We love Act4outlook. Not only is it the best-selling Act! addon of all time, but it has successfully filled a customer need for years.

Unfortunately, this addon is not a solution for larger deployments and organizations that don't use Outlook as an email client. Reliable email History recording is a must for many industries, and with the emergence of web-based emails and GSuite, the number of Act! users forsaking Outlook is growing, and we wanted to provide them a centralized solution that was easy to deploy and works.

Enter Link2mail.

Link2mail is the latest product in our Linktivity Suite. It provides an online solution configured within Linktivity and then writes the email History to Act! from a single Windows utility installed on your network. The connections to the database are the Act! Web API or K-API, and wholly configured online. All the global settings, users, and user preferences are configured within Link2mail, and then synced to the Windows utility. The advantage of this setup is simple. All the accounts are managed in one place without ever having to go to the Windows server to configure anything. You can even set global defaults if you have a lot of users to configure. Just set it and forget it. 

Moreover, after the Windows utility is deployed once, there is nothing more to install anywhere. No plugins, no having to touch every user's computer, nothing. The first Linktivity user sets up their account, the global preferences, and then the rest of the users. There is nothing to teach your users because everything works in the background.

So, how does Link2mail work?

1. Once you configure your Act! and email settings in Link2mail, you can generate a Windows utility with all the settings already configured
2. Download & install that utility to the computer or server
3. That utility will then monitor the email flow through those accounts and write History to any Contact records it recognizes
4. The utility will also sync every hour to Linktivity to confirm if any account updates or available

What are the advantages of Link2mail versus an Outlook plugin? Consider the following:

• No more History duplication because it can only get written to the database once
• It works equally well for Act! users with the Windows client or Browser based users
• Mac and mobile users can now have full email recording functionality, regardless of where they work or on what platform.
• No more having to install or configure plugins or deal with permission or security issues.
• Larger deployments can be configured quickly in one centralized place without touching anyone's computer or training anyone on the addon's use. In fact, after the Windows utility is installed, you never need to configured it again as updates are synced from Linktivity.

As with anything, there are some trade-offs to not using a plugin. Any integrated Act4Outlook features like converting inbox items to Contacts, Activities, or Lookups are not available with Link2mail, but most of your attachment preferences like History type, are available with Link2mail.

If you're an average Windows user with Outlook installed, it may make sense to continue using Act4outlook. But if you're part of the growing number of people using web-based email clients, or Macs, it's nice to know that there is now a reliable Email History Recording option for you.