path: root/help/C/usage-contact.xml

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<chapter id="usage-contact">
  <title>Evolution Contacts: the Address Book</title>
      <para>
        This chapter will show you how to use the
        Evolution contacts tool 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 contacts tool, see <xref
        linkend="config-prefs-contact"/>. You can import contacts from
        other contact management tools with the Import tool by
        selecting
        <menuchoice><guimenu>File</guimenu><guimenuitem>Import</guimenuitem></menuchoice>,
        or by mailing them to yourself as vCard attachments.
      </para>

    <para>
     Double-click on a card to display all its details.
    </para>


  <sect1 id="usage-contact-cards">
    <title>The Contact Editor</title>

    <para>
       If you want to add or change cards, you'll use the contact
       editor.  To change a card that already exists, double click on
       it to open the contact editor window.  If you want to create a new
       card, clicking the <guilabel>New</guilabel> button in the
       toolbar will open the same window, with blank entry boxes for
       you to fill in.
    </para>
    
    <para>
      The contact editor window has three tabs,
      <guilabel>Contact</guilabel>, for basic contact information,
      <guilabel>Personal Information</guilabel>, for a more specific description of
      the person, including URLs for their calendar and free/busy information, 
      and <guilabel>Mailing Address</guilabel>.
      In the 
      <guimenu>Actions</guimenu> menu you will find <guimenuitem>Forward
      Contact</guimenuitem>, which opens a new message with the card
      already attached, and <guimenuitem>Send Message to
      Contact</guimenuitem>, which will open a new message to the
      contact's email address.
      </para>
      <para>
        From the contact editor toolbar, you can <guilabel>Save and
      Close</guilabel>, <guilabel>Print</guilabel>,
      <guilabel>Close</guilabel>, or <guilabel>Delete</guilabel> the contact.
      </para>
   
    
    <figure id="usage-contact-editor-fig">
      <title>Evolution Contact Editor</title>
      <screenshot>
    <screeninfo>Evolution Contact Editor</screeninfo>
    <mediaobject><imageobject><imagedata
    fileref="figures/contact-editor" format="PNG" srccredit="Aaron
    Weber"/>
    </imageobject></mediaobject>
      </screenshot>
    </figure>


      <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.
    </para>
      </tip>


    
    <para>
      Most of the items in the contact editor simply display the
      information you enter, but some of them have additional
      features:
    </para>



    <para>
     <variablelist>
    
    <varlistentry>
      <term>Full Name</term>
      <listitem>
        <para>
              Enter the name of your contact here.  You can enter a
              name into the <guilabel>Full Name</guilabel> field, but
            you can also click the <guilabel>Full Name</guilabel>
            button to bring up a small dialog box with a few text
            boxes for first and last names, titles like "Mr." or "Her
            Excellency," and suffixes like "Jr."
          </para>

          <para>
            The <guilabel>Full Name</guilabel> field also
          interacts with the <guilabel>File Under</guilabel>
          box to help you organize your contacts and to handle
          multi-word surnames.
        </para>
        <para>
          To see how it works, type a name in the
          <guilabel>Full Name</guilabel> field. As an example,
          we'll use <userinput>Miguel de Icaza</userinput>.  You'll notice that the
          <guilabel>File Under</guilabel> field also fills in,
          but in reverse: <computeroutput>Icaza, Miguel de
        </computeroutput>.  If you had entered <userinput>John Q.
        Doe</userinput>, the contacts editor would have
        correctly guessed that the entry should be filed under
        "Doe, John Q." However, Miguel's surname, "de Icaza,"
        has two words, and so to get proper sorting you must enter
        <userinput>de Icaza, Miguel</userinput> in the
        <guilabel>File As</guilabel> entry.
      </para>
      </listitem>
        </varlistentry>
        

        <varlistentry>
          <term>Where</term>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Select one of your address books as the location for
              this contact. You may not be able to write to all
              available address books, especially those on a network.
          </para>
          </listitem>
        </varlistentry>

        <varlistentry>
          <term>Categories</term>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Click the <guilabel>Categories</guilabel> button to
            select categories for this card. If you assign contact
            categories, you can then search for contacts using those
            categories. For more information on contact categories,
            read <xref linkend="usage-contact-organize"/>.
          </para>
          </listitem>
        </varlistentry>

        <varlistentry>
          <term>Free/Busy and Calendar URLs</term>
          <listitem>
            <para>
              Click the <guilabel>Personal Information</guilabel> tab
            to enter web addresses for the contact. If the contact
            publishes Free/Busy or calendar data online, using a
            server other than Exchange or GroupWise, you can enter the
            address for those servers here. Once you do so, you will
            be able to check their schedule when creating appointments
            in the calendar.
          </para>
          </listitem>
        </varlistentry>

      </variablelist>
    </para>


  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="contact-search">
    <title>Searching for Contacts</title>
    
    <para>
      To search through contacts:
      <orderedlist numeration="arabic">
    <listitem>
      <para>
        Select your search type in the search bar.
      </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
      <para>
        Enter your query.
      </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
      <para>
        Press return to search.
      </para>
    </listitem>
      </orderedlist>
    </para>
    <para>
      For a more complex search, select
      <menuchoice>
        <guimenu>Search</guimenu>
        <guimenuitem>Advanced</guimenuitem>
      </menuchoice> and select criteria that describe your desired contact:
    </para>
    <orderedlist>
        <listitem>
      <para>
        Name the rule in the <guilabel>Rule Name</guilabel> field.
      </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
      <para>
        Setup your criteria  in the <guilabel>If</guilabel> section.
      </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
      <para>
        If you want to add more criteria, click the <guilabel>Add
        Criterion</guilabel> button.
      </para>
    </listitem>
    <listitem>
      <para>
        Click <guilabel>Search</guilabel>.
      </para>
    </listitem>
      </orderedlist>

    <para>
      To show all your contacts, Click <guilabel>Clear</guilabel> in the
    search bar, press
    <keycombo><keycap>Shift</keycap><keycap>Ctrl</keycap><keycap>B</keycap></keycombo>
    or search with an empty query.
    </para>

  </sect1>

  <sect1 id="usage-contact-organize">
    <title>Organizing your Contacts</title>
    <para>
      Just as you can search mail, you can search contacts. You can
      also create several individual address books, or contact groups.
      Within a given contact group, you can have several
      categories of contacts. 
    </para>

<!-- UNIMPLEMENTED FEATURE
    <para>
      Another useful Evolution feature is
      its ability to recognize when people live or work together.  If
      several people in your address book share an address, and you
      change the address for one of them,
      Evolution 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>Contacts Groups</title>
    <para>
           The simplest way to organize contacts is to create
          additional groups of contacts. You can create a new one by
          selecting <menuchoice><guimenu>New</guimenu>
        <guimenuitem>Contacts Group</guimenuitem></menuchoice> For
        contacts groups on your computer, you only need to provide a
        name. For contacts on the network, you will need to provide
        more information about the contacts server you are trying to
        access.
     </para>
    <para>
          To move a card from one group to another, just drag it there
          from the main display of contacts. Note that you will not be
          able to change the contents of most network contact groups.
         </para>

         <tip id="lists-vs-groups">
           <title>Contact Lists and Contact Groups</title>
         <para>
           Contacts groups are not the same as contact lists. A
           contact group is like a folder or address book full of contacts.  A
           contact list is a single contact which contains other
           contacts, and is most often used to email several people at once.
         </para>
       </tip>

      </sect2>
      

      <sect2 id="usage-contact-organize-group-list">
    <title>Creating a List of Contacts</title>
    <para>
          A contact list is a set of contacts with a single nickname
          that you create. When you send email to the nickname, it is sent to
          every member of the list. This differs from a network
          mailing list in that it exists only on your computer as a
          convenience to you, rather than as an actual email address
          managed by a mailing list application on a server.
        </para>
        <para>
          For example, you could create one card for each family
          member, then add
           those cards to a contact list called "Family." Then,
           instead of entering each person's email address
           individually, you could send email to "Family" and the
           message would go to all of them.
        </para>
        <para> 
        To create a list of contacts:

         <orderedlist numeration="arabic">
        <listitem>
          <para>
                Open the list creation dialog box by clicking the
                <guilabel>New List</guilabel> button or selecting
                 <menuchoice>
          <guimenu>
                     File
                  </guimenu>
          <guisubmenu>
                      New
                   </guisubmenu>
          <guimenuitem>
                     Contact List
                   </guimenuitem>
        </menuchoice>.
               </para>
        </listitem>
        
        <listitem>
          <para>
                Enter a name for the list.
              </para>
        </listitem>
        <listitem>
          <para>
                Enter names or email addresses of contacts, or just
            drag contacts from the main window into the list.
              </para>
        </listitem>

        <listitem>
          <para>
                 Choose whether you would like to hide the email
                 addresses when you send a message to the list.
                 Unless it is a very small list, it is recommended
                 that you leave the addresses hidden.  This is the
                 same thing as using the "Bcc:" feature discussed in
                 <xref linkend="usage-mail-getnsend-send-to-types"/>.
              </para>
        </listitem>
        
      </orderedlist>
        </para>
    <para>
           When you are done, click <guilabel>OK</guilabel>. The
           list will appear as a contact card, which you can use as
           you would any other. That includes emailing the list to
           another person, and, of course, sending email to the list.
        </para>
    <para>
           To mail the list, open a new email and type the name you
           chose for the list. Novell Evolution will address the
           message to the entire list when you send it. You can also
           right-click on the list's address card in the contacts tool
           and select <guimenuitem>Send Message to List</guimenuitem>.
        </para>
        <para>
           Evolution cannot store contact lists on Microsoft Exchange
           servers.
        </para>
      </sect2>

      <sect2 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.  That means that you
           can mark a card as being in several categories or no
           category at all.  For example, you put a friend's
           card in the "Business" category, because he works with you,
           the "Friends" category, because he's a friend, and
          the "Frequent" category, because you call him often, but can
          never remember the number.
        </para>
    <para>
           To mark a card as belonging to a category, click the
           <guilabel>Categories</guilabel> 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>

           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 <guilabel>Categories</guilabel> and
           choose <guilabel>Edit Master Category List</guilabel> in the
           window that appears. 
         </para>

      </sect2>

  </sect1>
  
  <sect1 id="usage-contact-sharing">
    <title>LDAP: Shared Contact Groups on a Network</title>

    <para>
      The <link linkend="ldap">LDAP</link> protocol was
      created to let users share contact information over a network by
      sharing access to a central directory.  LDAP allows a company
    to maintain a shared set of contact information.  Many companies
    keep a common LDAP address book for all their employees or for
    client contacts.
    </para>

    <para>
       To learn how to add a remote directory to your available
       contact folders, see <xref linkend="config-prefs-contact"/>.
      Remote groups of contacts appear under the <guilabel>On LDAP
    Servers</guilabel> item in the shortcut bar.  They work
       exactly like a local folder of cards, with the following
       exceptions:
       <itemizedlist>
      
          <listitem>
        <para>
              Network folders 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 some of the
              network directory.  You do this by dragging and dropping
              your desired contacts into the local contacts list.
        </para>
      </listitem>
      
          <listitem>
        <para>
              To prevent excess network traffic,
              Evolution will not normally
              load data from the LDAP server immediately upon
              opening.  You must click <guilabel>Display
              All</guilabel> before contacts will be loaded
              from the network. You can change this behavior in the
              <interface>Contact Preferences</interface> window.
        </para>
      </listitem>
      <listitem>
        <para>
          Depending on your server settings, you may not be able to edit
          all the fields in a contact stored on an LDAP server. Some
          servers prohibit some or all changes, and others use a smaller
        set of fields than Evolution allows. Check with your system
        administrator if you need different settings.
            </para>
      </listitem>
    </itemizedlist>
    </para>
    <sect2 id="usage-contact-sharing-setup">
      <title>Configuring Evolution to use LDAP</title>
      <para>
    For information about setting up
    Evolution to use LDAP, please refer
    to <xref linkend="config-prefs-contact" />
      </para>
    </sect2>
  </sect1>

  <sect1 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 Sender to Contacts</guimenuitem> from the menu that appears.
       Evolution can also add cards from a
      hand-held device during HotSync operation.  For more
      information about that, see <xref linkend="usage-sync"/>.
    </para>
  </sect1>
  
<!-- Unimplemented features:
      <para>
         You can also use the contacts tool to print postal addresses
     on mailing labels.  Future versions of
     Evolution 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
     mailings.
      </para> -->

</chapter>