Since the shift of iCloud, the process for keeping contact info on your iPhone and non-Daylite programs has changed drastically. That is not the topic of this post, and I hope to find some time to write about this in the near future. This process involves exporting contacts to vCard which was very rarely done before. A few weeks ago, a very annoying bug came to my attention when I was exporting/updating contacts for one of my clients. What was happening is that for some contacts, when I would export a vCard and import it into Address Book, the data was different than what was in Daylite. There would be additional phone numbers, emails, and/or addresses. I went back into Daylite and made sure there was no duplicated info in the contacts card. There was not. Where in the world was Address Book getting this info from?

I tried creating a new contact to test and could not figure it out this behavior for the life of me. As a Master Partner, I have the Marketcicle support team on speed-dial (not sure the term in email for that). WE had a couple emails back and forth, i sent them a video of the issue and they were able to pinpoint the behavior. I had to dig for it, but here it is for you:

The issue occurs when the contact linked to the organization card in Daylite has data in the ‘Title’ and ‘Department’ fields (see screenshot). If there is data in these fields, the vCard will contain the organization data, but if there is no data in these fields then the vCard will only contain the contact information when exported.

If you wish to only have the contact information exported then the workaround would be to either ‘clear out’ those fields or temporarily unlink the organization before exporting.

A Burst of Daylite: vCard exported from Daylite brings in other info into Address Book originally appeared on Apple Consulting Firm for Attorneys | Small Businesses | Retail on January 16, 2012.

Let’s say you were just at a luncheon and collected a dozen business cards, which you plan on following up with as sales leads. Once you enter these as contacts in Daylite you can then use the “bulk edit” feature to efficiently categorize all twelve of them as prospects.

Here’s how:

1. Select all the contacts you just entered that you would like to Bulk Edit.

2. Once highlighted go to Edit and select “Bulk Edit XX Contacts” from the drop down.

3. Check the Category box and choose the category, ‘Prospect’ in this instance.

4. Then check the Keyword box and choose the keyword you want to apply, assuming this keyword applies to all the new leads.

While you are here, take a minute to view the other options that you are able to bulk edit here and keep in mind this can be applied to all other items in Daylite. The bulk edit tool has many great applications.

WARNING: There is not UNDO when using bulk edit, so always double check what you are changing before hitting APPLY.

Once you are sure everything is set that you want to bulk edit, hit Apply and there you go.

Now that the category is defined, all of the associated contacts in Daylite are now categorized as prospects and are branded as such in the individual contact – color -coded for easy visibility.

A good rule of thumb is that categories are generally mutually exclusive while keywords are not. With keywords, you can bulk edit as many as you would like. The bulk edit function works the same way for both, however categories tend to be more cut and dry (“prospects”, “vendors”, “family”, etc.) while keywords can be a bit more creative  and personalized … (“fan of baseball”, “Outlook user”, and “Scorpio”… if you are into the whole astrological thing and want to send daily horoscopes out to your contacts!) Depending on the custom keywords you have created in Daylite will determine how liberal you will be in using the bulk edit feature. Again, this all depends on your particular business needs.

The bulk edit feature in Daylite  truly helps cut down on time spent customizing your objects. Start by assigning those custom categories today and move forward with trying this function on your custom keywords.

If you have been with us over the past two posts that covered categories and keywords, this tool can really help you in cleaning up your database and getting everything in order.

Do you have a question about how to do something in Daylite? Or a topic you’d like to us to cover? Drop us a note, we’d love to hear from our readers!

Bulk edit in Daylite originally appeared on Apple Consulting Firm for Attorneys | Small Businesses | Retail on October 31, 2011.

Keywords  in Daylite work in tandem with categories however, unlike categories, keywords are not mutually exclusive – you can create a long list of keywords that apply to objects such as skills, interests or other characterizations of your contacts while the category describes what KIND of person the contact is. Refer to the following example:

Michael Smith is a contact with a category “prospect.” He is an attorney considering moving from PC to Mac and looking at using Daylite for his case management  software and Billings Pro to handle his firms billing (…hence his prospect status)

In the above example, the keyword phrases in bold above give you insight on Michael Smith so if we are looking at our current prospects, we can drill down into the types of prospects we have and what products he is a candidate for.

Keywords essentially help group valuable data together in Daylite. The combinations and applications can be endless. For experienced Daylite users who have thousands of contacts, knowing the hobbies and special interests can be invaluable. For the new user it might not seem as important but it is a good habit to at least experiment and create some custom keywords. The time invested in setting up custom keywords and phrases for objects can go a long way in helping users compile data and begin taking advantage of advanced features of Daylite such as creating useful smart lists. Which we promise to cover in a future blog post.

To come up with what keywords to create, make a list with 4 columns: Contacts, Organizations, Projects and Opportunities. Next brainstorm all the things you would like to be able to find easily. For example, let’s say I have an urgent announcement to send out to al my clients using Daylite, I can create a smart list with : Category is “Client-Active” and keyword is “Daylite“. This is a very basic example, but try to brainstorm what kind of info you want to easily track about the four areas on your list. This will give you a place to start. As you start using keywords more, you’ll start to find more and more ways to use keywords.

To get started, open up Daylite’s main screen and click on the Daylite menu and select preferences.

Under preferences you will see a section titled classifications, click on that.

• Inside of the classifications window, you will then find two tabs – categories and keywords.
• Select the keywords tab to see a full list of keywords and phrases that Daylite sets you up with by default.
• If you created your database using a template, you will want to purge the list of all the keywords you would never use first, then go on and create the keywords from your brainstorm list.

Once these keywords categories are defined, you will want to create and assign new keywords to the respective objects. For this post, we are focusing on Contacts but the same applies to organizations, opportunities and projects. Let’s say we wanted to track an interest for Michael, which happens to be baseball so we find all people with this interest to invite to a game once a year. Simply select the “+” sign at the bottom and add your new keyword or phrase in. For this post, let’s add “fan of baseball”.

Now that the new keyword has been created, we simply want to assign it to a contact such as Michael Smith… go to your contacts and select “edit” at the bottom and from the drop-down you can add as many keywords to Michael’s contacts as you want.

We want  all Daylite users to get the most out of using keywords and urge you to customize them so that they closely match the data needed for your particular business. Over time you would add and remove keywords as needed. All of our clients are required to read over and accept our Consulting Agreement, as soon as we get it, we go to the client and check that keyword. You can keep track of products your clients are candidates for or are currently using.

How do you use keyword in your business? What method are you using in your business to use keywords?

Daylite keywords- using them to manage and organize your data originally appeared on Apple Consulting Firm for Attorneys | Small Businesses | Retail on October 20, 2011.

Categories describe what type of contacts you know, what kinds of tasks you perform, what kind of projects and opportunities you have, etc. Categories make it easy to filter and find items in your database by cutting down search time for information as they group items you work with together. Categories typically are NOT used to describe specific jobs, geographical information or certain industries and shouldn’t be used to classify things if you need use more than one category at a time. If that is required, developing keywords is a much better way to describe things in finer detail…(come back next week for more on keywords)…

Categories in Daylite are generally mutually exclusive: for example, each contact can only have one category. Most Daylite users typically only need a handful of categories, and they shouldn’t overlap. To get started, you should consider asking yourself the following two questions:

• What kinds of people do you know?

• Do you work with Law professionals?
• Catering services?
• Other outside vendors?
• Or are you simply trying to keep better track of prospects and don’t want to lump all contacts together (active clients, inactive clients prospects, etc.)
• If you could take your 1,000 contacts, for example, and chunk them down into types, what would come up with?
• Here are some of the categories we have setup in our Daylite database for contacts: Blacklisted, Client – Active, Client – Inactive, Consultant, Financial, Legal, Medical, Prospect, Team Member, Vendors, Family, Friends.
• What type of projects, opportunities, tasks and calendar items do I have?

• Some of ours: Billings Pro, Daylite, Lightspeed, Business Development, Prospect, PC to Mac Conversion, Website, Administrative, Home, Skill Development.

Inside preferences, click on Classifications.

Categories in Daylite – utilize your database more efficiently and effectively originally appeared on Apple Consulting Firm for Attorneys | Small Businesses | Retail on October 10, 2011.

For starters, simply go to the Calendars pane in Daylite. Immediately, you will see your calendar and all the categories that exist. Right out of the gate, you can click on My Calendar, Categories and Users & Resources. Daylite automatically defaults to My Calendar (and why wouldn’t it…) so if you want to access other staff calendars you simply open up Users & Resources and command-click on each user and their corresponding information shows up color-coded at the top. Cool tip, sure, but not the focus of this post… we can do better!

Command-clicking on each users

So, what if you want to create a smart calendar- a staff calendar if you will, so that you don’t have to open up Users & Resources and command-click to select various parties all of the time? Simply click the “plus” symbol at the bottom – allowing you to create a smart calendar which (you guessed it) you can quickly name “staff calendar”.

Create your smart list and label it

Here, under Contents, you can drill down and select certain calendar criteria under both Kind and Category that you would like to have visible in the staff calendar; items such as appointments, events, meetings or outbound calls. For this specific post, let’s focus on showing custom data which will include “appointments” and “meetings” under Kind and “meetings” and “work” under Category.

Add custom criteria filters to your smart list

Now, let’s add some contacts to this newly created staff calendar to pull data from. Simply click on Sources and add the relevant parties to your newly created staff calendar by selecting Me and Other Users and clicking on the specific parties you want to include. Click the blue Create tab at the bottom to save.

Add parties to your staff calendar... almost finished!

Done! Now, you can see all of the calendars at the top color coded for easy reference; James is red, Amin is green and Mary is blue.

All parties calendars are color coded for easy visibility!

If one of the added staff members did not have a meeting scheduled on October 4 then their names would not be visible on the staff calendar.

There are dozens of types of custom calendars you can setup. For example, some teams like having a vacation calendar, or a specific groups calendar, say Marketing or Accounting.

What type of custom calendar have you setup?

Staff calendars made smarter in Daylite originally appeared on Apple Consulting Firm for Attorneys | Small Businesses | Retail on September 28, 2011.

So you have already taken the time to create lists and smart lists in Daylite. That’s a great first step but how are you accessing them?  Many new Daylite users fall into the bad habit of  clicking on each list, smart list or smart calendar in each separate accompanying view that the list, smart list or smart calendar was created in. This can be a tedious, time consuming, and let’s face it, confusing process… enter the Shortcut bar!

Essentially, working with Daylite’s Shortcut bar is no different than working with bookmarks in the Safari web browser. Users can simply take their most used items in Daylite – whether it’s a smart list called “hot opportunities” from Opportunities, a list of “active clients” from Contacts and a smart list called “website projects” from Projects view  and add them directly to the Shortcut bar (which is located directly below the toolbar in the Daylite window)  by choosing File > add Sourcelist to Shortcuts or by  simply dragging and dropping them directly on the Shortcuts bar.

Shot of items from Opportunities, Contacts and Projects added to Daylite's Shortcut bar.

While it’s great that these often used items are now at your fingertips without having to switch through Daylite’s navigation pane, it’s equally effective in cutting down unused clutter in Daylite and really helping users streamline their focus on the searches they access everyday without having to switch views. Users can access these shortcuts by mouse-clicking on any of them or by entering the command prompts conveniently located next to each shortcut terms. Want even less clutter? Simply collapse the navigator and you can work in the main window with just your defined  shortcuts!

Daylite's Navigator window collapsed with Shortcuts bar visible

Should you need to delete any shortcuts just drag them out of the Shortcut bar… and watch them disapear!

Working with shortcuts is also an effective way to assist in training new Daylite users who might only be concerned with having access to some contacts, a calendar and perhaps a few daily tasks vs. having to take in all that Daylite has to offer. This again proves just how highly customizable and flexible Daylite is and why it consistently outperforms other CRM’s.

Daylite proves taking the shortcut pays off! originally appeared on Apple Consulting Firm for Attorneys | Small Businesses | Retail on September 8, 2011.

While this method works for all options in the Navigator pane (Contacts, Tasks, Projects, Opportunites, etc.) we are going to keep this post strictly about sorting contacts, as it comes up so often. The great thing about Daylite is that it is endlessly customizable and truly succeeds with making the users experience more personal – a huge area where other CRM’s fail.

Let’s start off by briefly explaining the three main list views you will find in Daylite. These are referred to as 1) LIST, LINKED and BUSINESS CARD, 2) LIST and LINKED and 3) LIST ONLY. The list views are accessible by simply navigating to the “View” menu in the Daylite toolbar and highlighting “List”.

Today, we are going to hone in on the simplest (and in many ways) cleanest view, LIST ONLY. (This is also the only list view in which column options can be adjusted.)

1) Cursor to the ‘View’ menu, ‘List’ and select ‘List Only’ menu in Daylite and select ‘Column Options’.

List view in Daylite

2) You will see a full roster of column header options to help personalize your use of Daylite – anything from adding birthdays or nicknames (remember to be nice) for contacts or choosing when clients prefer to be invoiced. Now, drag the desired column header options from the ‘inactive list’ to the ‘active’ or vice-versa.

Arranging columns in Daylite

3) From there, select “Size Column to Fit Checkbox’ and click close.

4) Customize the order in which the column headers are shown by dragging and dropping.

5) Finally, select the column header in which you want to sort by. This brings up the ‘Sort Options’ window which allows you to specify two columns in ascending or descending order by click on the visible ‘up’ or ‘down’ arrows respectively.

Again, this post is in relation to the sorting and customization of contacts in Daylite but it can be used for sorting all other items in the Navigation pane in Daylite.

The Sorting and Customizing of Contacts in Daylite originally appeared on Apple Consulting Firm for Attorneys | Small Businesses | Retail on August 29, 2011.

While searching for the perfect analogy to describe Daylite, I kept coming back to a Swiss army knife –  one I received as a kid; a top-of-the-line model that featured multiple blades, a corkscrew, bottle opener, woodsaw, sewing reamer, multiple screwdrivers and yes, everyone’s favorite – the ubiquitous nail file. While the blades, scissors and bottle opener received constant use, the poor sewing reamer was never once extracted. In essence Daylite IS that top-of-the-line Swiss Army knife; one for unequalled business productivity.

This blog post exists to remind users that it is perfectly fine to use Daylite for the simple things it is so great at doing – creating and linking contacts, assigning tasks and scheduling appointments. Learning these core basics will boost your effectiveness and productivity in ways that other productivity suites can still only dream of.

For starters, creating new contacts and linking them to a specific organization or cause is a breeze in Daylite. Let’s pretend you work with a printer for your offices direct mail needs. You have your sales rep, Mike, his sales assistant Nicole and his delivery driver Paul. All of these contacts work for the same company, ABC Printing and can be accessed effortlessly in Daylite. Now, take the same core basics and imagine setting that up for a multi-tiered fund raising campaign. It’s all possible and Daylite makes it ultra-easy.

Daylite Main Window

For staff members, project managers or collaborators, creating and assigning tasks used to require multiple emails, responses, more emails, etc. As we all know, losing track of an email is a far too common oversight – especially when you get a hundred a day! In Daylite, simply create the task, provide clear details, set an anticipated timeframe – (you can even select whether or not you would like to be sent a reminder!) and delegate to staff members. Outlook simply does not behave in this manner.

The beauty of Daylite is that it can be customized for any users needs – whether you are a legal professional, non-profit arts center, or small business owner Daylite is easily adaptable for anyone who wants to become better organized and escape the rigid confines of Windows-based CRM’s. The best part is that when you want to learn the advanced features of Daylite it’s all there for you when you need it – kinda like that Swiss Army knife from many moons ago…

Daylite – why it’s perfectly ok NOT to use everything it has to offer. originally appeared on Apple Consulting Firm for Attorneys | Small Businesses | Retail on August 18, 2011.

We are proud to announce that we recently received another certification milestone – becoming the only Ohio-based Advanced reseller of Lightspeed Retail.

So how did we do it…by attending extensive Lightspeed certification camps, completing a qualifying number of Lightspeed Retail installations and by passing the Advanced Lightspeed certification exam. Simply put, this proves that we are equally as committed to advancing our expertise in the field as we are to providing you the optimum level of service that all of our clients have come to expect – it all works hand-in-hand!

LightSpeed is the complete retail Point of Sale solution for single or multi-store operations that combines Mac innovation with powerful backend business tools, a streamlined POS interface for fast front-counter sales and a tightly-integrated Web Store for selling online.

Recently Global Mac Consulting had the pleasure in working with the following businesses and showing them the benefits of Lightspeed Retail:

• Dredgers Union – a brand-new, 4,000+ square foot Cleveland-based retail store specializing in locally-made men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing as well as unique home furnishings. We recently assisted in installing two point-of-sale stations as well as a dedicated system to better serve inventory and management needs.
• The Furry Nation – a Lakewood-based holistic pet needs store – we worked with them to install a point-of-sale system as well as an online web store so that their clients can view all available inventory.
• Aaron’s City Trains – boasting one of the world’s largest selection of model trains, we worked with this Akron-based business to service their point-of-sale needs and to get them set up for online ordering.
• Western Reserve Wines – One of the finest wine shops in the state, based out of Solon, we switched out an archaic Windows-based system for a full fledged Mac-based Lightspeed Retail system running two-POS stations as well as a dedicated inventory system.
• J3 Clothing Company – A soon-to-open Moreland Hills based high end men’s fashion retailer. We worked with them to better learn their business needs and implemented a Lightspeed Retail system to prepare them for their forthcoming grand opening.

As you can see, Global Mac Consulting specializes in working with diverse businesses and providing that “special touch” to learn more about their business needs first, and to sell our services second. If you are a Mac user and work in a retail environment, we would like nothing more than to learn how we can help you take your business needs to the next level and show you how Lightspeed Retail is the premier choice to service all of your point-of-sale (POS) needs. Much more than a typical POS, Lightspeed Retailcombines Mac innovation with powerful business logic – providing a comprehensive solution for all retail needs.

Lightspeed Retail – GlobalMac Consulting becomes Ohio’s 1st and only Advanced Reseller originally appeared on Apple Consulting Firm for Attorneys | Small Businesses | Retail on August 12, 2011.

Sure, you have set up appointments and tasks in Daylite – and used a reminder, we all have. But what you may not know is that you can easily setup multiple reminders per activity using the lesser knows ability to set multiple Daylite notifications. This blog post will show you how to do just that. Notifications can be setup individually, per each task or appointment, OR they can be setup as defaults, so that everytime you setup a reminder, it will automatically apply your desired notifications. NOTE: This walk-thru applies to setting up your default reminders, since most people have preferences for when and how they wish to be notified and like that to be done automatically.

For example, some users working from home, just need a 15 minutes heads up before an appointment. In contrast, a salesperson that is on the road often may want to have an email notification 24 hours before and then an hour before on the day of. It is for instances like these where the multiple notifications features can save a lot of time when inputting data.

So, let’s start on a brief tutorial…

[NOTE: this walk thru will adjust your default reminders for ALL appointments that you set Daylite notifications for.]

Go to Daylite in the menu bar, choose Preferences and choose Notifications.

Inside this view, you will be able to change the default settings for the behavior of your Daylite Notification settings; whether you want them to bounce in your dock, open in a new window, etc. Most importantly this is where you can set up multiple reminders (the whole point of this blogpost, after all!) You will also notice that you can set unique default reminders for Appointments AND for Tasks.

Now let’s say you want to send an email reminder 24 hours before the scheduled appointment begins but you also want to set a reminder that sends an audible sound fifteen minutes before the meeting begins. So, under default reminders simply

• For the first reminder:

• click on “message” to reveal a drop down menu
• Choose  “email“
• Set the time to 24 hours before
• For the second reminder:

• Click on the green plus symbol (iCal users, this may look familiar…Daylite mimicked this feature directly from iCal)
• select “Message with sound” to setup an audible reminder
• setup the appropriate time – in this instance we will select 15 minutes before.

So, once completed, we can open up a new appointment and these default settings will now be in effect for all appointments when we check the “Remind Me” button. Once the reminder it set, we will see that an email will be sent 24 hours before the appointment as well as “1 more” which once we select edit reminders we will see that the “1 more” is the audible reminder (which can be whatever the sender wants it to be) scheduled to sound fifteen minutes before the appointment for all invited parties. As you set this up, make sure to look at all the options provided in the Daylite Notifications area.

You can choose from the following types of notifications:

• Message
• Message with Note – handy if you want to write a note to yourself in regard to the appointment/task
• Message with Sound
• Email
• Script
• Open File – this is great if the task or appointment involved you working on a specific file, it will not only remind you, but open the file for you!
• Speak Text – This may freak you out the first time, make sure your volume isn’t set too high

These reminder functions were completely re-written in Daylite 3.8 to allow for better synchronization – previous versions only allowed the person who created the meeting to see the reminder. This is a huge benefit and is very helpful for users who need to keep everyone in the loop. Try it the next time you create a task or appointment, the real key to using the Daylite Notifications is finding what works best for you and what you respond to the best.

Did I leave anything out?

Daylite Notifications – Adding Multiple Default Reminders originally appeared on Apple Consulting Firm for Attorneys | Small Businesses | Retail on July 29, 2011.