Act to Zoho Conversions: More Questions from Act Users Wanting to Convert to Zoho

I’ve been doing a lot of Act to Zoho conversions lately. I have written several previous articles on what to expect when you convert your data and where to start. Here are a few great questions I received from one of my Act to Zoho conversion clients recently along with my answers in RED:

1. After the migration, will we still have access to Act – desktop and/or cloud?  No, not if you don’t renew your subscription. However, most of my clients keep I license for a while so they can double check back to Act! if they have a question.
   
2. Does Zoho integrate with Microsoft Office such as link to email and word documents? Zoho includes “writer” which a better option for templates. Do you print out documents or do you mean email templates?
3. Please confirm fields can be customized and added.  Yes, as well as additional modules (custom tables in Act!) at no extra charge.
4. Can some records be ‘private’ as view only to me?  Out of the box Zoho doesn’t have private contacts. For me this is a good thing as users often created private contacts in Act! that no one could see including the owner of the company. In Zoho you could create a “hierarchy” of contacts or do custom programming to create privacy. A lot of my clients also use Bigin (free with Zoho One) to house their personal contacts that aren’t business related.
5. We use Act Groups (types of clients); does Zoho offer similar feature.  Zoho doesn’t have “Groups”. If you were using “Dynamic” groups they have a feature I like better called “Views.” They not only include a filter but you can set which fields/columns you want to include and in which order. If you were using Static groups I bring over all the Group names as a field so you can continue to find them. Going forward you can use Tags but in my opinion Dynamic Groups are the only way to go.
6. What does training look like for my team?  Is that something your company provides? I can provide private training. There are also a ton of videos and articles available.
7. I am very interested in Tasks.  Can a task be created and then assigned to another  user? Tasks would be the equivalent to Act!’s “To Do’s” but are a bit more sophisticated. Yes, they can be assigned to another user.  They also allow you to “partially” complete them if you are looking for an exact status on a more complex task. You can also add fields to the Task structure if you need more classification for your tasks.
8. What are ‘Sticky Notes?’ Sticky notes in Zoho CRM are a great way to quickly jot down details about a call, a task or any other information that needs to be easily accessible. These are personal notes and not visible to other users in your CRM account. Sticky notes are available in all Editions of Zoho CRM.
9. When I click ‘send email’ is that linked to outlook?  Yes  Can we  create shared templates? Yes
10. Can you customize the List Views? Yes, You can add and rearrange the fields of any of Zoho’s List Views. You can also save your List View with a query as a custom View.
11. Can you export your data? Yes, to Excel or Zoho Sheets. You’ll also receive all of your Zoho data in spreadsheet form when you make a backup.
12. Is a custom layout available? Absolutely. There are multiple ways to create custom layouts.
13. Can you use the Account Feature to update the associated Contact fields so that you don’t have to manually update all the individual Contact records when an Account changes its address? Yes, you can map your Account fields to your contact fields.

To sum it up, Zoho is a great product but it does look and work differently than Act does. If you have questions about converting your Act data to Zoho or Salesforce feel free to comment below or send me an email.

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