Act! v25 Premium Desktop is now available. Aimed at boosting business effectiveness, Act! v25 introduces an advanced dashboard builder and new SMS text messaging capabilities.

Now you can easily create new analytic dashboards to gain insights into your Act! data. This enables you to visualize more of your data by utilizing multiple queries, and retrieving data more quickly. The end result is that you can monitor your business performance, react to changing business conditions and respond with better decision making.

This release contains new SMS4Act! text messaging capabilities. Now you can send ad-hoc text messages to customers anywhere in the world. Messages can be personalized with contact or activity information, which can be saved as templates for future use. Texts and replies are automatically recorded in Contact or Group History records.

To top it off, enhancements have been made to Act! Marketing Automation and Act! Companion mobile App for more intuitive and end user friendly capabilities.

Act! like many vendors implements a policy whereby they support the current release of the product and specific older releases up to a certain date. When a release becomes unsupported, the products are no longer eligible for service packs, hotfixes, or compatibility updates. ASDS as a vendor can provide support on older versions of Act!, but sometimes a workaround cannot be developed without the manufacturer’s support. The dates below are the published upcoming Act! obsolescence policy dates. Products not listed here are already obsolete.

Act! Growth Suite v22, Act! Premium v22	Through 3/31/22
Act! Growth Suite v21, Act! Premium v21	Through 11/30/21
Act! Pro v21, Act! Pro v22	Through 11/30/21
Act! v20 products	Through 11/30/20

If you are running anything older than Act! v21, your software is obsolete and has already been locked at the last revision of that software. You can no longer get support from Act! In real terms this means your software is vulnerable from a security standpoint. When software is locked, you no longer receive the updates necessary to keep it performing with other related software. In the Act! world this mean Windows, Outlook, and Google^TM.

It is time to consider an Act! subscription plan to keep you up to date and in step with other software applications. Act! Subscription plans include free updates as long as your subscription is active.

The bottom line is that by staying on an old release to save money, you are putting your company at risk. Both security risk from hackers as well as taking the risk of having access to your data and functions interrupted. Don’t be caught trying to restore your applications functionality.

Meanwhile, If you run into an issue on an older product, please check with us to see if we can help – we have been supporting Act! for over 30 years!