While an account generally refers to a company, a contact is the actual person with whom you do business. Although you enter contact information in pretty much the exact same way as you do account information, some of the fields differ a bit. For example, you’ll probably need to store more than one e-mail address — and possibly an IM address as well.

You’ll use the account record to keep details about a company or an organization, and the contact record to capture information about the people with whom you have a business relationship.

If you shut your eyes while adding a contact record, you’d probably think you were adding an account record. (Actually, you’d probably better keep those eyes open when adding any kind of record into Office Live, but you get the drift.) You’ll see very little difference between your account and contact records.

Follow these steps to add a contact to Business Contact Manager:

1. Click Business Contact Manager from the Office Live Home page
Navigation bar.

2. Click the Contacts tab.

3. Click New on the Contact tab toolbar.

4. Type the requested information on the Communicate tab.

5. (Optional) Click the Details tab and add more details.

6. (Optional) Click the Personal tab and add more details.

7. (Optional) Click the Comments tab to add a comment about the
contact.

8. (Optional) Click the Tracking tab to log in items about the contact.

9. Click OK to save your changes and exit the New Item page.

If you have several people who are all working for the same company, chances are pretty good that they all share the same business address. If time is not an object, feel free to add all those contacts in one by one — but if you’re in a rush to fit in a few rounds of golf before the sun sets, you can duplicate a record:

1. Click the drop-down arrow next to a last name on the Contacts tab
and choose Copy Item.

2. Fill in the appropriate first and last name, as well as any other
changes you might have.

You’re good to go!

You can add a contact quickly directly from the Business Contact Manager dashboard. Look for the Quick Add: Contact section where you can add a few small details (Last and First name, e-mail and phone), and you’ll be on your way.

If you’re chomping at the bit to start creating an Account record — or if you just don’t have all the pertinent information at your fingertips — you might want to create an abbreviated Account record. After all, you can always go back later and edit the record to include any pieces of information you left out the first time around.

Figure 8-7: The Accounts Tracking tab.

Figure 8-8: The Accounts Opportunity tab.

Here’s what you need to do to add an Account record in a jiffy:
1. Click Business Contact Manager from the Office Live Home page Navigation bar. The Business Contact Manager dashboard opens.
2. Fill in the pertinent information in the Quick Add: Account section. Talk about abbreviated — there are only three fields (Account name, Primary E-mail, and Phone) to fill in.
3. Click Save to save your new Account record.

No pain, no gain. The more information you fill in now, the more information you can use later. Although this method is quick and easy, be sure to fill in the rest of the information later.

Creating an account is easy. Here’s all you need to do:

1. Click Business Contact Manager from the Office Live Home page Navigation bar. The Business Contact Manager dashboard opens.
2. Click the Accounts tab. The Business Contact Manager Accounts list opens, as shown in Figure 8-2.
3. Click New on the toolbar. The Accounts – New Item page opens with the Communicate tab showing, as shown in Figure 8-3.
4. Fill in all the pertinent information. The only field that you must fill in is the Account field — the rest of the fields are optional.
5. (Optional) On the Communicate tab, click the Business Address dropdown arrow and choose Shipping Address if you’d like to fill in an additional address that you’ll use for shipping. Business Contact Manager allows you to enter both a business and shipping address.
6. (Optional) Click the Details tab and fill in the account information. Here’s where you can add the pertinent account information, including projected revenue and payment status (see Figure 8-4). You can also assign an Office Live user to the Account; the users appear when you click the book icon to the right of the Assigned To field.
7. (Optional) Click the Contacts tab and add any contacts that belong to the account. If you’ve ever wondered which comes first — the chicken or the egg — you’ll probably be just as inquisitive about knowing which comes first — the Account or the Contact? If you’ve added contacts to Business Contact Manager, you can associate them with the Account record by clicking the Add Existing link (see Figure 8-5) to see a list of all the contacts in Business Contact Manager. If you’d rather add a new contact, click the Add New link; the New Contact page opens and you can add a new contact that is then associated automatically with the Account record. Wondering why you don’t see a contact listed here when you know you’ve added it already? If the contact you want to add is not in the list, you’ve probably already associated it with a different account.
8. (Optional) Click the Comments tab and add a comment about the account. You can add a small comment — or write a book about — the Account just by filling in the Comment field (see Figure 8-6). The Comment tab allows you to add one comment — and only one comment — to the Account record. The Tracking tab, however, allows you to add multiple notes to the Account record.
9. (Optional) Click the Tracking tab. The Tracking tab is where you turn to add opportunities, phone logs, and notes to an Account record. You can add an unlimited number of items to the Tracking tab. Need to add a lot of notes? No problem — add away!
10. (Optional) To add a new tracking item, click the appropriate link, as shown in Figure 8-7. For example, if you want to add a note, click the Add Note link. The corresponding form appears. Figure 8-8 shows the Opportunities form; to find out more about adding an Opportunity to either an Account or Contact record see the section, “Creating an Opportunity When One Comes Knocking” later in this chapter.
11. Click OK to save your changes.

Figure 8-2: The Business Contact Manager Account tab.

Figure 8-3: The New Accounts page.

Figure 8-4: The Accounts Details tab.

Figure 8-5:The Accounts Contacts tab.

Figure 8-6: The Accounts Comments tab.

Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of an Account record.

Business Contact Manager includes the capability to add both accounts and contacts. An account record contains all the pertinent details about a company or an organization. A contact record collects information about an individual person. You can associate contacts with an account if you have a number of contacts in one company.

You might think of an account as an “uber-contact” because it represents the master contact. Some of your clients may be smaller businesses and you’ll find that one contact record is sufficient. However, if you’re dealing with larger organizations — those with a bunch of cubicles and a cafeteria — you might be dealing with several people in an organization. And chances are that the contacts working for a company might be “here today and gone tomorrow.” The account record holds the critical information for the company, including a list of all the contacts associated with it.

You might like to think of Contact Management as the last frontier in the world of software. When you start a business you probably have a certain hierarchy of software in mind. You probably start with the ability to e-mail and compose documents, throw in a spreadsheet or accounting software to track the dollars coming in and out of your business, and maybe even develop a Web site.

A successful business follows a steady path. You start with some prospects that hopefully turn into paying customers. As your business grows, so does your customer list. And as your business continues to grow, so do your headaches. You find that sticky notes and legal pads are just not an efficient way to conduct your business.

Enter the world of contact management — with the operative word being contact: a person you’ve encountered in the course of your business. A contact record is all the information you have collected about that person.

Note, however, another meaning of the word contact — to communicate. To do business, you need to stay in touch with your contacts — and Business Contact Manager gives you all the tools to do just that.

Click the Business Contact Manager link from the home page Navigation bar to open the Business Contact Manager dashboard, shown in Figure 8-1. The
dashboard provides you with a listing of all the newest information for the various BCM parts. In addition, the dashboard allows you to add new Accounts and Contacts quickly.

Figure 8-1: The Business Contact Manager dashboard.

Business Contact Manager consists of five main areas, all of which you can access by clicking the corresponding tabs that run across the top of  BusinessContact Manager page:

• Accounts: The companies that you work with
• Contacts: The individuals that you work with
• Opportunities: Potential sales you’re hoping to close
• Products: The items or services that you sell
• Business Documents: Documents that you upload to the BCM portion of Office Live to share with other users

You might be wondering why you’d want to let the entire universe access your Personal calendar. The answer is to not get hung up on the Personal portion of the calendar. Clubs and businesses can enjoy the benefits of a Basic Office Live subscription. For example, a soccer team might publish its calendar on the Web so anyone — moms, dads, grandparents, players — can access the team’s schedule. A dance studio might want to publish its class schedules. The possibilities are endless.

By making the calendar public, you don’t have to worry about collecting everyone’s e-mail addresses; instead, you provide them with a direct link to the calendar.

Here’s all you need to do to get started:

1. Click the Sharing link on your Personal Calendar. The Calendar – Sharing page opens.
2. Click Publish Your Calendar. The Publish Your Calendar page opens.
3. Select the level of detail that you want to share with others. The only options you have are to allow everyone to see the details of all your appointments, or only allow them to see when you’re free or busy.
4. Save changes. After you publish your calendar, anyone with an Internet connection can view it. Simply give them the link to your calendar — or consider putting a link to it on the Web site you create in Office Live!

You might decide that there are certain appointments you don’t want everyone to see. To make an existing appointment private, double-click the appointment, and then select Do Not Display This Appointment When
I Share My Calendar.

Figure 7-13: Changing who can view your calendar.

Your first decision when sharing your personal calendar is to decide whether select individuals can access your calendar, or whether you want to open it up to the Internet world at large. Typically you’ll want to share your calendar with a single individual or two. As you set up the sharing, you can decide whether you want them to see the details of your activities, or just the fact that you are free or busy during any given time period.

If you want to share your calendar with a hand-picked list of individuals, you’ll have to do so one at a time. Here’s how you’ll share your calendar with the first person:

1. Click the Sharing link in the Personal Calendar. The Sharing page, shown in Figure 7-11, opens.
2. Click Share Your Calendar. The first page of the Calendar – Options Wizard opens.
3. Fill in the e-mail address of the person with whom you want to share your calendar. You can select an address from Contacts if you’ve already entered him in your Address Book. You can only share your calendar with people who are MSN members or have a Microsoft Passport. You can usually recognize the Microsoft Passport crowd by their suitcases and hotmail.com or msn.com e-mail addresses. In addition, anyone sharing your Office Live account is also part of the In-Crowd who may share your calendar.
4. Click Next to continue. The Choose How Much Information to Display page opens.
5. Select the level of appointment detail that you want to share. You don’t really have much choice here; you can either opt to let the invitees see all the juicy details of your appointments, or let your visitors know only that you are either free or busy.
6. Click Next to continue. The third page opens, as shown in Figure 7-12. Here’s where you can type a personal e-mail to the person you are going to share your calendar with.
7. Click Finish. A recap page opens, confirming that your e-mail has been sent, which contains a link to your shared calendar.
8. Click OK. You return to the Calendar Sharing page where you can further configure your calendar or just call it a day. Your invitees can view your calendar by using their Microsoft Passport e-mail addresses and passwords.

Figure 7-11: Sharing your personal calendar.

Figure 7-12: Sending the Sharing Invitation.

After you’ve set up Personal Calendar sharing with a person, one of two thoughts will probably strike you:

• Eww. I’ve changed my mind — I don’t want to share my calendar with him.
• Wow! This is so cool I think I’ll share my calendar with a few other members of the In Crowd.

Either way, you’ll follow these steps:

1. Click the Sharing link on your Personal Calendar. The Calendar – Sharing page opens.
2. Click Permissions for Your Shared Calendar. The Change Who Can View Your Calendar page opens.
3. Click one of the option buttons. Depending on your choice, another window opens:
   • Add Person: Share your database with another person. Follow Steps 3-8 in the previous list.
   • Edit: Change the sharing privileges of someone currently sharing your database.
   • Stop Sharing: Remove the sharing privileges for the selected contact.
4. Click Save Changes to close the open window, and then click Finish to close the Change Who Can View Your Calendar window.

When you were little, your mother taught you to share. Now that you’re all grown up, sharing has become a necessity.

One of the great benefits of Office Live is that you can share your Personal Calendar with others. And you can decide not only who accesses your calendar, but what they can access.

You can share your calendar with others in several ways:

• One-to-one free/busy: A specific person can view the times on your calendar when you are free or busy, but can’t view any of your appointment details (such as location or appointment title).
• One-to-one full: A specific person can view your complete schedule, including appointment details.
• Public free/busy: Anyone connected to the Internet can view the times on your calendar when you are free or busy, but can’t view any of your appointment details.
• Public full: Anyone connected to the Internet can view your complete schedule, including appointment details.

As great as Office Live is, it can be totally useless if you don’t have access to a computer or handheld device. Or maybe you work with a technically challenged coworker (your boss?) who prefers to have a copy of his or her Task List printed daily. No need to fret; Office Live can easily print any of the lists in your personal calendar for you:

1. Click the list view you’d like to print. For example, if you want to print your Task List, click Tasks from the Personal Calendar Navigation bar. The appropriate list opens, complete with all the items you’ve so painstakingly entered.
2. Click Print View. You list transforms into a nice, clean-looking list.
3. Click the Print button on your browser’s toolbar. Your printer window opens.
4. Click OK to print your list. If you’d like, feel free to pat yourself on the back and say, “Darn, I’m good” as you affix your beautifully designed list to the company bulletin board.

If you live in Florida — or any place with an abundance of paddle fans —you’ve probably learned that a sticky note is not your best method of recording information. Even if you haven’t fallen prey to a paddle fan, you might avoid sticky notes because they tend to stick to everything except what they’re intended to stick to.

You can jot down a Note in the Office Live Personal Calendar in much the same way you create one on a sticky note or paper scrap — and it won’t blow away. Here’s how you do it:

1. Click the New drop-down arrow and select Note. The New Note page appears; see Figure 7-9.
2. Fill in the note details and click Save. Selecting a category from the drop-down list comes in handy if you
decide to sort your notes by category later on. You return to the Notes page, as shown in Figure 7-10. Your new note sits along all the other notes that you’ve added along the way.

Figure 7-9: Creating a new note.

Figure 7-10: The Notes window

Like the Honey-Do list hanging from every husband’s workbench, the Office Live Task List gives you a listing of all those things you need “to get around to.” In general, your calendar is the best tool for scheduling activities associated with specific dates and times; your Task List on the other hand, includes those timeless activities that you just plain need to accomplish. (When you get to them. Real soon now.)

You can access the Task List readily enough by clicking Tasks on the Office Live Navigation bar. Figure 7-7 shows a sample Task List.

Probably one of the first things you learned to do after you mastered the art of turning on your computer was to organize the documents you created. Presumably you discovered the My Documents folder and learned how to subdivide it into smaller folders, in much the same way that you create paper folders to help keep your paperwork in order.

Sharing documents with users in other locations presents a whole new set of challenges. First of all, you’ll have to have some method of transmitting your documents to other people; after all, they can’t see documents that you continue to store on your own computer. You might try e-mailing documents to people; however, in this day of spam and viruses you’re likely to find it difficult to send and receive files — especially the larger ones. And then you have to find a way of keeping those files updated so that all users have the latest and greatest version of a document. Whew! What a nightmare.

Business Contact Manager and Office Live make it so easy to share documents that you might just think you’re dreaming. You can either upload a bunch of documents directly to the Business Documents list, or you can create folders and upload documents directly into each folder.

Of course, if you’ve been following along through this book, by now you’re an old pro at adding items to a Business Contact Manager list. But adding a document has a few extra twists. Here’s what you need to know:

1. Click Business Contact Manager from the Office Live Home page Navigation bar. The Business Contact Manager dashboard opens.
2. Click the More tab and chose Business Documents. The Documents list opens. You might want to dive right in and start adding documents, but I highly recommend that you first give some thought to which folders you want to create. After you add a document to the Documents list, you can’t move it to another folder. If you anticipate having a lot of documents in the Documents list, create folders before you upload documents.
3. Choose New?New Folder. You’ll have a choice of New Folder or, well, New Folder. I recommend picking the New Folder option — especially considering that it’s your only option! The New Folder: Business Documents page opens.
4. Fill in the Folder name and click OK to save your changes and return to the Documents list. Your new folder is now proudly displayed on the Documents list; see Figure 8-14. To open the folder, all you have to do is click it.
5. Click the Upload button and choose the documents you want to upload.

Your documents now appear either in the current folder or directly on
the Business Documents list.

Figure 8-14: The Business Documents list.

Figure 8-15: Uploading multiple documents to the Business Documents list.

A product is an item that you sell or a service that you provide. You can add products to the Business Contact Manager Products list to develop a centralized catalog, or you can add a product to an opportunity if you want to create a product that is only used with that opportunity.

Products work in much the same way as Contacts, Accounts, and Opportunities. You can view all your products in a list, or you can zoom in on any given product to see a bit more detail. You can access your products while adding or editing an Opportunity in the same way you access your Account and Contact lists from within an Opportunity.

However, there is one rather unique quirk you should recognize while working with products: Products that are created from within an Opportunity don’t appear in the Products list. And when you edit the price or quantity of a product in an Opportunity, that change doesn’t appear as a permanent change in the Products list.

If the concept of adding a product through an opportunity or the Products list seems confusing, you might follow this simple rule: If you want a particular product as a part of your permanent Product list, add it directly from the Product list.

Any changes you make to products from within an Opportunity list don’t affect the main Product list, only the current Opportunity you are editing.

Understanding where to add a new product is the difficult part; creating a new product is the easy part:

1. Click Business Contact Manager from the Office Live Home page Navigation bar. The Business Contact Manager dashboard opens.
2. Click the Products tab. The Products list opens, displaying any products you might have already added.
3. Click New. The Products – New Item page opens, as shown in Figure 8-13.
4. Fill in the required information. This step should prove fairly easy; the only information you must add is a product name and the default quantity or amount. The product description isn’t required. You can change the quantity or amount for each individual Opportunity when you create a new Opportunity or edit an existing one.
5. Fill in any additional information. When you add a product description, unit cost, unit price, and a discount percentage, and then indicate if the product is taxable, Business Contact Manager automatically calculates these things:

• Markup: The difference between the unit price and cost.
• Line Total Before Discount: The quantity times the unit price.
• Line Total: The quantity times the unit price minus the discount percentage.

Figure 8-13: Adding a new product.

If you’re chomping at the bit to start creating an Account record — or if you just don’t have all the pertinent information at your fingertips — you might want to create an abbreviated Account record. After all, you can always go back later and edit the record to include any pieces of information you left out the first time around.

Figure 8-7: The Accounts Tracking tab.

Figure 8-8: The Accounts Opportunity tab.

Here’s what you need to do to add an Account record in a jiffy:

1. Click Business Contact Manager from the Office Live Home page Navigation bar. The Business Contact Manager dashboard opens.
2. Fill in the pertinent information in the Quick Add: Account section. Talk about abbreviated — there are only three fields (Account name, Primary E-mail, and Phone) to fill in.
3. Click Save to save your new Account record.

No pain, no gain. The more information you fill in now, the more information
you can use later. Although this method is quick and easy, be sure to fill in the rest of the information later.

Business Contact Manager includes the capability to add both accounts and contacts. An account record contains all the pertinent details about a company or an organization. A contact record collects information about an individual person. You can associate contacts with an account if you have a number of contacts in one company.

You might think of an account as an “uber-contact” because it represents the master contact. Some of your clients may be smaller businesses and you’ll find that one contact record is sufficient. However, if you’re dealing with larger organizations — those with a bunch of cubicles and a cafeteria — you might be dealing with several people in an organization. And chances are that the contacts working for a company might be “here today and gone tomorrow.”

The account record holds the critical information for the company, including a list of all the contacts associated with it.

You might like to think of Contact Management as the last frontier in the world of software. When you start a business you probably have a certain hierarchy of software in mind. You probably start with the ability to e-mail and compose documents, throw in a spreadsheet or accounting software to track the dollars coming in and out of your business, and maybe even develop a Web site.

A successful business follows a steady path. You start with some prospects that hopefully turn into paying customers. As your business grows, so does your customer list. And as your business continues to grow, so do your headaches. You find that sticky notes and legal pads are just not an efficient
way to conduct your business.

Enter the world of contact management — with the operative word being contact: a person you’ve encountered in the course of your business. A contact record is all the information you have collected about that person.

Note, however, another meaning of the word contact — to communicate. To do business, you need to stay in touch with your contacts — and Business Contact Manager gives you all the tools to do just that.

Click the Business Contact Manager link from the home page Navigation bar to open the Business Contact Manager dashboard, shown in Figure 8-1. The dashboard provides you with a listing of all the newest information for the various BCM parts. In addition, the dashboard allows you to add new Accounts and Contacts quickly.

Figure 8-1: The Business Contact Manager dashboard.

Business Contact Manager consists of five main areas, all of which you can access by clicking the corresponding tabs that run across the top of Business Contact Manager page:

• Accounts: The companies that you work with
• Contacts: The individuals that you work with
• Opportunities: Potential sales you’re hoping to close
• Products: The items or services that you sell
• Business Documents: Documents that you upload to the BCM portion of Office Live to share with other users

You might be wondering why you’d want to let the entire universe access your Personal calendar. The answer is to not get hung up on the Personal portion of the calendar. Clubs and businesses can enjoy the benefits of a Basic Office Live subscription. For example, a soccer team might publish its calendar on the Web so anyone — moms, dads, grandparents, players — can access the team’s schedule. A dance studio might want to publish its class schedules. The possibilities are endless.

By making the calendar public, you don’t have to worry about collecting everyone’s e-mail addresses; instead, you provide them with a direct link to the calendar.

Here’s all you need to do to get started:

1. Click the Sharing link on your Personal Calendar. The Calendar – Sharing page opens.
2. Click Publish Your Calendar. The Publish Your Calendar page opens.
3. Select the level of detail that you want to share with others. The only options you have are to allow everyone to see the details of all your appointments, or only allow them to see when you’re free or busy.
4. Save changes. After you publish your calendar, anyone with an Internet connection can view it. Simply give them the link to your calendar — or consider putting a link to it on the Web site you create in Office Live!

You might decide that there are certain appointments you don’t want everyone to see. To make an existing appointment private, double-click the appointment, and then select Do Not Display This Appointment When I Share My Calendar.

Figure 7-13: Changing who can view your calendar.

Your first decision when sharing your personal calendar is to decide whether select individuals can access your calendar, or whether you want to open it up to the Internet world at large. Typically you’ll want to share your calendar with a single individual or two.

As you set up the sharing, you can decide whether you want them to see the details of your activities, or just the fact that you are free or busy during any given time period.

If you want to share your calendar with a hand-picked list of individuals, you’ll have to do so one at a time. Here’s how you’ll share your calendar with the first person:

1. Click the Sharing link in the Personal Calendar. The Sharing page, shown in Figure 7-11, opens.
2. Click Share Your Calendar. The first page of the Calendar – Options Wizard opens.
3. Fill in the e-mail address of the person with whom you want to share your calendar. You can select an address from Contacts if you’ve already entered him in your Address Book. You can only share your calendar with people who are MSN members or have a Microsoft Passport. You can usually recognize the Microsoft Passport crowd by their suitcases and hotmail.com or msn.com e-mail addresses. In addition, anyone sharing your Office Live account is also part of the In-Crowd who may share your calendar.
4. Click Next to continue. The Choose How Much Information to Display page opens.
5. Select the level of appointment detail that you want to share. You don’t really have much choice here; you can either opt to let the invitees see all the juicy details of your appointments, or let your visitors know only that you are either free or busy.
6. Click Next to continue. The third page opens, as shown in Figure 7-12. Here’s where you can type a personal e-mail to the person you are going to share your calendar with.
7. Click Finish. A recap page opens, confirming that your e-mail has been sent, which contains a link to your shared calendar.
8. Click OK. You return to the Calendar Sharing page where you can further configure your calendar or just call it a day. Your invitees can view your calendar by using their Microsoft Passport e-mail addresses and passwords.

Figure 7-11: Sharing your personal calendar.

Figure 7-12: Sending the Sharing Invitation.

After you’ve set up Personal Calendar sharing with a person, one of two thoughts will probably strike you:

• Eww. I’ve changed my mind — I don’t want to share my calendar with him.
• Wow! This is so cool I think I’ll share my calendar with a few other members of the In Crowd.

When you were little, your mother taught you to share. Now that you’re all grown up, sharing has become a necessity.

One of the great benefits of Office Live is that you can share your Personal Calendar with others. And you can decide not only who accesses your calendar, but what they can access.

You can share your calendar with others in several ways:

• One-to-one free/busy: A specific person can view the times on your calendar when you are free or busy, but can’t view any of your appointment details (such as location or appointment title).
• One-to-one full: A specific person can view your complete schedule, including appointment details.
• Public free/busy: Anyone connected to the Internet can view the times on your calendar when you are free or busy, but can’t view any of your appointment details.
• Public full: Anyone connected to the Internet can view your complete schedule, including appointment details.

As great as Office Live is, it can be totally useless if you don’t have access to a computer or handheld device. Or maybe you work with a technically challenged coworker (your boss?) who prefers to have a copy of his or her Task List printed daily. No need to fret; Office Live can easily print any of the lists in your personal calendar for you:

1. Click the list view you’d like to print. For example, if you want to print your Task List, click Tasks from the Personal Calendar Navigation bar. The appropriate list opens, complete with all the items you’ve so painstakingly entered.
2. Click Print View. You list transforms into a nice, clean-looking list.
3. Click the Print button on your browser’s toolbar. Your printer window opens.
4. Click OK to print your list. If you’d like, feel free to pat yourself on the back and say, “Darn, I’m good” as you affix your beautifully designed list to the company bulletin board.