Printing an individual contact
Curt
via web
I'm here after searching for the better part of 4 days for a CRM
that I can build a new company around. You've made the cut. You
have a terrific site. Thanks for your thoughtful design. I hope
you're as successful as you are professional.
1) I need to print and distribute individual contact information. The 'Print' available when in the contact screen is nice, but I want just a subset of those fields, and would like to customize the header as well. Can I customize what the 'Print' prints?
2) If I can't customize the print layout and fields included, can I export an individual contact to Adobe or MS Office where I could build a form and map the fields to that form so that it will print just what I want? I sure don't want to have to re-enter all that basic data for each future customer.
Support Staff 2 Posted by Scott Blitstein on 20 Mar, 2010 12:53 AM
Hi Curt,
Thank you for the kind words - we appreciate it.
The print report isn't customizable at this time. I've been sort of racking my brain to think of a quick way to export a single contact record and I think the best that I can come up with (other than a vcard) is to create and customize a list with all of the information you need and then edit it to just search for the particular record you are looking to use. Even though most folks use lists to export large groups of data there is nothing prohibiting single records.
This report export file can then be used pretty easily in a mail merge or other document to create a custom document.
hope this helps,
sb
3 Posted by Curt Lind on 21 Mar, 2010 04:08 AM
Thanks for taking some time on my question. I'd already experimented via
the single contact list report. Works, but kind of clunky. The vcard is a
nice feature though, and maybe I can figure out a way to make that work.
Problem is, I need some of the custom fields to print.
FYI, in shopping for a crm, I have yet to find one that will allow me to
export a contact from the contact page. Interesting. I'm in residential
relocation services, a one-customer-at-a-time environment, and am surprised
this simple function isn't offered.
Thanks again.
Support Staff 4 Posted by Scott Blitstein on 23 Mar, 2010 03:13 PM
Hi Curt,
I've added your notes to my list of items to discuss at our next feature request meeting.
sb
5 Posted by Stephen Lewicki on 28 Mar, 2010 03:26 PM
This is the most important feature missing form Batchbook. I look the system and have been using it for over a year now but I want to be able to not only print a single contact out in a customized way but to paste it to the slipboard where I can use it in any number of ways.
Support Staff 6 Posted by Scott Blitstein on 29 Mar, 2010 02:15 PM
Thanks for the suggestions - we're always looking for ways to improve. I've added your notes to our feature request list.
sb
7 Posted by Stephen Lewicki on 29 Mar, 2010 02:57 PM
Thanks - I love your product - this is just one feature that it really needs
Best Regards,
Stephen Lewicki
President, L&L Kiln Mfg Inc
Phone: 856-294-0077 ext 100
Private Fax: 856-294-0081
steve@hotkilns.com
www.hotkilns.com
8 Posted by Jan Badur on 29 May, 2010 09:41 AM
Hi Scott,
the new design is great - but not on the print ;) The old print result was with frames, looked okay.
Now I get many pages and one page with al long list of all tags... Is it possible to fix that?
We use it quite a lot because we print out the contact details including custom fields (we put a lot of content into it) when we go to meet our clients.
It would be so great to have the option to customize the print.
Thanks, Jan
Support Staff 9 Posted by Scott Blitstein on 01 Jun, 2010 05:00 PM
Hi Jan,
Let me check in with tech on this - I thought they had redone the styling on the print contact page.
sb
10 Posted by Jan on 01 Jun, 2010 06:38 PM
Hi Scott, thanks!
Could you please delete my "out of office"? Thank you :)
For some reasons you allways get and publish it automatically...!
Jan
11 Posted by Cheryl on 02 Jun, 2010 11:43 PM
Hi Scott!
Since the re-design, my frustration and major headache is how this change affected the "print contact" on the contact page. Much like the fine people above have mentioned, I need a printed contact sheet for one client at a time. With the contact info moved to the right, contact info now prints mostly on a second, unneeded page two. Before it printed at the top and I would only have to print page one to get what I wanted.
And yes as discussed above, I can export and create a mail merge. However, I moved to BatchBook from an Access database because I was tired of doing everything myself and because of the integration that was offered that I couldn't get with a localized database.
What would be really cool is the ability to drag and drop the fields you want, printed in the order you want, printed for the one person you need printed. I hope, I wish, I dream that making this printing of one contact will become a priority for the BB programmer gods. Like Kurt above noted, I haven't found a CRM that can do this. Way cool for BB to get there first!
Thanks!
12 Posted by Stephen Lewicki on 03 Jun, 2010 12:54 AM
All -
Before I came to the wonderful world of Batchbook I used Goldmine. I dislike a lot of things about Goldmine which there is no need to go into here. However, they did have one feature that I came to rely on. There is a functionality under the Edit Menu to "Copy Contact Info to Clipboard". A dialog box comes up which allows you to choose various fields or combinations (such as name, address, phone, email). Then the selected information is copied to the clipboard and can be used in an email, a document or for data input. FABULOUS.
I wish I had this system at least 5 to 10 times a day. For instance, I was writing an email today introducing two business associates. I wanted to give both of them the other contact info. If I had this system I could have switched between my email and Batchbook a few times and been done in a minute or two. Instead I had to laboriously try to select text from the screen and paste and then clean it up.
I am not a programmer but it would seem to me that such a function would not be very hard to implement. I would love to know what other users think.
Support Staff 13 Posted by Scott Blitstein on 03 Jun, 2010 05:39 PM
We were just chatting about something like this in our meeting on Tuesday so your example is timely. Making it easier to use your contact data no matter where you need it is important to us.
thanks
sb
14 Posted by Cheryl on 03 Jun, 2010 05:53 PM
Stephen, this is an interesting option. If there were a way to combine it with a choice of details from supertags, that would be remarkable. One of my supertags includes personal information about each client that I need for my work, info that is not included in the standard contact fields but info that I need to print out for each client. For example, birthdate and full legal name.
I am pleased to hear that BB is thinking on this topic.
Thanks,
Cheryl