Big Contacts Product Description
Big Contacts is a web-based tool to help you to organize all of the information and activity about the people you work with and live with.
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Today the circle of contacts we have is growing larger and the ways that we communicate with them is growing too. A black book with names and phone numbers will no longer cut it. Today you need fax, email, mobile phone, web site, files, photographs, kids names, birthdays and on and on. If you're part of a sales team, a small business, or a organization, you will need some way to share all of the contact information that everyone generates. Big Contacts is designed for you.
Big Contacts Features
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Contacts
In the center of the main Big Contacts page you will see a "business card" for your contacts. This will have most of the important information you would want to access quickly. The more information you have saved for a contact, the more that is displayed.Main Contact: First, Middle and Last Name, Address, Phone, Mobile, Fax, Company Phone, Email, Company Email, Website, IM Service and Screenname, Company Name, Company Adddress, Date of Birth, SSN, Up to 6 Interests, Gender, Marital status, Salutaion, Formal Name, Nickname
Type/Lead/Group: The Contact Type helps to segment your contacts. Examples include Client, Prospect, Friend, Family, or Employee. These are customizable. You can have as many contact types as you want. Lead Type and Lead Source can be used to identify how you were introduced to the contact. Grouping is a way to further segment your contacts. You can have both Groups and Categories.
Comment: A general note about the contact. Something important that you want to remember. This is displayed prominently with the contact data so is easy to spot.
Tags: You can have as many tags as you want to add to identify this contact. You can search for contacts that have the same tags using the Contact Browser.
Spouse Data: First, Middle and Last Name, Address, Phone, Mobile, Fax, Company Phone, Email, Company Email, Website, IM Service and Screenname, Company Name, Company Adddress, Date of Birth, Anniversary, SSN, Up to 6 Interests
Family: Add as many additional family members as you want. Can save First and Last Name, Date of Birth, SSN, Phone, Email and their Relation to the main contact.
Second Home: Many people today have a second home or vacation home where they spend much of their time. Here you can track the Address and Phone Number, along with the Months of the year this is their primary residence.
Custom Data: You can create as many customer data fields as you wish. Custom data is used for storing information you want to track about people that Big Contacts does not already save.
Group Calendar
Big Contacts includes a full group calendar. It is designed to make it easy to track your meetings as well as the events for everone on your team.Views: You can see your calendar in four different views - One-Day, Seven-Day, 31-Day and 31-Day Group. There are tabs on the calendar to allow you to easily switch between views. While on any of the views, if you click on a date, you will be taken to the one-day view for that date. From the one-day view you can easily schedule meetings and events.
Team: On each of the views, you can see anyone on your team's calendar. Each of your team mebers is listed along with a button. By clicking on the button you see their calendar. For example, if you are on the one-day view, and you click on another team member, you will see their calendar for the day and you can schedule a meeting for them.
Scheduling Meetings: You can easily schedule meetings and events right on the one-day view. There are boxes shown for each available time slot during the day. Clicking on a box next to a time slot birings up a number of scheduling options. You can type in the name of a contact and it will search your contact list for a matching contact. Click on one of the names and it will link this meeting with that contact - and show that meeting in that contact's history. If the meeting is not related to a contact, you can type in anything here, such as "Staff Meeting".
You can add a subject for the meeting, a location, the specific time, a long description and a list of attendees from your team who will attend. You can add default subjects and locations on the Admin page. These are then listed below where you would type in the subject and location. Then, you only need to click on a subject or location - you don't have to type it in each time. When you schedule ameeting you will see a list of each of your team mebers. There are checkboxes next to each of them to allow you to select specifically who on your team will attend the meeting. This meeting will be on the calendar for each member of your team that you select. This eway, you can easily schedule meetings for other people on your team.
Creating New Contacts from the Calendar: Many times you are scheduleing a meeting with someone who is not an exisitng contact in the system. With Big Contacts you can create a new contact form the Calendar. Pick a time on the one-day view and type in the name of your new contact. Then just check the box next to "Create a New Contact". When the meeting is scheduled a new contact is created with the name that you typed in. You don't have to create a contact first and then add a meeting - this is much easier and more efficient.
Recurring Meetings: Many times we want to have meetings that take place on a regular basis. With Big Contacts, you can schedule a meeting and have it recur on a regular basis. When scheduling a meeting, click the box next to "This meeting repeats". This can be for a meeting with a contact or for an event that is not specific to a contact. There are a number of options to select from. For example, if you want to schedule a "Kiwanis Club Meeting" on the third Tuesday of each month for the next 6 months, you can easily do that.
Tasks and To-Do's
Keeping a Task list is one of the ways to better organize our lives and our businesses. Tasks and To-Dos can be assigned to yourself, or to anyone else on your team. If you assign a Task or a To-Do to someone else, it will show up on their Task list.Tasks: A Task is related to a specific contact such as "Complete new account paperwork".
To-Do's: A To-Do is like a task, but it is unrelated to a contact. An example is "Prepare quarterly tax return".
Steps: Tasks can by simple, or they can have multiple Steps. A multistep Task would be one where you need to do several things, sometimes by different people, in order to complete the Task. The Steps or ordered so that you can complete them in the proper sequence. This is a better way to organize workflow such that you do reduce the complexity of getting things done. A 3-step task is much better than three, separate, discrete tasks.
Task Types: If you find that you are doing the same tasks over and over again, it is better to write out the task and the steps one time and just assign it. On the Admin page, you can create as many Task Types as you wish. The tasks can be simple, or they can have multiple steps. Then, when you are creating a new Task, you will see a list of all the Task Types you created. Simply click on the Task Type and it will prefill the task and steps. This makes it much quicker to assign new Tasks.
Recurring Task: You can make your tasks reapeat at regular intervals. When you create a new task, just click the button next to Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-Annually or Annually and the task wil repeat on that interval.
Search
There are several ways to find a contact or group of contacts.Regular Search: A simple, single, search box allows you to just type in the name of the contact or company that you are looking for. As you type, a list of matching contacts is displayed below the search box. You can clik on the name of the contact to "open" that contact. Clicking on the "person" icon next to the name of the contact will "open" that contact in a new browser tab or browser window. You will also see a list of contacts whose names "sound like" the name you typed in. If you type in Smith, you will also see contacts that are named Smyth. You can search for last, last comma first, or first space last. You can also search for a company name and contacts that match will be shown.
Advanced Search: Sometimes a simple search is not enough. Or, you are looking for a group of contacts that match a specific criteria. Advnaced Search allows you to search on multiple data fields. A report is returned with all of the contacts that match. For example, you could search for contacts that have a specific City, Contact Type and Lead Source. You can select what fields you want returned in the search result. You have the option of viewing the Advanced Search results in the browser window, or downloadeding them as an Excel spreadsheet. You can also search on your custom data fields.
Contact Browser: The Contact Browser allows you to search for a contact similar to how the iTunes browser works. You can select which data fields you want to browse. The fields are First Name, Last Name, Company, Contact Type, ABCD, State, Assigned To, and Tags. You can select any number of fields to browse on. Then select one or more values for each field. Click on a field to add it, click on it again to remove it. As you select fields and values, matching contacts are listed below. Clicking on a contact "opens" that contact.
Tag Browser: The Tag Broswer is identical to the Contact Browser, except that it preselects Tags as the field to search on.
Contact Cloud: A Contact Cloud is a page with all of your contacts last names listed. These contact names will vary in size and color. The more activity you have for a contact, the larger the size and brighter the color of that contact. Activity includes tasks assigned, meetings held, notes written, etc. The contacts that you have done more things for will stand out and be easy to find.
Open the Contact Cloud by clicking on the link in the upper right corner of the page that says "Cloud View". If you click on a contact's last name, their Business Card will appear on the page just below the contact name in the cloud. You can then view the information directly on the cloud. If you want to %quot;open" the contact, click on the link in the Business Card that says "Load this contact in a new window". You can view Contact Clouds that match one of your Contact Types. For example, if you have a "Client" Contact Type, you can see a Contact Cloud that contains only Clients.
Reports
Big Contacts comes with a number of built-in reports. These include Contact Reports, Activity Reports, Calendar Reports and Data Export. All of the reports can be viewed in your browser or downloaded as Excel files.Exporting Data: You can export all of your data from Big Contacts. Exportign your data is useful for archiving or for importing into another application. The export reports are located by clicking on My Reports. The data is downloaded as Excel files. There are four Excel files that must be downloaded to access all of your data. They are contacts.xls, meetings.xls, tasks.xls and history.xls. The contacts.xls file includes all of your custom data.
Files and Photos
You can attach files and photos with each contact. These might be Word proposals, PDF document scans, or Excel plans. You can add a description of the fie to help you remeber what it is. To download the file, just click on the filename. If you upload a JPG photo usng the Add a Photo box, a thumbnail will be created and displayed below the contact data.
Sales Opportunity Tracking
Many people use Big Contacts to keep track of business clients and prospects. With Big Contacts you can also keep track of potential sales to your clients and prospects.Sales Pipeline: A sales pipeline is simply the process that you go through to close a sale. Using a pipeline makes it much easier to track all of your business and it helps to make sure you are using a systematic approach to running your sales efforts. With Big Contacts, you can build a custom sales pipeline that is suited for how your sales process works.
Products: Products are the goods or services that you sell. By pre-loading products, you make it easier to add new opportunities. You can also enter commission rates for products.
Opportunities: A potential sale that you track is called an Opportunity. You can add one or more opportunities to a contact to keep track all of your sales efforts with that client or prospect. There are three types of opportunities - Future opportunities, Existing opportunities and Closed/Won opportunities.
Sales Manager: With the sales manager you can see all of the current sales activity for you and your team in aggregate. You can also drill down to specific contacts that make up your total sales funnel. The sales manager also helps you to project your future business.
Activity
With Big Contacts you can see everything that has been done by you or others on our team. You can filter this by specific person on your team or by length of time - past 24 hours, past 3 days, or past week.
Administration
There are a number of settings and customizations that you can make with Big Contacts. These are all managed on the Adminsitration Page. This page is accessed by clicking on the Admin link in the upper right part of the Big Contacts page. Only Administrators can access the admin page.Company Information: Basic information such as your name and address and phone number are stored here. You also set your timezone here. The timezone is used for displaying the timestamps on notes and history. You can rename some of the fields here to make using Big Contacts easier. The fields you can rename are Lead Type, Lead Source, Category and Group. Also in this section is a table showing some of your usage statistics.
Users: You can manage the details of individual users on your team. There is a table showing some of the information. Click on edit to see all of the User settings.
Calendar Customizations
Contact Types
Task Types
Cards
Custom Feilds
Billing Information
Billing History
Mobile Access
Any web enabled mobile device can access Big Contacts. There is a dedicated, low-bandwidth version of Big Contacts that has been optimized for mobile access. It includes the most commonly used features of Big Contacts. You can view yor calendar, search for contacts, see contact details including phone numbers and email addresses, schedule meetings, assign tasks, and view team activity.
Synchronization
This feature is Coming Soon.
Data Import
To get full value from Big Contacts, you must get all of your exisitng contact data into it. Big Contacts has an import wizard to make this process easy. Click on the import contacts link in the upper right part of the page. This will start the import wizard. All you need to do is get your contact data into CSV (Excel) fomat and then run the wizard. Most programs, such as Microsoft Outlook, can export data in CSV form. Read the Support Wiki for more information on how to export from other programs such as GMail, Thunderbird, Outlook Express and Hotmail.
Application Programming Interface
This feature is Coming Soon.No details are available yet, but rest assured, it will be a REST API.