTACT HOME ZIP CODE",
VRP_CONTACT."CONTACT HOME COUNTRY"

"Serializing" Retrieval of Activity Information

Note that starting in version 4.0, this option can be set using the Tools->Options screen. The option can still be set by editing the .ini file directly, as described below.

Act! 2005 and later versions store their data in SQL Server, and for most items Reporting4Act! retrieves data directly from the SQL Server database. However, the Act! 2005-2009 data provider does not make activity information available in this way. Because of this, when using the Act! 2005-2009 data provider, Reporting4Act! retrieves the activity information through calls to the Act! program itself (using the Act! SDK). For several reasons, Reporting4Act! retrieves roughly one month of activity information at a time, rather than all at once. In some cases, performance is improved by retrieving the data all at once. To have Reporting4Act! do this, add a Serialize=No item in a Activities section of data.ini.

[Activities]
Serialize=No

The case where this is most useful is for reports for which there are few activity records in the database, particularly in cases where the report activity filter is for a large date range.

For more information on Act! data providers, see the Understanding Act! Data Providers topic.