Sage Software today announced the new ACT! by Sage Online Community available at http://community.act.com for over 2.8 million individually registered ACT! users, and users registered through more than 43,000 ACT! corporate customer accounts. The ACT! Online Community enables ACT! and ACT! by Sage Premium users, product developers, and Sage Software personnel to interact with each other through a variety of themed discussion forums and blogs covering best practices, product usage tips, and feature requests, among other topics.

"We have created an online community where sharing personal opinions, ideas, and information will help our customers learn more about using ACT! to grow their businesses," explained David van Toor, senior vice president and general manager for Sage CRM Solutions North America. "Through the ACT! Online Community we can encourage and more actively participate in ongoing dialogue with our customers, and believe the knowledge shared will exponentially benefit everyone for years to come."

van Toor's personal blog is featured on the ACT! Online Community, and is the first of several subject matter expert blogs planned.

Sage is definitely taking a leadership position by implementing a community like this and I expect others to follow," noted Denis Pombriant, Beagle Research managing principal. "A community of interest or, just 'community,' is a very effective tool that enables marketers and others to gather information about what a large group of people think, and the resulting understanding can be very powerful. Adding a community to the huge ACT! installed base should provide a great deal of usable input to Sage, and result in better products for everyone."

ACT! Online Community Features

In addition to subject matter expert blogs, the ACT! Online Community includes:

- ACT! Forum - Discussion board for individual and small business ACT! users to post ideas and questions, and share information about their ACT! experiences.

- ACT! Premium Forum - Discussion board for people using ACT! Premium in a workgroup or corporate environment.

- ACT! Developer's Network - Discussion board for product developers regarding the ACT! architecture, technology questions, and the development of ACT! add-on solutions.

- Best Practices Forum - Discussion board for ACT! Online Community members to share sales and marketing best practices, how-to's, and a variety of support tips.

- How do you ACT!? - Discussion board for ACT! Online Community members to share their success stories.

- ACT! Extras - An additional section providing links for ACT! eNews, submitting feature requests to the product development team, and providing feedback and suggestions about the ACT! Online Community.

About ACT!
ACT! established the Contact Management software category in 1987 and, today, is the number-one selling contact and customer management solution and preferred choice of over 2.8 million registered users and over 43,000 additional corporate customers to organize, access and manage their customer information. ACT! delivers powerful capabilities that support a full range of desktop, laptop, Web browser and handheld device access methods that can work seamlessly with a centralized database to help individuals, selling teams and corporate workgroups improve productivity and increase sales.