Contacts

To create a contact:
  • Click the new contact button on the toolbar.
  • Click Contact -> New Contact.
  • Right click on a "To:" or "Cc:" address in a mail window and click "Add to Contacts".
Each contact can have multiple email addresses associated with the contact record. Different addresses can be selected in the right click menu of the mail window's recipient list.

The nick name is really useful for giving the record a unique "shortcut". When adding recipients to an email, the nick name is searched after the real name fields, so by putting some unique and short name in the nick field it makes it really easy to type in the recipients entry box.

The home and work tabs have all the usual information associated with people.

The plugins tab is where, if you have the right plugins loaded, you can specifically associate a contact with a particular plugin. For instance this is used by the AutoGPG plugin to automatically encrypt and decrypt communications with that contact.

The notes field is just free form text.

Custom fields, which can be addressed via the Scribe DOM are useful for more complex scripting and filtering.

The final tab, "other" contains a field for setting the timezone that the contact is in. This then also displays the local time for the contact, which can be really useful for not waking me up at 2am with an international phone call! *hint hint* :) This local time is also displayed in the recipient list IF the time zone is set in the contact record. Also if an incomming email has timezone information for a contact record, then the timezone field will be automatically updated. This means that if the timezone of the contact changes, like for daylight savings, then the first email with the new timezone will update things.

You can group contacts into groups by creating sub-folders of contacts under the /Contacts folder in the main window. Then add the contacts to that folder to form the group you had in mind. Then to send an email to that group right click on the folder and select "Email <FolderName>". A new email with all the contacts in the folder as recipients will be created.

Note: This features isn't complete.

When adding addresses to a new email Scribe will search all the contacts in the normal /Contacts folder and any sub folders of contacts under /Contacts.

The search looks for a matching first name, then a matching whole name, and then a matching nickname.

If a match for a name or email is found then the reipient address entry has a little contact card icon. If the address is not in the database a "To:", "Cc:" or "Bcc:" icon is shown.

If Scribe cannot uniquely identify which contact you meant a red question mark is shown next to the recipient. To resolve the name conflict right click on the entry and select which name you meant before you can send.

To browse for the correct recipient, click the "..." button next to the recipient entry field in the main window. This allows you to search through available contacts for the recipient you want. Just type the first few characters in the search box and the list will seek down to the nearest entry, if the entry you want is now selected, hitting enter will add that person to the email.

If you have a directory service plugin like the LDAP Client plugin loaded then you will have an extra tab on the "Add Contact" window displaying all the contacts stored on the server.

You can share your contacts out using the LDAP Server plugin. When loaded it provides read only access to all the contacts under the /Contacts sub folder. If you want to keep a folder of private contacts then place them outside the /Contacts folder.

Use the LDAP Client plugin to access someone else sharing their contacts.


© 1996-2003 Matthew Allen