The iPod and iPhone may grab the plaudits for the Mac's re-emergence in the enterprise, but a slice of credit should also go to MarketCircle's powerful and increasingly popular customer management application, Daylite. This latest version is impressive enough to tempt more Windows-centric small businesses to the Mac.
At its most basic, Daylite acts like a souped-up mix of iCal, Mail and Address Book. When you create a Daylite database (in this new version, there are templates for common businesses such as print and design), you can import and subsequently sync contact and calendar data from Address Book and iCal. Databases can be either standalone or shared across a network and you can choose which iCal calendars to sync, so you can keep personal calendars outside Daylite's remit.
The program's Microsoft Entourage-like main window houses a clutch of category buttons that let you examine customer and project information in different ways. The Calendar category shows an overview of events and appointments, either for you or for a shared workgroup, while sensibly there are separate buttons for contacts and the organisations to which they belong.
Two categories - Projects and Opportunities - are fundamental to the program. Each relates to tasks or sales opportunities and comprises multiple workflow steps, called pipelines. You can define your own pipelines or edit existing ones, including a general design pipeline with stages for acquiring materials, design review and client delivery. It isn't quite as detailed a project planning tool as Merlin 2.5 (see MacUser, 1 February 2008, p34) - there are no Gantt charts for starters - but the visual overview of the pipeline is fine for basic project management, while the compensating features include the way you can combine tasks into reusable activity sets, complete with automatic due dates, and apply them to projects. It's a great timesaver.
Daylite gathers in a single window all material related to a project or opportunity, such as linked files and forthcoming activities. At any point you can link discrete items - contacts, notes and so on - to projects through a toolbar button; you can also gather projects, contacts and other items into groups, which is useful if you're organising a campaign. While some similar features are present in Entourage, Daylite comes into its own with Smart Lists, which work in a similar way to Smart Albums in iPhoto or Smart Folders in the Finder. Constructed using item fields, they're stored in a source list in each category view. By clicking on one, you get a tailored view of the information you need. Switching between Smart List views is near instantaneous.
A significant arrival in Daylite 3 is Daylite Mail Integration, available as an add-on module or as part of the Daylite Productivity Suite. This links Apple Mail and Daylite by adding a drawer to Mail's browser window. From here you can add contacts or emails to Daylite - the emails appear here as notes linked to the relevant contact. The drawer also appears in Mail's Compose window, and as you add an email recipient, matching Daylite contact details appear in the drawer, allowing you to quickly link the email to them.
If you're using Mail solely as a business tool, it's a great way to track incoming emails. The drawback is that if Daylite isn't running, then by default it prompts you to launch the program and connect to your database each time you launch Mail, although you can turn off this option.
Although we didn't test them, the new version also offers other extra-cost add-ons, including links to FileMaker databases and a Daylite Delivery application that lets you schedule reports and automatically email them to chosen recipients at any time. However, many upgraders will probably be satisfied with the huge number of new reports available in the Report Writer tool.
Although there's an inevitable learning curve involved in getting the most out of Daylite, it still manages to marry powerful customer management tools with a Mac look and feel. If there's a better way to organise your business, we've yet to see it.
Needs Mac OS X 10.4.9 or higherAuthor: Tom Gorham
Daylite 3.7.3