Migrate ACT! to Dynamics CRM

We had a customer using ACT! (we forgave them for that) who wanted data migrated to Dynamics CRM. Here is a generic overview of how it was done.

• Backup the existing ACT! database into a .zip file
• Download the ACT! Reader Utility
• Run it and enable SQL read-only access
• Use SQL Management Studio to connect to the ACT! database instance, default is "ACT7"
• The database structure is very straight forward
• Write some .NET code to import the data into SQL

Things to watch out for

• Notes in ACT! are in RTF format, you'll need to convert them to plain text before importing into Dynamics CRM
• Attachments are stored in the file system, you'll need to lookup the filename and find the correct physical location if you want to attach the file into Dynamics CRM
• Only the subject line of emails are stored in ACT! 

Tools used

ACT! Reader Utility - http://kb.sagesoftwareonline.com/cgi-bin/sagesoftwareonline.cfg/php/enduser/fattach_get.php?p_sid=3ROImuPj&p_li=&p_accessibility=&p_redirect=&p_file_id=16370&p_tbl=9&p_id=22989&p_created=1240323461&p_olh=0

SQL Management Studio 2005 - http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=C243A5AE-4BD1-4E3D-94B8-5A0F62BF7796&displaylang=en

XrmLinq - http://www.xrmlinq.com