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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, it's a lot easier to update
<application>Evolution</application> than it is to change an
actual paper book. <application>Evolution</application> also
allows easy synchronization with hand-held and remote devices.
Since <application>Evolution</application> supports most major
network protocols, including <glossterm linkend="ldap">LDAP</glossterm>, it can
fit into almost any 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, or select
one of your contacts folders from the folder bar. <xref
linkend="usage-contact-fig"> shows the Contact Manager in all
its organizational glory. By default, the contact manager
shows all your cards in alphabetical order, in a <glossterm
linkend="minicard">minicard</glossterm> format. You can select
other views from the <guimenu>View</guimenu> menu, and adjust
the width of the columns by clicking and dragging the grey
column dividers.
</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 one or more cards.
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
<guibutton>Delete</guibutton> deletes a selected card.
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para> <guibutton>View All</guibutton> Displays all
the address information in the folder. Use this button to
refresh the display for a network folder, or to switch from
viewing the results of a search and see the whole contents.
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para> <guibutton>Stop</guibutton> Stop loading
contact data from the network. This button is only
relevant if you are looking at contact information on a
network. </para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
<para>
The rest of the contact manager is taken up by the display of
your contact information. You can view that display as a table
or as a list of cards— switch views in the
<guimenu>View</guimenu> menu — and move through them
alphabetically with the buttons and the scrollbar at the right
of the window. Of course, if you have more than a few people
listed, you'll want some way of finding them more quickly,
which is why there's a search feature.
</para>
<sect2 id="contact-search">
<title>Searching for Contacts</title>
<para>
Between <guilabel>Delete</guilabel> and <guilabel>View
All</guilabel> is <guilabel>Quick Search</guilabel>. To use
it, just type in one or more words you're looking for and
hit <keycap>Enter</keycap>.
<application>Evolution</application> will search through
the contents of every displayed card to find one that
matches. That means that you can refine searches by doing several in
succession.
</para>
<para>
If there are no matches, the card display will be blank. When
you'd like to see all the cards again, press <guilabel>Show
All</guilabel>.
</para>
<example id="contact-quicksearch-ex">
<title>Refining a Quick Search</title>
<para>
Tom comes back from lunch and finds a note on his keyboard:
"Curtis in sales called for you, but he didn't leave a number,
and I forgot to write down the name of the company he works
for. He said it was important, though." Tom is not at all
annoyed.
</para>
<para>
He opens his contacts folder, and runs a quick search for
"Curtis;" there are eighteen different people with that name
in the file. He then enters "Sales," and
<application>Evolution</application> narrows it down to the
right Curtis. He only becomes annoyed when he discovers that
the call was not actually important.
</para>
</example>
<para>
If you prefer to perform a more complex search, press
<guibutton>Find</guibutton> or choose
<menuchoice><guimenu>Tools</guimenu><guimenuitem>Search for
Contact</guimenuitem></menuchoice>. This will open the in-depth search window, which
lets you use multiple search criteria in the same way that
email filters and <glossterm linkend="vfolder">vFolders</glossterm> do..
</para>
<para>
Click <guibutton>Add Criterion</guibutton> to increase the
number of criteria you'd like to use in the search, and
<guibutton>Remove Criterion</guibutton> to remove one from the
bottom of the list. Your criteria may be a searchs within the
<guilabel>Name</guilabel> or <guilabel>Email</guilabel>
fields; alternately you can choose to search through all the
fields with a regular expression. Then, you can select all
the familiar requirements like <guilabel>Begins
With</guilabel> and <guilabel>Does Not Contain</guilabel>,
decide whether to match <guilabel>All</guilabel> or
<guilabel>Any</guilabel> of your criteria, and press
<guibutton>Search</guibutton> to set it all off.
</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="usage-contact-cards">
<title>Destroy, Create, and Change: The Contact Editor</title>
<para>
To delete a card, click on it once to select it, then press the
<guibutton>Delete Card</guibutton> button. If you have
multiple cards selected, you'll delete multiple cards.
</para>
<para>
Adding or changing cards is slightly more complicated. Any
time you add information to the contact manager, whether it's
an old card you're editing or a new card you're just adding to
your address book, you'll use the contact editor. To change a
card that already exists, just double click it to open the
contact editor window with all the current information already
filled in. If you want to create a new one, clicking the
<guibutton>New Card</guibutton> button will open up that same
window, but with empty fields instead of full ones. Either
way, it's the same tool for quite similar tasks, and you'll
find that it's pretty flexible and can store quite a lot more
than you'd think would fit onto a file card.
</para>
<para>
The contact editor 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
<guimenu>File</guimenu> menu, covered in <xref
linkend="menuref-contact-editor">, and a toolbar with three
items: <guilabel>Save and Close</guilabel>,
<guilabel>Print</guilabel>, and <guilabel>Delete</guilabel>.
After that, however, it gets slightly more complicated, as you
can see in <xref linkend="usage-contact-editor-fig">.
</para>
<figure id="usage-contact-editor-fig">
<title>Evolution Contact Editor</title>
<screenshot>
<screeninfo>Evolution Contact Editor</screeninfo>
<graphic fileref="fig/contact-editor" 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 globe for web page address; a house for postal
address; a file folder for contacts, and a briefcase for
categories. You can guess what sort of information belongs in
fields like <guilabel>Job Title</guilabel> and <guilabel>Web
page address</guilabel>, but there are several parts of the
window that are a little more interesting.
</para>
<para>
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term>Full Name</term>
<listitem>
<para>
The <guilabel>Full Name</guilabel> field has two
major features:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
You can enter a name into the <guibutton>Full
Name</guibutton> field, but you can also click the
<guibutton>Full Name</guibutton> button to bring
up a small dialog box with a few text boxes
<variablelist>
<varlistentry>
<term><guilabel>Title: </guilabel></term>
<listitem> <para>
Enter an honorific or select one from the menu.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><guilabel>First: </guilabel></term>
<listitem> <para>
The person's first, or given, name.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><guilabel>Middle: </guilabel></term>
<listitem> <para>
The middle name or initial, if any, goes here.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><guilabel>Last: </guilabel></term>
<listitem> <para>
The last name (surname) belongs here.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term><guilabel>Suffix: </guilabel></term>
<listitem> <para>
Suffixes such as "Jr." or "III" can go here.
</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
The <guilabel>Full Name</guilabel> field also
interacts with the <guilabel>File As</guilabel>
box to help you organize your contacts.
</para>
<para>
To see how it works, type a name in the
<guilabel>Full Name</guilabel> field:
<userinput>Eva Lucianne Tester</userinput>.
You'll notice that the <guilabel>File
As</guilabel> field also fills up, but in reverse:
<computeroutput>Tester, Eva</computeroutput>.
You can pick <computeroutput>Eva
Tester</computeroutput> from the drop-down, or
type in your own, such as <userinput>Lucianne
Tester, Eva</userinput>.
</para>
<tip>
<title>Filing Suggestion</title>
<para>
Don't enter something entirely different from
the actual name, since you might forget that
you've filed Eva's information under "F" for
"Fictitious Helix Code Employee."
</para>
</tip>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
<term>Multiple Values for Fields</term>
<listitem>
<para>
If you click on the small arrow buttons next to the
<guilabel>Primary Email</guilabel> field, you can also
choose <guilabel>Email 2</guilabel> and
<guilabel>Email 3</guilabel>. Although the contact
editor will only display one of those at any given
time, <application>Evolution</application> will
remember them all. The arrow buttons next to the
telephone and postal address fields work in the same
way.
</para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</para>
<para>
The last item in the <guilabel>General</guilabel> tab is the
<guilabel>Categories</guilabel> organization tool. That's
really its own topic; for information on that, read <xref
linkend="usage-contact-organize">.
</para>
<para>
The <guilabel>Details</guilabel> tab is, fortunately, much more
simple: three sections, all of which are more or less obvious:
the briefcase next to the details about the contact's
professional life; the face next to the details about their
personal life; the globe next to a big blank space you can use
for anything and everything else you'd like to note about them.
If you ever wanted to have that uncanny knack for remembering
obscure details like the date of someone's anniversary (perhaps
your own) this is the answer.
</para>
<!--- ############# This section isn't implemented yet either:
<sect2>
<title></title>
<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>
<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>
</sect2>
############### SHORTCUT SECTION COMMENTED OUT FOR NOW -->
</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. To
learn about categories, read <xref
linkend="usage-contact-organize-group-category">.
</para>
<!--
<para>
Another useful <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> offers two ways for you
to organize your cards. The first way is to use folders;
this works the same way that mail folders do. For more
flexibility, you can also mark contacts as members of
different categories.
</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. If you've read <xref
linkend="usage-mainwindow"> then you already know that you
can create a new folder by selecting
<menuchoice>
<guimenu>File</guimenu>
<guisubmenu>New</guisubmenu>
<guimenuitem>Folder</guimenuitem>
</menuchoice>
and that you can put new folders anywhere you like. Just
like with mail, cards must be in a card folder, and no card
can be in two places at once. If you want more
flexibility, try <xref
linkend="usage-contact-organize-group-category">.
</para>
<para>
To put a card into a folder, just drag it there from the
folder view. Remember that contact 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. From the dialog box that appears, you can check as
many or as few categories as you like.
</para>
<para>
Then, you can refer to all the cards in that category by:
<!-- FIXME --> Waiting for Evolution to support the
operation.
</para>
<!-- FIXME: Feature Not Implemented
<para>
If the master list of categories doesn't suit you, you can
add your own. Just enter the new category's name in the
text box, then click <guibutton>Categories</guibutton> and
choose <guilabel>Add to Master List</guilabel> in the
window that appears.
</para>
-->
</sect3>
</sect2>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="usage-contact-sharing">
<title>Sharing your Cards</title>
<para>
If you keep your cards on a network using an
<glossterm linkend="ldap">LDAP</glossterm> server, you can share access to
them. Actually, the server software takes care of that, and
also determines who is allowed to see and change them. 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 work-group
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 in the office you're talking to new job prospects? If
you keep cards on your own computer, you can decide which items
you want to make accessible to others.
</para>
<para>
To learn how to set up your connection to an LDAP server, see
<xref linkend="config-prefs-contact">. Once you have a
connection, the network contacts folder or folders will appear
inside the <guilabel>External Directories</guilabel> folder in
the folder bar, and will work exactly like a local folder of
cards, with the following exceptions:
<itemizedlist>
<listitem><para>
They are only available when you are connected to the network. If
you use a laptop or have a modem connection, you may wish to copy or cache
the network directory and then synchronize your copy with the networked version
periodically.
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
To prevent excess network traffic,
<application>Evolution</application> will not normally
load the contents of LDAP folders immediately upon
opening. You must click <guilabel>Display
All</guilabel> before LDAP folder cards will be loaded
from the network. You can change this behavior in the
<interface>Contact Preferences</interface> window.
</para></listitem>
<listitem><para>
Your ability to view, change, add or delete
contacts depends on the settings of the LDAP server.
For example, you may read all the entries in the public
Netcenter directory (available by default in the
<guilabel>External Directories</guilabel> folder), but
you may not change or delete any of them.
</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</para>
</sect1>
<sect1 id="usage-contact-automate">
<title>Contact Manager Tools</title>
<para>
The contact manager works with
<application>Evolution</application> mail and the calendar to
help you add new address cards quickly. However, it can also
manage mailing lists. There are more tools planned, and when
they arrive, <!-- FIXME --> they will be described in this
section.
</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.
</para>
<!-- FIXME this feature not yet implemented -->
<para>
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!</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>
