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<chapter id="usage-contact">
<title>The Evolution Contact Manager</title>
<abstract>
<para>
The <application>Evolution</application> contact manager can
handle all of the functions of an address book, phone book, or
Rolodex. Of course, <application>Evolution</application> allows
easier updates than an actual paper book. <application>
Evolution </application> also allows easy synchronization with
handheld and remote devices. Since
<application>Evolution</application> supports most major network
protocols, including <glossterm>LDAP</glossterm>, it's easy to
use over an existing network.
</para>
<para>
Another advantage of the <application>Evolution</application>
address book is its integration with the rest of the
application. That means that when you look for someone's
address, you can also see a history of appointments with that
person. Or, you can get an e-mail with contact information in
it and create a new address card on the spot. In addition,
searches and folders and all work in the same way they do in the
other components, so you don't have to learn another system for
similar tasks.
</para>
<para>
This chapter will cover using the
<application>Evolution</application> contact manager to organize
any amount of contact information, share addresses over a
network, and several ways to save time with everyday tasks. To
learn about configuring the contact manager, see <xref
linkend="config-prefs-contact">.
</para>
</abstract>
<sect1 id="usage-contact-basic">
<title>Getting Started With the Contact Manager</title>
<para>
To open up your address book, click on
<guibutton>Contacts</guibutton> in the shortcut bar. The
contact manager is illustrated in <xref
linkend="usage-contact-fig">
</para>
<figure id="usage-contact-fig">
<title>Evolution Contact Manager</title>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>Evolution Contact Manager Window</screeninfo>
<graphic fileref="fig/contact" format="png" srccredit="Aaron Weber">
</graphic>
</screenshot>
</figure>
<para>
The toolbar for the address book is quite simple:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>
Press <guibutton>New</guibutton> for a new contact.
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
<guibutton>Find</guibutton> brings up an in-depth search window.
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
Press <guibutton>Print</guibutton> to print.
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
<guibutton>Delete</guibutton> deletes a selected card.
</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
The last feature is <guilabel>Quick Search</guilabel>; to use
it, just enter what you're looking for and hit
<keycap>Enter</keycap>. <application>Evolution</application>
will show you all the cards that match; if there are none, the
display will be blank. To display <emphasis>all</emphasis> of
your contacts, you can leave the <guilabel>Quick
Search</guilabel> field blank, and press enter.
</para>
<para>
The rest of the contact manager is taken up by the display of
your cards. You can view it as a table or as a list of
cards— switch between them in the <guimenu>View</guimenu>
menu — and move through them alphabetically alphanumeric
buttons and the scrollbar at the right of the window.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="usage-contact-cards">
<title>Creating, Deleting, and Adding Cards</title>
<para>
Open up the contact editor by pressing the <guibutton>New
Card</guibutton> button. The window has two tabs,
<guilabel>General</guilabel>, for basic contact information, and
<guilabel>Details</guilabel>, for a more specific description of
the person. In addition, it contains a full menu bar. FIXME:
The contents are still changing rapidly, but you should be able
to guess what they're for.
</para>
<figure id="usage-contact-editor-fig">
<title>Evolution Contact Editor</title>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>Evolution Contact Editor</screeninfo>
<graphic fileref="fig/contact-new" format="png" srccredit="Aaron Weber">
</graphic>
</screenshot>
</figure>
<para>
The <guilabel>General</guilabel> tab contains no less than seven
sections, each with an icon: a face, for name and company; a
telephone for phone numbers; an envelope for email address; a
house for postal address; a handshake for contacts (FIXME: I
don't understand this feature, and the button doesn't do
anything yet.); and a briefcase for categories. The things that
go into most of the text fields should be obvious enough, so
we'll just describe the more interesting parts of the window.
Aside from the <guilabel>Categories</guilabel> feature, which is
discussed in <xref linkend="usage-contact-organize">, there are
two things you'll want to know about: the first of these is the
<guilabel>File As</guilabel> field.
</para>
<para>
Type "Eva Lucianne Tester" into the <guilabel>Full
Name</guilabel> field. You'll notice that the <guilabel>File
As</guilabel> field also fills up, but in reverse: Tester,
Lucianne. You can pick "Eva Tester" from the drop-down, or, if
you prefer, type in your own, such as "Lucianne Tester, Eva". I
suggest that you don't enter something entirely different from
the actual name, however. You might forget that you've filed
Eva's information under "F" for "Fictitious Helix Code
Employees"
</para>
<para>
The other feature I want to mention involves the little squares
next to several of the fields. Click on them and you'll get a
menu of different labels; for the fields in the telephone
section, it's a long list involving things like
<guilabel>Home</guilabel>, <guilabel>Home 2</guilabel>,
<guilabel>Other Fax</guilabel>, and <guilabel>Pager</guilabel>.
Select from among them to determine which four telephone numbers
to display at any given time. Of course, these connected times
mean that people often have more than four telephone numbers.
You can display only four in the editor, but
<application>Evolution</application> can remember them all for
you. When you click the little square button for the list of
labels, any that you've already filled in will be marked.
</para>
<!-- FIXME: do this whole thing later.
<variablelist>
<listitem>
<term>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem> <para>
<guilabel>Name:</guilabel> Enter the person's name here
</para></listitem>
<listitem> <para>
</para></listitem>
<listitem> <para>
<guilabel>Business:</guilabel>
</para></listitem>
<listitem> <para>
<guilabel>Job Title:</guilabel>
</para></listitem>
<listitem> <para>
<guilabel>Home:</guilabel>
</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
-->
<tip>
<title>Contact Shortcuts</title>
<para>
You can add cards from within an email message or calendar
appointment. While looking at an email, right-click on any
email address or message, and choose <guimenuitem>Create Card
for this Address</guimenuitem> or <guimenuitem>Create Card for
this Sender</guimenuitem> from the menu. While looking at a
calendar appointment, right-click any email address, and
choose <guimenuitem>Create Card for this
Address</guimenuitem>. (NOTE that feature may change!
unimplemented!)
</para>
</tip>
<para>
You delete a card by pressing the <guibutton>Delete
Card</guibutton> button, or by dragging it into the trash
folder.
</para>
<para>
You can move cards around just as you would move email messages:
dragging and dropping works, as does right-clicking and choosing
<guimenuitem>Move</guimenuitem> from the menu that appears.
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="usage-contact-organize">
<title>Organizing your Contact Manager</title>
<para>
Organizing your contact manager is a lot like organizing your
mail. You can have folders and searches the same way you can
with mail, but the contact manager does not allow vFolders. It
does, however, allow each card to fall under several
categories, and allow you to create your own categories. We'll
go over categories in a bit.
</para>
<para>
Another useful UNIMPLEMENTED
<application>Evolution</application> feature is its ability to
recognize when people live or work together. If several people
in your contact manager share an address, and you change the
address for one of them, <application>Evolution</application>
will ask you if you wish to change the address for all of them,
or just for one.
</para>
<sect2 id="usage-contact-organize-group">
<title>Groups of contacts</title>
<para>
<application>Evolution</application> lets you put cards into
folders and mark them as members of different categories.
Although the contact manager does not support vFolders,
categories should provide as much flexibility as you need in
grouping your address cards.
</para>
<sect3 id="usage-contact-organize-group-folder">
<title>Grouping with Folders</title>
<para>
The simplest way to group address cards is to use folders.
By default, cards start in the
<guilabel>Contacts</guilabel> folder. You can create more
folders inside that one, or create other address book
folders as well. Each card must be in one and only one
folder. If you've read <xref linkend="usage-mainwindow">
then you already know that you can create a new folder by
selecting <guisubmenu>New</guisubmenu> and then
<guimenuitem>Folder</guimenuitem> from the
<guimenu>File</guimenu> menu.
</para>
<para>
To put a card into a folder, just drag it there from the
folder view, or (SOMETHING ELSE). Remember that address
cards can only go in contact folders, just like mail can
only go in mail folders, and calendars in calendar folders.
</para>
</sect3>
<sect3 id="usage-contact-organize-group-category">
<title>Grouping with Categories</title>
<para>
The other way to group cards is to mark them as belonging
to different categories. The difference between folders
and categories is that folders contain cards, but category
membership is a property of each card. That means that you
can mark a card as being in several categories or no
category at all. For example, I put my friend Matthew's
card in the "Business" category, because he works with me,
the "Friends" category, because he's also my friend, and
the "Frequent" category, because I call him all the time
and can never remember his phone number.
</para>
<para>
To mark a card as belonging to a category, click the
<guibutton>Categories</guibutton> button at the lower
right. A dialog box will pop up with check-boxes for
different categories in it. You can select as many or as
few categories as you like.
</para>
<para>
Then, you can refer to all the cards in that category by:
</para>
<para>
If the master list of categories don't suit you, you can
add your own. Just enter the new category's name in the
text box, then click <guibutton>Categories</guibutton>e and
choose <guilabel>Add to Master List</guilabel> in the
window that appears. (FIXME: This isn't quite accurate.)
</para>
</sect3>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="usage-contact-sharing">
<title>Sharing your Cards (and keeping them to yourself)</title>
<para>
Cards can be shared over a network. This is the sort of
feature you'll want to use if your company has a list of
vendors and clients that needs constant updating. If you
also share your calendars, people can avoid duplicating
work and keep up to date on developments within their
workgroup or across the entire company.
</para>
<example id="usage-contact-sharing-ex">
<title>Sharing Address Cards and Calendar Data</title>
<para>
Ray wants to schedule a meeting with Company X, so he
checks the network for the Company X address card so he
knows whom to call there. Since his company also shares
calendars, he then learns that his co-worker Deanna has
already scheduled a meeting with Company X next Thursday.
He can either go to the meeting himself or ask Deanna to
discuss his concerns for him. Either way, he avoids
scheduling an extra meeting with Company X.
</para>
</example>
<para>
Of course, you don't want to share all of your cards— why
overload the network with a list of babysitters, or tell
everyone on your network you're talking to new job prospects?
<application>Evolution</application> lets you decide which
folders you want to make accessible to others.
</para>
<para>
To begin sharing a folder of address cards, wait until
<application>Evolution</application> supports this
feature. (FIXME!)
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="usage-contact-automate">
<title>Automating the Contact Manager</title>
<para>
In addition to working with the mailer and the calendar to add
new cards quickly, the contact manager can do some pretty cool
stuff on its own. (FIXME: This para is terrible)
</para>
<sect2 id="contact-automation-basic">
<title>Send me a card: Adding New Cards Quickly</title>
<para>
As noted before, when you get information about a person in
the mail or in a calendar entry, you can add it to an address
card. To do so, right click on any email address or email
message, and select <guimenuitem>Add Address
Card</guimenuitem> from the menu that appears. Of course,
<application> Evolution</application> also adds cards from a
hand-held device during HotSync operation. For more
information about that, see <xref linkend="usage-sync">.
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="contact-automation-lists">
<title>Managing a Mailing list</title>
<para>
You already know that when you are writing an email, you can
address it to one or more people, and that
<application>Evolution</application> will fill in addresses
from your contact manager's address cards if you let it. In
addition to that, you can send email to everyone in a
particular group by (FIXME: wait for feature implementation,
then document). Future versions of
<application>Evolution</application> will allow you to you
export a group of cards to a spreadsheet, database, or word
processor so you can print address labels or prepare large
postal mailings.
</para>
</sect2>
<sect2 id="usage-contact-automation-extra">
<title>Map It! and other extra features</title>
<para>
Need a map or directions? Click
<guibutton>MapIt</guibutton> from within the contact
manager, and <application>Evolution</application> will
map the address for you online.
</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
</chapter>
