Act! 2011 Slow Terminal Services

It has been reported that Act! 2011 users using Terminal Services [A Microsoft Remote Connection to a Server running Act!] to connect to their Act! database are having significant slowness when trying to clear activities from the task list and from the calendar.  The situation usually presents itself to be more of a problem the longer that the user is signed on to Act! and then clears up if you exit Act! and then re-open the software.  Most or all Terminal Services users of Act! will experience the slowness at the same time due to the nature of the problem.  Task Manager will show a high allocation of memory RAM being used by one or more than one user that is using Act!

Most indications are that the problem is occurring specifically for users that initiate email messages from the Act! Contact Detail screen by clicking on the email address hyperlink to create an email.  Users that create the email from scratch using Outlook and then identify who to send it to by using the Act! address book are not experiencing the same issue.  In the background a significant amount of RAM is being used by Act! after the emails are initiated using the hyperlink and other functions like closing an activity are effected in a negative way.  The problem also exists if the user initiates the email from the Contact Detail screen and clicks on the Email Button on the Act! toolbar.

There is a hot fix that will be addressing this issue [expected in SP1 – Hot Fix 3] but there is a work-around in the mean time.  If the Act! software starts to perform slowly, close Act! and re-open it to reset the amount of RAM allocated to the application.  From that point forward, use Outlook to initiate email as described above and use the Act! address book to fill in the To: Field or copy and paste the email address from the Act! Contact Detail screen if your address book is not set up properly on your computer [this is fixable with a phone call to our help line].

The problem described here is significantly persistent for people that use Act! via Microsoft’s remote connectivity feature – Terminal Services.