INTRODUCTION Welcome to CONTACT PLUS(R) shareware version 2.16. This is a shareware version of a client tracking system suitable for attorneys, salespersons, real estate agents, insurance agents, etc. It will run on IBM compatible systems and works best with a hard disk. Contact Plus was recently called "THE BEST OF SHAREWARE 1990" by PC World Magazine (Oct '90) in the category for business software. Contact Plus logs the last 30 phone calls and the last 15 letters to each client in your database. It features an autodialer and a way to keep track of incoming calls. Contact Plus also interfaces directly with WordPerfect(TM) and WordStar using the F6 (WP) key. This is not an ASCII interface -- it will actually generate instant follow up letters to your clients by simply pressing a key. Version 2.16 adds better support for VGA monitors and comes with a separate tutorial slide-show designed to help you get better acquainted with Contact Plus Shareware. The tutorial consists of the following files: TUTOR.BAT PRORUN.EXE P1.SET P2.SET P3.SET P4.SET LICENSE.TXT To run the tutorial, simply enter TUTOR at the DOS prompt. HOW CAN YOU USE CONTACT PLUS? Let's introduce Harry, a salesperson for a restaurant equipment manufacturer. Harry needs to keep track of basic information such as the name, address and phone number of his clients. However, Harry wants a history of previous contact with his clients. He also needs to track information such as the best time to contact, the receptionist's name, and the next action step (send literature, call back, etc). Contact Plus stores the previous 30 phone calls including the date, time, duration and any notes for each of his clients. It also has user-defined fields available so Harry can customize the database for his particular needs. Since Harry can't touch type, popup lookup menus are available which can save him much time when entering new data. As customers call him, he uses the notes windows to keep detailed records of all conversations. Using the incoming call button (F9) he also has a record of the phone call. If Harry wishes to recall a conversation about "blendomatics" but can't remember who he was speaking to, he can search all notes/phone calls/memos/ticklers for the word "blendomatics". Harry likes to send follow up letters to his clients immediately after speaking with them on the phone. Contact Plus makes this simple as it gives him the ability to enter up to 100 different template files. Each template file will have the client's name/address/city entered. Since Harry has been using WordPerfect for a while and has a laser printer, Contact Plus enables Harry to send handsome follow-up letters which impress his clients and gives him a professional edge over his competition. At the end of the week, Harry has to report the number of calls he has made to his clients. He simply sends a copy of the phone log report captured to an output file to his main office. Keeping track of customers used to take Harry hours every day. He wasn't able to spend all the time he wanted actually making contact with his clients. With Contact Plus, Harry can now keep better track of his customers and have even more time to bring in new business. FEATURES o Autodialer o Phone call history o Rolodex(r) cards o Mailing labels o Mail/merge for mass mailings o Correspondence history o Elapsed phone call timer o User defined index fields o User defined date fields o Phone call graph o Multiple databases o Unlimited date stamped notes o Ticklers/reminders o Keeps track of holidays/vacations o Reschedules your outstanding ticklers o Automated follow up schedules o Extensive online help (over 2,000 lines of help) o 24 categories to classify your contacts o Interface to word processor with form files o Interleaved letter/envelope printing o Call analysis reports (Who didn't you call?) o Local and long distance dialing prefixes o Popup lookup and data entry windows o Colorful calendars and screens o Mouse support o Support for 43/50 line mode on reports (EGA/VGA monitors only) o Browse screen for dialing, taking notes and writing letters ============================================================================= If you order Contact Plus, in addition to over 100 pages of printed documentation you will receive: o CONCAL - monthly calendar generation program o CHECK - prints out today's appointments whenever machine is turned on o CFIX - repairs broken databases o IMPORT - import ASCII data from other database programs or computers o MS - MicroStar word processor from Borland International The registered shareware version of Contact Plus is priced at $79. Add $5 for shipping & handling. Print out the enclosed INVOICE.DOC file to fill out your order and send to: Contact Plus Corporation * PO Box 3992 Albuquerque, NM 87190 USA * Formerly E Trujillo Software or for rush orders call (Visa/MC accepted): (505) 881-3223 (information & orders) We also offer BBS support. You can check out our other software offerings at (505) 881-7781 9600 baud 8-N-1 using the Wildcat BBS system. Contact Plus Corporation reserves the right to change this offer at anytime. Contact Plus is a registered trademark of Contact Plus Corporation. Contact Plus Corporation also holds the US copyright to Contact Plus. ============================================================================= INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS: Make sure that the proper date and time are setup. CONTACT PLUS makes heavy use of the date and time throughout the system. (1) Copy all files into a CONTACT directory on your hard disk (2) Enter the command "C" at the prompt. Press the HELP button (F1) often when first getting acquainted with Contact Plus. If you have a problem at startup with the message: CANNOT OPEN ALL FILES ... QUITTING Follow these steps: (1) Locate your "config.sys" file. This file is a DOS configuration file and is located in the top directory of your boot disk. (2) Issue the following command which will either create the config.sys file or add the line to it. C> echo FILES=20 >> config.sys (3) Turn off your computer and turn it back on again. (4) Try to run Contact Plus again. Contact Plus comes with a sample database already programmed in. You may change any of the user defined fields and experiment with the system as you wish. Make sure that you backup the database everyday. You will soon find that the data you keep is very valuable. CUSTOMIZING CONTACT PLUS Go to the USER PARAMETER MENU to change the user defined fields. You will want to set the first two user defined fields with something that can be sorted such as account number, region, sales id, or social security number. You may also want to customize the user defined date fields. ADDING/DELETING CONTACTS Adding, and deleting contacts can only be done from the header page under the contact menu. To add a new contact, simply press A followed by the ENTER key. You can copy the information being displayed to the new contact or enter your information on a new clean screen. When finished adding the contact, press ESC. You will be prompted to save the contact. Contact Plus is ALWAYS in search mode. The search will depend upon the setting of the index which can be last name, company name, zip code or one of the two user defined index fields. Press the UP and DOWN arrow to access different contacts or enter the first few characters of the last name. If you change the index to COMPANY, you can access the contacts by company name instead of last name. The indexing feature is also available for zip code, user field 1 and user defined field 2. PHONE CALLS Press F3 or F4 from any of the pages under the Contact Menu. Of course, the contact that you want to dial must be displayed on the screen. If you have a Hayes compatible modem, Contact Plus will dial the phone for you. Otherwise, you can still press F3 or F4 to log the phone call but you will have to dial the phone manually. Each call will be stored in the phone log page with the most recent call appearing at the top of the screen. The phone calls cannot be deleted once they are entered. You have access to the previous 30 calls only. AUTOMATED FOLLOWUP LETTERS Contact Plus has the unique ability to interface with WordPerfect, XYwrite, and WordStar when generating followup letters automatically. From the Contact Plus menu, simply press F6 and you will be presented with a list of up to 100 different FORM files. Each file is a template with codes where the salutation, address, dates will go. You must specify the path of your word processor in the SYSTEM PARAMETER MENU in order for this to work properly. The form letters (WordPerfect) do not have to be in TEXT or ASCII format, they can be in native WordPerfect format. Press F6 with the sample database and you will be placed in the sample word processor called MSDEMO which only illustrates the capability of the followup letter feature. POPUP WINDOWS Most prompts in the header page have a popup window that enables you to enter common information at the press of a few keystrokes. If the popups are set to appear automatically, they will popup whenever the highlight bar is placed over the field. Otherwise, press F10 to access the popup menu on those prompts in the HEADER PAGE. Press F10 again to modify the popup menu. NOTES While in any of the contact menu pages, you may press the F7 key (NOTES) which will bring up a date/time stamped note. The notes may be summoned while any other popup window is on the screen. It is especially convenient when talking on the phone. There are an unlimited number of notes that can be stored perpetually for each contact in the database. Each note is date and time stamped for your convenience. TICKLERS Use the tickler feature to remind you to call back or followup on one of your clients. Each contact in the database has up to 15 different associated ticklers. Use the DONE? field to signify if the task was completed, not completed or if you don't care. The ticklers marked as NOT DONE today, can be rescheduled to a date in the future. REPORTS There are 15 reports available all of which can be printed on the screen, printer or sent to a capture file for later processing with a word processor. A selection menu will appear after the report is chosen. The selection menu allows you to sort and select particular clients MAIL/MERGE If you wish to send one letter to a bunch of clients the mail/merge feature will allow you to do just that. Simply create an ASCII text file using your favorite editor and call it CONTACT.1, CONTACT.2 CONTACT.3 through CONTACT.9. The first mail/merge template under the mail/merge menu corresponds to the CONTACT.1, the second template corresponds to the file CONTACT.2, etc. The sample file "CONTACT.1" is included with the shareware version. MOUSE SUPPORT If you have a Microsoft mouse, you can use it by setting up the MOUSE parameters under the SYSTEM PARAMETER MENU. The MOUSE will act as the arrow keys. Press the LEFT mouse button for the ENTER key and the RIGHT button for the ESC key. MULTIPLE DATABASES You can keep a database of hot prospects. Another one for friends and acquaintances and another one for your vendors. Use the DATABASE MENU to create new databases. ============================================================================== Here is what some of our satisfied customers and reviewers are saying about Contact Plus: Dr. Leon Wortman, Software Reviewer of Business Marketing Magazine (Jan '89): "I look at, install or run an average of three or four new software packages a month. They range in price from much less than $100 to several thousand dollars. I know what I'm about to report may be hard to swallow. But have faith in me. If I didn't genuinely know that Contact Plus is the best-buy-of-the-year, I wouldn't describe it with those very words." Charles K. Fairchild, Washington D.C.: "You realize, I hope, that programs like this could set a new standard for overall design and ease of use. I have never seen anything on the regular commercial market that feels so good to use, has so much built-in help, and so many features!" Harry Pollard, President of Henry George Schools of California: "After using a dozen or more databases, I settled on Contact Plus for the best reasons. It's the fastest database, tracker, tickler, dialing program I've encountered. It automatically backs up, issues reports in a variety of formats and mail/merges as you wish. It records letters and calls, and graphs calling experience with individual clients." Tim Greer, Software Reviewer of the Phoenix PC User's Group (April '90): "CLIENT TRACKING DREAM... If you are in a business where tracking client contact is important, have I got a gem for you. It's a piece of Shareware called CONTACT PLUS." Brad Caverly, Film Plane of Panorama City, CA: "This is one of the best programs I have seen ever, shareware or commercial. I have never registered a piece of shareware before but I have never run across a program so complete, so user friendly and so useful." Paul Cassel, Software Reviewer of the Albuquerque Journal (July '89): "Today, there are several programs designed to help salespeople increase productivity. One of the best of these was written, and is distributed by, an Albuquerque programmer, Ed Trujillo." Dr. File Finder (Mike Callahan, best selling book author): "Contact Plus, by Ed Trujillo, is a full-featured program that can be used by anyone who has to keep track of the people. It's many features make it a powerful program that can really increase your productivity and your effectiveness. I've looked at MANY programs and Contact Plus is the BEST! My advice is to give it a try!" Larry Fox, Vice President Ziff-Davis Press: "I honestly have never encountered a software package that works so much like I work. From its friendly yet practical data screen through its annotations, logs and reports of calls, ticklers, memos, letters, notes and appointments to its seamless template and mail merge with either its own word processor or Wordperfect, Contact Plus creates a complete yet natural environment for the tracking of daily contacts ..." ============================================================================== For those with extensive client tracking needs, we are also offering Contact Plus Professional 3.0 which is different from the shareware version in the following features: o The database uses approximately 50% less disk space. o There are 16 user defined fields. o There are 2 extra 4 line mailing addresses. o Database access is about twice as fast o There is NO limit to the number of phone calls can be stored. You thus have a perpetual history of all calls to all contacts. o There is NO limit to the number of letters that can be stored. o You can now store a history of meetings o A DEAR field has been added (Dear *de) useful when addressing a person in a letter. I.e. you can write "Dear Bill" instead of "Dear William H." o A history popup window has been added displaying all calls and letters. While you are talking on the phone, you can press the HISTORY window which will give you immediate access to the previous phone calls and letters. o You can select which fields will have an automatic popup menu. You may for instance, choose to have the POPUP come up on the CITY field only. o The popup menus have more selections on most fields. You thus can have more options when using the F10 popup menus. o A birthdate field (Month and day only) is recorded for each contact for handy birthdate mailings. o HP laser labels (two different Avery formats). Do mass mailings using your HP laser printer quickly and professionally. o Support for COM3 and COM4 modems for auto-dial. o 2 up and 3 up mailing labels for pinfeed printers. o 6 keys to access DOS with ability to pass mail/merge codes as parameters. This enables you to communicate with other programs such as FAX transmittal programs. o Index on next tickler date. This will bunch all of your contacts in the order that they have to be contacted. You can simply press the DOWN arrow key or drag the mouse to access the next person that needs to be called. o Remembers index, page and contact last accessed between sessions. This is handy if you want to always access your contacts by company name instead of by contact name. o Tickler rescheduler will reschedule ticklers not DONE for ALL ticklers prior to today (not just today's ticklers). If you are sick for a week and need to catch up on your call backs for the previous week, you can re-schedule all those ticklers when you come back from sick leave. o Browse screen allowing you to view up to 42 contacts on the screen at one time. From the BROWSE screen, you can dial, write letters take notes, and view the history. You may also flag/unflag contacts. o Ticklers are based on the DATE and TIME of the appointment. They are also tied into a MASTER calendar so that you can instantly see if you are free to make a NEW appointment with your contacts. o An alarm function can be set based on the TIME set for your ticklers. Even if you aren't running Contact Plus you will still be notified when it is time to make your call or meeting. o Optional interface to Calendar Creator Plus from Power Up Software. This will allow you to get your ticklers printed in a multitude of formats including DayTimer(r) format. You can then have a handsome calendar listing all your contacts for the week, their phone numbers and what you have to call them about. o Optional interface to DBASE III. This allows you to access to ALL data fields in Contact Plus through a DBASE III compatible tool. The contact information (including phone calls/letters/notes) are dumped out in DBF file format. You can then generate your own customized reports. You can even do a mass-update such as updating all the ZIP codes to ZIP + 4 codes. ============================================================================== If your office needs to access the same database simultaneously through a network call and ask about our multi-user LAN version. The multi-user version works on IBM-PC networks such as Novell and LANtastic. It will log the user id of the person making the phone call, taking a note or writing a letter. Many of the features in the professional version are also in the multi-user version. Call for more information or check out our BBS which contains sample screens of the system. Contact Plus Corporation PO Box 3992 Albuquerque, NM 87190 USA (505) 881-3223 voice (505) 881-7781 BBS (9600,2400,1200 baud - 24 hours) =============================================================================