ASCON Advanced Tutorial - Complete guide to Acute Softwares Contacts Manager

This tutorial describes the more advanced features of Acute Softwares Contacts Manager.

If you haven't yet done so, you may want to try the Quick tutorial first.

Customising the screen
Using the Groups and creating your own
Using the bulk emailing program
Using the MergeContacts program to clean up data files
Tracking the Sales process
Contact Histories
Speeding up bulk data entry

Last revised 4th-Dec-2002 (C) Acute Software 2002

Customising the screen

This section details methods to customise how you want ASCON to look and feel

You can resize the width of the list of contacts by clicking and dragging the mouse on the vertical line separating the list of contacts and the contacts details. You can drag it right over to the right hand side (almost) so you have a lot of room for the contacts lists.This is a good way to work if you want to see a list of 5 or 6 fields instead of individual contacts details

You can change the colors and fonts of the display by using the Options menu and choosing Background Color and Fonts.

To get a complete list of all fields available choose Options and then 'Fields to Display'

Using the Groups and creating your own

Selecting which set of contacts to list is simply a matter of clicking on the relevant item in the groups list on the main form.

To add/remove groups that a contact belongs to, you edit the contact details (select the contact and click the edit button) and choose the 'Group' tab.
This lists all the groups available and the ones that the contact belong to, are ticked.
You can tick/untick any of these groups to change the groups that the contact belongs to.

From the main ASCON screen, go to the Groups menu and choose 'Edit Groups'

You can also edit the text file groups.lis in the ASCON program path to add and delete groups

Using the bulk emailing program

Registered users have the bulk email program which sends emails to all matching contacts.

Generate a report in ASCON, or choose one of the groups from the Example database (containing dummy email addresses)

Choose 'Send Email to all Matching Contacts' from the Reports menu.

The email program will startup and you will see the individual list of emails on the left hand side of the screen.

The top right contains a list of simple 'form letters' which you can customise with any text editor. These are used for commonly used emails that you might send on a routine basis.

The bottom right of the screen shows the details of the email which will be sent to each of the users on the left (if they are ticked)

Click an example form letter to place its contents into the subject and body of the email message being sent, or simply type in the details. NOTE - the FROM field will be your email address from which ever email program you use, and the TO field will be individually addressed to the email of that person.

Click the connect button to 'connect' to your email program (this will not start your internet connection)

Click 'Send to checked recipients' and the emails will be sent - check the Sent Folder of your email program to see the emails sent.

Using the MergeContacts program to clean up data files

The MergeContacts program shown to the left, is a powerful utility to manage multiple contacts databases.

It lists all the databases in the current directory, and allows you to merge them all into a single file - while removing duplicates and tidying up the data as it goes.

It can also (at the same time) merge in CSV files from other sources, such as Palm handhelds, mobile phone exported files and mail exports.

Simply tick the files you want merged, and enter a filename on the top of the screen which will hold the new contacts database (filename only - no paths). Click the 'merge' button and after a few moments (depending on the size of the databases), your file will be ready - you can double click the new file to open it in ASCON.

While initially useful to import multiple CSV files at once, the MergeContacts program becomes extremely handy later on as your database grows in size. You may want to split the main database by exporting groups of contacts for others to update, and MergeContacts will seamlessly intergrate them back together.

Tracking the Sales process

The money menu in the Contacts manger shows a number of reports, which can be displayed to show the status of payments to/from contacts. Note that these reports only work if you use the contacts manager to record details of when customers order and pay you.

Get a List of Leads.
This gets a list of the contacts who have been in touch with you but haven't asked for a quote. These contacts may be able to be converted to potential sales by calling them and offering more information or sending them news about any special offers you have coming up.

Potential Sales
This gets a list of the contacts who have asked for a price but they haven't bought the product. Get on the phone/email and contact them to see why they haven't bought .. is your price too high? Are they just procrastinating?

Jobs in Progress.
Its time to do some work! This gets a list of the contacts who have ordered your product, but haven't got it yet this is a list of the jobs you need to do.

Who hasn't paid!
This gets a list of the contacts who have been sent a product, or you have done the work for them, but they haven't paid yet. You'll want to keep an eye on this list or you could go out of business quickly

Contact Histories

The history menu in the Contacts manager shows a number of reports, which can be displayed to show the list of contacts that you haven't contacted over certain periods. Note, that these reports only work if you use the contacts manager to record details of when customers contact you.

These reports are useful to get a list of leads who may require repeat orders, or following up on a previous sale (maybe there is an upgraded version they can buy?)

Select the contact (either from the List or find in the main screen), and choose 'Add History' from the History menu.
Choose the type of 'history' it is : eg Phone call, email, visit to shop, etc [you can customize this list]
Enter any notes about the history and click 'ok'

To view a contacts history, click the 'View History' button.

Note any problems here can be resolved by checking that the dataPath entry in the diary section of the ascon.ini file is pointing to a valid directory.

Speeding up bulk data entry

If you find you need a lot of contacts with minimal details entered, it is quicker to use a spreadsheet program like OpenOffice, Star Office or MS Excel to enter all the details in a table and then import this to ASCON as a CSV file.