path: root/doc/C/usage-contact.sgml

<!DOCTYPE Chapter PUBLIC "-//GNOME//DTD DocBook PNG Variant V1.1//EN">
<!-- uncomment this during validation and debugging -->
<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&mdash; switch between them in the <guimenu>View</guimenu>
       menu &mdash; 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&mdash; 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>