Outlook® 2007 Business Contact Manager For Dummies®

Chapter 10. Creating Business Histories

In This Chapter

• Keeping track of history

• Linking e-mails automatically and manually

• Attaching files to BCM records

• Customizing views of your history

In this chapter, you find out how Business Contact Manager keeps track of the history of your interactions with contacts and accounts. Did you ever have a conversation with someone where you discussed pricing, and, later on, you thought you agreed to $123 per pound, but the other person remembered $132 per pound? Or haveyou spent time searching for that letter you sent them telling them that the widgets wouldn't be shipped until October? If you're paper-based, you have to page through slips of paper or your journal book looking for where you wrote it down. If you use BCM and diligently make notes of conversations and link them to the appropriate contact, it takes just a few seconds to find the answer. This kind of history may not be as interesting as thekind you learned in high school, but it makes your business life a lot smoother.

Notes that you write about your conversation and negotiations with contacts, tasks that you create and complete, appointments you schedule, opportunities you track, and files (such as spreadsheets or graphics) you create that relate to a contact — all these can be linked to the contact or account record and are called communication history. Linking these to a BCM record gives you an easy way to find everything in one place.

E-mails also are linked into communication history ...