Allan is a People Group Advocate looking for tips regarding software that 
might help him do a better job. The people group has experienced significant migration, with pockets of people now in scores of localities in about 30 states in Mexico and the US. He is looking for a more integrated way to keep track of his expanding contact list and to record data about the various locations, communications with his contacts, trip reports, vernacular resources distributed, the status of projects, etc. Please list any leads, URLs, or software names in the “Comments,” immediately below this item.
Kindly give us some EXAMPLES of what you are looking for.
BTW, could you help build a RESOURCE LIST of available FREE Audio or Video titles that can help share the Good News in various languages/dialects used today around the world.
Bless you.
I guess we could set that up as an item in a future Brigada. We’ll make a note of it.
What about using ACT! contact management software? You can do all those things using ACT! It can be integrated fairly well with MS Outlook too.
I have found Time and Chaos (http://chaossoftware.com) to be a capable and very inexpensive solution. Lots of options for contact management, easy to sync with other copies via their webservice, syncs with Outlook and does beautiful mailmerge via MS Word. Also has an email client version that I have not used.
Ed Brown, Madison WI
I would need more information before making an informed comment. For example,
* what tools are you currently using?
* what operating system are you using, Windows, Mac, or Linux?
* how tech-savvy are you? Can you work with multiple software programs, or do you need one single, integrated solution?
* does your solution need to be web-based, or can it be a desktop solution?
* does your solution have to integrate with your current email system, or do you want a system with its own email capabilities?
* what email system do you currently use?
* does the system need to have multi-user capabilities (many users, many computers), or will it be single-user (used primarily by one person on one computer)?
* do you have a budget for this, or are you looking for free/open source solutions?
As you see, there is no one “right answer” to this question. So much depends on your particular situation. What works well for one organization may or may not work well for you.
check out the reference on Friday, February 22, 2008 titled FREE DOWNLOADABLE EVANGELISTIC FILMS.
on Sunday, October 8, 2006 titled VIDEO EVANGELISM TOOL
those sites might get you started.
Partners.worldmap.org is the latest from the World Missions Atlas Project. It allows you to track all your ministry anywhere in the world. It provides a database for your locations (ministry offices,etc.) ministry activity, and contacts and maps them for you. You can then download to Google Earth and many other file formats. This is extremely powerful for mapping all you are doing and sharing for strategy and planning.
A few of you have requested more info than there was room to share in the initial note published in Brigada. There are members of the people group in over 100 locations in a total of around 30 states in two countries. I want to have a consistant, integrated way for storing data gathered about individual sites and for contact info for my growing list. I also want to be able to put multiple tags on contacts to be able to search via different criteria (e.g. indigenous or not, community of origin if indigenous, type of Christian worker, place of current residence, level of cooperation), and organize notes about phone calls, emails, and visits. I want to be able to schedule reminders to contact individuals with certain frequencies so people don’t fall through the cracks.
I am only looking for software for me, not for a whole team, and for Windows. It doesn’t have to be open source, but I don’t have an unlimited budget either. I currently have information scattered in many programs, for example: location data on Google Earth; phone contacts, some field notes, and resource distribution data on my Palm and Palm desktop; emails contacts in Outlook Express; trip reports as Word 2000 documents; a little contact info in Mobile DB for Palm; and the beginnings of more integrated data in a FrontPage 2000 document for local access only. The website for the people group and related pages actually serve to some extent as a repository of information, with lists of all the resources available in the language, links to many hundreds of news articles making reference to the group, etc. Overall, it is very disjointed and there is MUCH room for a better integration of data that will help me to be more effective.
I have been using Virtual Filing Cabinet to manage all the communication activities in our small office. In one application it can manage all your emails, documents, scans, calendar events, notes, telephone calls, full collaboration etc. So I can click on a contact/company name and see all the communication activities associated with it and this is all linked and archived for you automatically . I highly recommend you check this software out because it’s quite impressive, affordable and great tool for a small office looking to manage all of its communication activities inside our outside of the office.
Looks very interesting, Haya. So with how many users are you currently using VFC?