There’s a great new feature in ACT! 11.0 called Relationships, which allows you to create – on the fly – a dynamic link to another person, placing them in their own tab on your Contact Screen.

To create a relationship:

1. From your contact's record, click on the Relationship tab from the tabs section of the record.

2. To create a new relationship with another contact, click Relate Contact in the top left corner of the tab.

 

3. The Relate Contact dialog box appears.

4. Choose the contact or contacts to relate to your current contact, by selecting them from the dropdown in the "Relate (contact name) to:" box. If you would like to relate a single contact then choose from the dropdown. If you would like to relate multiple contacts, your user record, or a new record, then click the  button.

5. Under the Define Relationship section, first choose the relationship of your contact to the contact(s) you are linking them to. Then choose that contact's relationship to your current contact. If you have selected multiple contacts, then a + sign appears before the first contact name. To view the contacts you selected, hold your mouse pointer over the name. You can choose different relationship values for your current contact and the linked contact(s). If choosing to link with multiple contacts, then you can choose only one relationship value for all the contacts. However, when you save the relationship, it will create an individual relationship for each, so you may edit them if needed.

Note: The relationship-type list contains pre-defined relationship types, but you may change or add to these values by clicking Edit List Values at the bottom of the list. You may also just type the relationship description directly into the field.

6. You can type in any notes or details regarding this relationship in the Details section.

7. Click OK when finished.

Managing Relationships:

Once you have a created a relationship, you can edit them as needed and use the links to quickly go to the related contacts.
 
1. Under the Relationship tab for your contact, you will see a list a related contacts. The contact will be hyper-linked, so you can quickly go to that contact by clicking on their name.

2. You can also edit the relationship by double-clicking on the line item for that relationship, or highlighting it and clicking Edit Relationship.

3. By right-clicking on a related contact, you will have the following options:

• Relate Contact - create another relationship to your current contact
• Edit Relationship - edit the relationship details for the currently selected related contact
• Remove Relationship - delete the relationship (removes from both contacts)
• Create Lookup - create a lookup of all contacts under the relationship tab of your current contact
• Goto Contact - takes you to currently selected related contact
• Customize Columns - add/remove columns (fields) to the Relationship tab to view data for the related contacts
• Print Relationships - does a quick print of the items under the Relationship tab

BUSINESS APPLICATION:

Not 100% sure. It seems that ACT! is on to something, but in my opinion Groups help track relationships better, as not only can you name the Group: Open House 2009, but you can add contacts, create activities, opportunities associated with the Group.  Relationships, while dynamic, seem very limiting to me.

Any ideas how you will build Relationships with people using this new ACT! feature – let me know!