Act! Trainer - Tandem Training, Consulting, Hosting

Sage ACT! 2013

Jon Klubnik — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 13:43:09 +0000

It’s not out yet, but we are expecting some great new things from Sage ACT! 2013.

Stay tuned to this location for more details.

Backing up ACT with the ACT Scheduler

Jon Klubnik — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 12:29:04 +0000

Hardly a week goes by where we don’t get a call with a really sad story.

1) my hard drive crashed

2) I accidentally deleted my database

3) someone broke into our offices and stole our computers

4) I was trying to do something and all my data is gone…

Can you get it back?

Granted, we like to think we can go miracles and we have some pretty good tricks up our sleeves, but there is nothing like having a quick accessible recent copy of your ACT database at the ready…. just in case.

Here is what doesn’t work.

1) you can’t just back up the files. Sure technically possible, but because SQL keeps hold of the files, unless you stop this service, you can’t just move and copy the files

2) services like Carbonite really don’t’ work for ACT. They don’t work for the reason above, but also because they are constantly backing up changes, So, if you break your database, before you figure out you have a problem, Carbonite is backing up the bad copy of your database. We have seen cases where the problem is actually made worse because of Carbonite backing up an active ACT database because the user then downloaded the bad carbonate and overwrote and further broke the only working opt they had on their machine.√ Carbonite is great for backing up your backups, but do the ACT backup first.

3) Backing up to a cd. YOu can but you have to know what you’re doing. Restoring can present challenges because the riles are marked read only.

So, Sage, the makers of ACT have a released a tip sheet on the best ways to back up your ACT database. better than that, you can use the ACT Scheduler to do your backups.

How to Use the ACT! Scheduler to Automatically Back Up Your Sage ACT! Database

Here is the link http://tinyurl.com/actbackups

A Road Warriors Dream….

Jon Klubnik — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 16:34:36 +0000

As the workforce becomes more and more mobile. The question is how to get to your data when you are away. There are also a lot of different new technologies entering the workplace, Smartphones, tablets and cloud computing are becoming more and more mainstream.

Bill is a 26 year sales veteran of the Food service industry in New York City. Bill considers himself to have better than average knowledge with technology. However, due to the changing times and highly competitive industry, he has had to adapt by being more mobile.

When it came time to finding a partner that would fill his ”mobile warrior needs”, Bill selected Tandem Training, after interviewing three companies. What first impressed us about Bill was his passion for technology. Bill is an early adopter and has several tablet devices and uses different computers for home, work, and road work. He sought out Tandem for hosting of his ACT database when he realized that he could gain a technical advantage by hosting his ACT database in the Cloud.

Bill is able to access his customer data from anywhere, at anytime from any internet enabled device for a flat monthly fee.

What Bill says about Tandem Training . . .

“We have been working together for 5 weeks now and have to give them deserved accolades to publish. They have been professional, responsive, flexible and intelligent, all traits of a team I like to work with and rare descriptions to put into one sentence these days. I had 1 custom requests needed done to get myself fully mobile, they did within a week and it is flawless. I have a second request they are working on now, have communicated with me about it’s progress and I expect a solution shortly. I look forward to growing my business with them.”
Bill A., New York.

If you are looking for a partner to provide solutions that allow you the flexibility and convenience to work from anyway, contact us today and we can work together to get the best solution for you.

Doing nothing isn’t free

Jon Klubnik — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 14:44:29 +0000

I hear it every day.

We are just going to stay put for a while.
We are just going to see what happens
We are going to see how we do on our own….

Dr. Phil probably said it best….

How is that working for you?

Many times we assume the cost of doing nothing is zero, since we have always done it that way. The truth actually is that the cost of doing nothing may be quite expensive, but you just don’t know it.

What if the person who is just going to see how it goes, has high blood pressure and a heart attack is immanent.

What if the person who just wants to see what happens is driving a car where the oil has run dry?

As far as just wanting to see how we do on own. I have a story to tell you.

For 10 years I had a boat. I loved that boat, and we had a lot of fun on that boat, but we never caught any fish. We tried, but we never had a good fishing day.

One day, I decided to hire a guide. I spent more on a guide than I ever had before. In fact we almost didn’t go because the guide and the boat were so expensive.

But I decided to bite the bullet and just do it. Let me tell you, I caught more in that one day than I did on my 10 years of doing it on my own. And we had fun.

Maybe you know what I’m going to say next….

Sage Whitepapers

Jon Klubnik — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 22:53:14 +0000

ACT Citrix Deployment Whitepaper

ACT verses Freeware

Architecture Customization and Integration

Choice Between Contact Management or CRM

Citrix Hosting (One Page)

Keys to a Successful_Deployment

ACT Integration with Microsoft_Office

Sage ACT! Reporting and Data Access Methods

Sage Business Info Services

ACT! Database Scalability

Sage ACT! Synchronization Architecture

ACT! Remote Access Options – Thin Client; Sync; ACT for Web

The Automated Selling Machine

Your Guide to Email Marketing

Choosing an ACT! Hosting Solution

Feedback from our Customers

Jon Klubnik — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 20:41:05 +0000

Feedback from our Customer

We received the following letter from our of our clients the other day.

“Before contacting Tandem to host our sales team’s systems, each of our sales reps had access to only his or her personal data on their local computers. Tandem has allowed us to share our customer’s data internally as well as nationwide pricing information, which has given us not only faster response time, but also greater accountability, and allowed us to easily run reports on sales data that was previously inaccessible. We can now track quotes, orders, and invoices for projects across the country without requiring the sales staff to waste time extracting their own data and then having someone at the corporate level consolidate it into a single report, saving us time and money.

We asked a lot of Tandem and their team, and they have consistently come through when we needed them. Since we began using their services we have increased our market share (from just over 42% to more than 60%) as well as our profit margins.”

Heading to the Cloud

Jon Klubnik — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:46:32 +0000

Heading to the Cloud

More and more we are seeing companies doing more with less… And they are using technology to do it. Whether it is a downsized our outsourced IT department, a geographically dispersed team of home workers, road warriors or just different offices, more and more teams are looking to a cloud based solution.

Another trend we have been seeing has been the introduction of tablet computers. Of these, IPAD are by far the most popular, but we also see Android based devices. While it is not possible to load ACT on these devices or run ACT for Web, our Citrix based solution will allow full access to all of your data from a tablet. The same environment follows you from work computer to laptop to home computer to tablet.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Setting up an IPAD to use Citrix

Jon Klubnik — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:50:21 +0000

Setting up an IPAD to use Citrix

One of the benefits of our Citrix Hosted solution is the ability to go from Laptop to Desktop to IPAD with the same session and without needing to reload any of your programs or sync your data.

Here are the simple steps needed to setup an IPAD or IPAD 2 to utilize our Citrix Cloud. IF you have questions or wish to sign up call us at (866) 710 4228

On the IPAD, go to the App Store and search for Citrix Receiver for Ipad

Search Will return the proper application: Citrix Receiver for IPAD; Choose Install

On the Welcome Screen, Choose Connect to my Company’s Virtual Apps and Desktops


Your Published Applications will come up. Click on the Icon to start the application, Click on the Plus + to add to your favorites

Create a Custom Lookup and Add to a toolbar

Jon Klubnik — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 20:43:32 +0000

Create a Custom Lookup and Add to a toolbar

Question: I have a lookup I like, can I Save it and create a button, to access it faster?
Answer: Create a Custom Lookup and Add to a toolbar. Here is how..

ACT and QuoteWerks Hosting

Jon Klubnik — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:10:09 +0000

ACT and QuoteWerks Hosting

We use Quotewerks internally and have been greatly impressed with the quality of the product and the excellent support Aspire Technology provides. QuoteWerks pulls ACT! contact information into the quote
When you select the ACT! contact to use in the quote, our innovative DataLink feature can automatically pull other information from ACT! into the quote such as customer terms, customer sales tax rate, customer profile etc. Customer profiles can be used by QuoteWerks to determine the appropriate pricing a particular customer should receive.

We host Quotewerks with our Citrix Hosting platform for an “everything in the cloud experience”

Download the Quotewerks -ACT! Spec Sheet