>> I have been struggling with BCM since shortly after the 2007 release and been
>> keeping a log of things that just don't seem right. Pardon the length of this
>> post, but there's so much that needs fixing. Please consider the following
>> thoughts for future releases:
>>
>> - THIS IS A BIG ONE: I can’t understand why there isn’t a one-to-one
>> correspondence between appointments displayed under the Communications
>> History window and the (monthly) Calendar. What’s the point of deleting an
>> appointment in the Communications History window and having it stay on the
>> Calendar?? Or editing an appointment in one of these two places and not have
>> the changes appear IMMEDIATELY in the other. Recurring appointments seem to
>> be particularly prone to this lack of consistency. THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS
>> CONCERN – I bill my clients based on what I see in BCM, and I’ve already
>> suffered considerable invoicing embarrassment due to “one-sided” edits of my
>> schedule. I don’t care if the calendar is controlled by Outlook and the
>> Communications History is controlled by BCM…to not have these two important
>> sources of information be in total “sync” is simply nerve-racking,
>> inadequate, and unacceptable!! Alternatively, having to go to both the
>> Communications History and the Calendar to ensure synchronicity is a total
>> duplication of effort.
>> - Can’t seem to save a customized view (always goes back to default upon
>> re-opening BCM??)
>> - Why are dropdown lists (like the “Snooze” dropdown in the Reminders
>> window) setup to only show the first several choices, often requiring
>> additional mouse clicks to scroll down to select other available options?
>> - Why is it that when you have a recurring item and receive a reminder for
>> the current instance, if you delete the reminder (as in something that
>> doesn’t require the creation of a “history”), the open reminder window
>> immediately launches a reminder for the next instance of the recurring
>> activity? These recurring reminders could be set to occur once a month, and
>> if they don’t require any lead time to complete or prepare for, why should
>> you have to now “snooze” this next instance of the reminder back to the date
>> for which it was originally intended?
>> - Building on the previous point, the recurring appointments in BCM are, for
>> me, unusable. I have clients who I see at the same day and time each week,
>> and in ACT! 6.0, I was able to setup an appropriate recurring appointment. In
>> BCM, when working with a recurring appointment, the client’s (i.e., Business
>> Contact’s) Communications History window only shows the last instance of the
>> recurring appointments, even though I may have placed unique information in
>> other occurrences of the recurring appointment (for instance, numbered them
>> so that I can determine when the client has exhausted his/her pre-paid
>> sessions and needs to renew…). Until I reach the last appointment in the
>> recurring series, there’s no indication in the Communications History window
>> that I have an ongoing commitment to fulfill. These customized intervening
>> recurring appointments should be displayed in the Communications History and
>> on the calendar as the customizations indicate that something unique and
>> meaningful will be associated with each of these appointments.
>> - As a workaround for the unusable recurring appointment feature (as
>> explained above), I’ve tried efficiently handling my recurring appointment
>> needs by simply creating a non-recurring appointment, saving it while keeping
>> the new appointment window open (i.e., not using “Save & Close”), then
>> changing the date and making any other edits in the appointment details for
>> the next instance of the appointment, then saving, etc. This also results in
>> loss of appointments intermediate to the current and last instance of the
>> series…no help there!
>> - If you inadvertently use “Delete” rather than “Remove” in an attempt to
>> delete an appointment in the Communications History window, you end up
>> accidentally deleting the entire contact record. Although I now know that you
>> can retrieve the record from the Deleted Files folder, it totally escapes me
>> as to why there’s no “Are you sure you want to delete this contact” message
>> to help avert the disaster. If you want to delete an appointment (a much less
>> potentially destructive action), it asks you to confirm the delete…where’s
>> the consistency??
>> - For windows showing history items, the linked Contact’s name should be
>> visible on screen and his/her record accessible via a single mouse click. The
>> current way of getting to the Contact record is unreasonably circuitous. The
>> same point holds true for displays of Reminders.
>> - Importing Contact records from ACT!6 (in my case) can only be brought in
>> as BCM Contact records, not Accounts (the drop-down menu had “Accounts”
>> greyed-out). As a self-employed person in a service business, I’m going to
>> have to manually duplicate several hundred Business Contact records as
>> Account records to take advantage of Accounting Express-BCM billing/invoicing
>> synergy. It’s hard to see how this could overall be considered a
>> time-saver??? This was one of the features that I felt would make the
>> painfully laborious transition from ACT! to BCM worth it…
>> - Why does there have to be so much ledding between printed lines on the
>> monthly calendar? You can’t fit more than 4 appointments on for a given day
>> without printing in 6-point type size or smaller, an eye strain nightmare!
>> Even at 6-point type, you can only fit 6 appointments, which isn’t an
>> extraordinary number of commitments to have for a single day…
>> - Can’t seem to save a toolbar setup (Adobe Acrobat-related buttons keeps
>> coming back, taking up a whole horizontal line of screen space…)
>> - If you open a recurring reminder and choose “Delete” within the new
>> window, it asks if you wish to delete the entire recurring series or just the
>> current instance of the series. If you simply right-click the same recurring
>> reminder in the pop-up Reminders window, and choose “Delete,” the recurring
>> reminder is deleted with no choice as to whether you wish to delete that
>> instance of the reminder, or the entire recurring reminder series. Which one
>> was it? I still don’t know. I don’t understand these inconsistencies…
>> - In the “Activity by Contacts” Report, it would be much more helpful if the
>> “Comments” field included word-wrap so that a hardcopy of extensive notes
>> could be created. As it stands now, any lengthy notes are cut off, the
>> missing part represented by “…”
>> - Reinforcing a recent thread in the BCM Discussion Group: BCM needs an
>> easy, reliable means for backing up ALL of the important data in ONE step.
>> Having to backup E-mails separately because they’re “under Outlook” is
>> totally absurd…and an accident waiting to happen (I’m still not totally
>> secure that I’m backing up all of my irreplaceable information should my hard
>> drive fail…)
>> - Reinforcing another recent thread: The data conversion from Act! and
>> Goldmine?) is marginal at best it took me WEEKS to restore the fields that
>> were supposed to come over, but didn’t. I’ll NEVER be able to restore all of
>> the correct dates for past appointments that were reset by BCM to the date I
>> did the data conversion…
>> - There’s been mention in the Discussion Group that E-mail addresses aren’t
>> “blind” when doing E-mail marketing campaigns. If that’s true, then the lack
>> of blinding renders the E-mail campaign function unusable.
>> - Reinforcing a recent thread: The BCM Discussion Group thread notification
>> system need to be fixed! For me, when I see a question mentioned that I’d
>> like to follow, despite having registered with “Windows Live” and used the
>> proper IDs and passwords, when request to be notified of replies, I get the
>> error message, “Notification failed. Please try later.” At the request of
>> the Microsoft Help representative, I spent an hour and a half documenting
>> this bug, complete with the requested screen shots of the problem. And how
>> was I rewarded for my work? The return E-mail explained that Microsoft is
>> aware of this problem and is working on it. That was five months ago…
>> - Some “fixes” proposed by Microsoft in the BCM Discussion Group talk about
>> editing XML and Visual Basic code – how is that accessible to the average end
>> user??
>> - How are “built-in” fields like “Gender” to be used if you can’t add them
>> to the BCM Contact Form?
>> - Why does the Contacts window always default to Outlook Contacts (and not
>> allow setting Business Contacts or Accounts as the default?
>> - How can Microsoft call BCM and Accounting Express “integrated” when only
>> invoices and not debits are available using the BCM-Office
>> Accounting/Express link?? Furthermore, I bill my Business Contacts/individual
>> clients, not Accounts/corporate entities, so the “integration” isn’t
>> appropriate and sensitive to the needs of numerous small business owners,
>> especially those in personal service industries like I am (despite the fact
>> that BCM/Accounting are marketed heavily to small businesses…)
>> - Why can’t the BCM windows remember the last size they were at (e.g.,
>> maximized) rather than having to resize them every time they’re opened?
>> - There doesn’t appear to be a way of printing detailed notes on a Contact
>> (fields on printed forms don’t word wrap??). Except for the Comments field
>> (and notably excluding Business Notes, which would seem to be the appropriate
>> place to be able to do this), you can’t display long notes on screen, either.
>> - Inconsistent use of the terms “Remove” (the button on the left) and
>> “Delete” (when you right click a specific task/entry) in the Communications
>> History window. They seem to do the same thing…why not use the same phrase??
>> After all, “Delete” and “Remove” could have different effects, but that
>> doesn’t appear to be true in this case…
>> - The default selection in the Reminders window is at the bottom of the
>> list. If you have a lot of reminders due, this means you need to scroll to
>> the bottom of a long list in an already “shallow” (i.e., only allows you to
>> see several entries at one time) window. Why the wasted time? Why not default
>> to the top of the reminders due list? Also, why are there two different ways
>> by which the reminders are highlighted (i.e., a pale vs a bright highlight
>> bar)? They seem to respond the same, but this causes unnecessary
>> inconsistency.
>> - Finally…since the software industry has abandoned use of manuals, it’s
>> true that for some of my concerns, there may be answers…but how is the user
>> to know?? The BCM online Help is mediocre at best.
>>
>> If I can be of any service in clarifying any of the above points, I'd be
>> happy to assist. Thanks.
>>
>> --
>> David
>>
>> ----------------
>> This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
>> suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
>> Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
>> link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
>> click "I Agree" in the message pane.
>>
>>
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/en-us/default.mspx?mid=fd9ead15-523a-44d7...
