The Hidden Powers of Open Contacts

One of the design principles of Open Contacts is: adding more features without crowding or complicating the user interfaces.

Comparing with the main windows of version 1 and version 4.1, they look very similar. And actually the higher versions look simpler.

As the program is used by large varieties of audiences, we generally let the users decide whether to turn on new features provided, when they feel they need something more. Many of the new features may be activated only when appropriate checkboxes get checked in the Options window.

Though the default features of Open Contacts have already suppress many other address book programs, if you are feeling that you want more from Open Contacts, it is time to evaluate those settings in the Options windows after reading "What's New".

Multiple databases for only you or multiple users

Your address book consists of the following components:

Core data -- A database file with extension name "GDB" contain essential part of your address book, including contact names, sections, fields, relationships and categories as well as almost all settings.

External files -- While the data fields can store names of external resources like web page addresses and file names, the files pointed by the file names are general stored in local computers or local area network. By default, file names without file path point to files stored in the Files directory of the user directory.

Template files -- While the whole design of Open Contact is very flexible for all users, some users with advanced knowledge of XML/XSL/HTML can modify some template files used by Open Contacts. Please read XML Explained for more details.

The built-in backup function backups the core database only. If you want to backup all components of your address book, you may just simply close the program, and copy all files of the user directory to an external storage.

Sometimes you might want an address book database for all your close contacts, and the other for business customers only. Or, there might be a few users sharing the same PC, each of them may want a personal database located in each personal folder under the "Documents and Settings" folder.

To support multiple databases, technically there can be a lot solutions. Because Open Contacts supports green mode which does not write things into Windows registry, we decided to use the Start-in folder as the location of the data files.

The operations described below might require knowledge of computer literate. If you are uncertain what to do, please ask your close contacts who understand system administration for assistant.

A windows program shortcut includes two paths: one for the target folder where the executable file is located, and the other for the "Start-in" folder where the program is started. If the "Start-in" folder is not defined, the folder is the same as the target folder. For example, checking the properties of the Open Contacts shortcut, you will see the target folder is inside "C:\Program Files\..." and the "Start-in" folder is inside "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Shared Contacts" if you installed for all users.

Open Contacts will locate data files in the "Start-in" folder by default at startup. Open Contacts will first read the "main.ini" file in the "Start-in" folder for the location of the database, then read the database. The other companion data files are all in the "start-in" folder by default.

In the "main.ini" file, if the database name is defined but without file path, the location of the file should be in the Data folder of the "Start-in" folder. So, by default, all data files and templates are located in the "Start-in" folder.

To support multiple personalities of one user or multiple users, please follow the steps below:

1. Copy an existing personal folder to specific folder as a new personal folder

From the "Start-in" folder of an existing shortcut, you locate an existing personal folder. Copy all files to specific folder which will become a new personal folder.

2. Copy a blank database to the data folder of the new personal folder to overwrite the database file copied from the source folder.

In the target folder, there's a blank database file "default.gdb". Copy this file to the data folder of the new personal folder to overwrite existing one. If you had changed the name of the database file or the settings of the INI file manually, you might need to adjust the operation details of this step.

3. Create a new program shortcut with the "Start-in" folder pointing to the personal folder.

If you as system administrator is going to create a new personal folder for another user and the PC is configured using LUA concepts, you might want to create the new copy inside the personal profile area and create the shortcuts there as well.

How Open Contacts update an existing contact when importing

How Open Contacts update an existing contact when importing

A contact is uniquely identified by the full name, surname, given name and middle name. When importing a contact with the same name existing in the database, OC will prompt the user for action. If the user choose to update existing record, OC will try to merge:
1. If an imported field (combination of section name and field name) does not exist, the field will be added.
2. If an imported field does exist, the field will be updated.

For example, Andy Smith in the database has
Personal/Phone = 4324324324

And the imported Andy Smith has
Personal/Phone =1111111
Personal/Phone =222222
Personal/Phone =333333

After importing, the existing phone field will be updated, and 2 more are added, so the personal section will have 3 phone fields.

How will you choose a replacement of address book program?

You have been using Email for years, and almost all Email programs came with an address book module. Are you satisfied with such container of contact info? Probably not. This is why you have been searching for a better solution. While there are hundreds of solutions around, based on Web or desktop, you might need to ask yourself a few questions before making a choice.

1. Do you have more than one Email accounts? Do you use different Email client programs? For example, Mozilla Thunderbird, MS Outlook and Hotmail.
2. Do you sometimes want to store some contact info that could hardly be stored in designed fields of the address book?
3. Do you sometimes use computer to make telephone calls and Skype calls?
4. Do you need to print mailing labels?
5. Do you have some organizational contacts to record?
6. Do you want to sometimes record multiple notes for a contact?
7. Do you want to have a multi-level category system to categorize contacts?
8. Do you want to run the address book program on an external portable drive such as a flash disk or iPod?
9. Do you want to run the address book program on LAN to share the address books with staffs in the same office?
10. Do you want to outline the relationships between contacts?
11. Do you exchange contact info with other people?
12. Do you often need to do copy/paste in order to copy contact info from/to other documents?

If you have 3 affirmative answers to the questions above, did you find any program that adapted such needs?

If not, then you might find the answers interesting made by Open Contacts.

1. Open Contacts is not an Email program and it has good interactions with different Email clients. It can natively interact with MS Outlook through Office COM, Mozilla Thunderbird and other conventional mail programs though MAPI, Portable Thunderbird through commandline, Lotus through Windows Shell, and web mail through copy/paste.
2. Open Contacts have almost all fields created dynamically, so that you can insert unlimited field/value pairs.
3. Open Contacts interacts natively with Windows Telephony (Dialer) and Skype. And you can seamlessly integrate telephony and skype if desired.
4. Open Contacts provides built-in functions of printing selected info of selected contacts in a compact format, thus you can easily have a tidy and handy address book. In addition, with exported CSV/Excel files, you can print rich formats of mailing label through dedicated label printing programs.
5. Designed with separation of people contacts and organizational contacts, Open Contacts provide associations between people and companies. So you can easy find people working in the same organization. In addition, you can record the relationships between one person and multiple organizations.
6. Almost all existing address programs provide only one Notes field, Open Contacts provide unlimited notes besides the primary one.
7. While grouping contacts is the basic feature of almost all existing address book programs, Open Contacts provide multi-level categories.
8. Open Contacts was designed to be running without installation, thus it can run on an external portable drive such as a flash disk plugged into any Windows workstation (Windows 2000 or above).
9. Open Contacts was designed to be running as a client/server application talking to a standalone Firebird database server.
10. You can create relationship links between people and companies.
    
11. CSV, vCard, LDIF and XML.
12. Open Contacts provides a set of copy/paste functions for you to exchange info between Open Contacts and other documents through Windows clipboard.

Plan B of Contact Management

Web base contact management has been becoming more and more popular in last few years. The advantages are obvious. I am not going to discuss them here.

Though there are still some criticisms against it, saying privacy and reliability etc., however, web base contact management is still the most attractive solution for metro people who "always" have reliable and constant internet connections.

However, small or large disasters do strikes occasionally. Plan B. Do you have a handy plan B for contact management?

Some prefer the PC desktop/notebook as a hub for all contact info and sync selected data to other platforms/programs. They won't be effected if the internet connection to the Web base contact management site is down. You still can access phone numbers and ring people. But when power is down, computer is useless. With laptop and UPS, things will become just a bit better.

Mobile phone / PDA is handy , though they are not good candidates to be hub of contact info. I am sure that everyone will naturally store emergency numbers and frequently used numbers in phone. Yes, you have already got yourself a plan B.

When you are busy having phone talks during power outage, the battery of your mobile phone become flat. You then can not access the address book on the mobile phone in order to ring through land line which is generally not effected by power outage. So, a low tech solution will come to rescue, if you have implemented such solution: printing those contact phone numbers on paper, one copy at home, and another copy in your wallet.

Was Open Contacts designed for your use cases?

Open Contacts is an address book, or contact management program. However, it is not a CRM or PIM program.

If you find existing address book / PIM programs that your are using can not fit your needs, Open Contacts is a much more powerful candidate for you to consider. However, if you want event tracking, sale/marketing activities as well as billing etc., then Open Contacts is not for you. Obviously you should then eyes on CRM programs. Open Contacts is positioned as a bridge between conventional address book program and CRM program.

One of the features that make Open Contacts stood out of existing address book programs is its great extendibility to other programs running on desktop or the web. Though Open Contacts is not a PIM program, however, it is relatively easy to construct a PIM utility using existing programs. Please read
Build your own portable PIM with Open Contacts and other portable programs
for details.

Open Letter to Users of Open Contacts

Hi All

I am writing to you to discuss the development path of Open Contacts (OC).

When OC is distributed as freeware, we have developed a few commercial extensions. We provide this piece of software sitting between conventional address book programs and CRM programs. After all, we do not intend to lock you, as we do provide a few ways of exporting data which can export almost everything you have inputted to external files which can be imported to other programs. In the future when you want to move to a more comprehensive platform of software application, data will be easily transfered.

As you might agree, contact management is not a single feature, and should rather work along side with other functions, such as a CRM system, an email client or a calendar program.

Up the now the version of Open Contacts has reached to v3.9.5, and we believe that Open Contacts provides richest features in the market of address book programs. Most planned key features were implemented, thus the paces of upgrading will be slowing down. We would like to take some time to review our development, and think about the paths and the focus.

We are thinking of the following options of new features and extensions, and would like your opinions about them. Essentially, it is not about new features, but what you need and what you will need:

1 Evolve to PIM

We were devoted to the best of address book programs running on PC desktop, while almost existing similar products at most just cloned the Windows Address Book (from Outlook Express and MS Outlook) and could never exceed the features of the WAB. However, we thought that many of existing schedule programs like MS Outlook, Mozilla Sunbird and Google Calendar are very adequate, as the requirements for scheduling are very common and stable. We would just try to provide convenient shortcuts and interactions between Open Contacts and these calendar programs. In short, it is unlikely that we will create another PIM program under current circumstance.

2 Provide better and better connections to other calendar programs

Yes. This have been what we always intent to do. The candidates are: MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Sundbird, Google Calendar, Yahoo Calendar. Of course, the development of such interactions will very much depend on many factors: the willingness of the vendors of these programs and websites. In addition, the evolving of Web 2.0 may play a part.

3 Provide pseudo remote access to address book database

For users who need to access the same set of contact info at home and at work, there existing a few ways: 1. Use OC in a portable device. 2. Use a remote PC program to access OC remotely. We are thinking the third way: Let a user to download the database from a remote host (likely managed by the user), after editing, then upload back to the remote host. The following protocols will be supported: FTP, IMAP, HTTP and others.

4 Support schemes of distributed social networking

This subject is the key issue we would like to discuss with you.

About Social Networking

Have you heard of or used the following web sites of social networking? Linkedln, MySpace, orkut and Bebo etc. There are many many, as you can see from this list of social networking.

Are we going to provide you yet another website of social networking? The simple answer is No, as we hated providing you yet another address book program. Otherwise, you might have picked yet another address book program rather than Open Contacts. However, we do believe that Open Contacts is reaching to an edge of providing an alternative solution of social networking, taking care of some of your concerns about social networking websites:

1. Privacy

2. Locking

3. Troubles of subscribing to multiple web sites

We have done some preliminary researches on these issues, and would like to share some findings with you. If you can raise your opinions after reading these materials, we will appreciate.

We would like to provide you a list of blogs we had visited. We did read these blogs and theirs follow-up comments carefully. And we would like you to make your own comments to us, and to these blogs as well.

http://blog.jonudell.net/2007/02/06/critical-mass-and-social-network-fatigue/

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/02/social_network_1.html

http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/238 and comments by Konstantin Guericke

http://www.texttechnologies.com/2007/02/06/what-is-linkedin-needed-for-absolutely-nothing-and-the-same-goes-for-myspace/

http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/index.php/2007/02/12/do-we-really-want-to-aggregate-identiy/

http://developinginnovation.blogspot.com/2007/02/case-of-missing-web-20-address-book.html

http://itredux.com/blog/2007/01/29/contact-managers-roundup/

http://blogs.business2.com/business2blog/2007/02/netvibes_and_th.html

http://lastparadox.blogspot.com/2007/01/linkedin-survivors-guide.html

www.FindMeOn.com

www.tellme.com

http://www.wehanghere.com/

http://www.sxip.com/

http://www.identity20.com/

Hopefully you will find some useful info or inspiration about what is happening in the Web.

We have a replicated copy of this letter at blogger, please feel free to raise comments following the blog, or just drop us an Email.

Regards

Fonlow Support

Open to the Future

The reasons why we selected the name "Open Contacts" for our product was because of the philosophy behind the development of the product:

• Open to the future. More fields will be added by us or by you, as you might have other info to input in the future. The program will adapt new data fields, and new ways of communication.
  
• Open to other applications. The program will interact with other desktop applications and Web applications, through inbound and outbound interfaces.
  
• Open to users' choices of freedom. We may or may not provide all-in-one solution in the future, however, we respect your choice of other complementary applications, and the freedom to moving away to other higher end programs. We don't lock you and We are open to your choices.

Providing dynamic fields as the building block of your dynamic contact info is one of distinct features of Open Contacts. With the dynamic action button upon highlighted data field, new ways of interacting with other programs can be introduced without making the user interfaces more complicated.

As described in the product home page, Open Contacts can import data from large varieties of data sources, and interact with different Email programs, Skype and Google Maps etc. In addition, the program provides COM interfaces for other programs to cooperate. Birthday Reminder is a good example.

Open Contacts can export selected contacts to other format: simple text, XML, HTML, vCard and LDIF, preserving most contact info. Only those data fields not supported in other formats will not be used. Thus, you will be free to sync data to other programs/platforms, or move your whole contact management to a highlander program you desire in the future.

Security

Many users are concerned by the security of address book data. While security is essential to privacy of you and your contacts, it is more practical for you to understand what security level you need, and what resources available for security, while there are many security solutions around.

An SQL database can be secured when authentication mechanism is sound and the database files are kept in a safe place. If the files got stolen, the authentication mechanism will be lost. While it is not rare to encrypt data in a database, however, this will bring penalty to performance, and queries will be made difficult.

Data security is a big topic not likely to be discussed here in detail. Though Open Contacts does not provide built-in security, however, it is easy to use existing resources to introduce certain level of security to Open Contacts.

If you use Open Contacts in LAN environment, you may put the database file in a secured server. Client machines should not be able to access the database file directly, but through Firebird database server. Please work with your system administrator to improve data security. If the contact data contain linked files, the directories of these files should allow client machines to access.

If you use Open Contacts in desktop mode, you has better to run your account in LUA mode, and put the database files into a folder exclusively accessed by your account.

If you use Open Contacts in an external drive, you many consider to use an open source freeware program called TrueCrypt located at www.truecrypt.org. TrueCrypt also support green installation on an external drive. You may then put Open Contacts and related files to the encrypted storage managed by TrueCrypt. Please study the TrueCrypt website for more details.

Please note, we do not provide technical supports to general questions of Windows, LUA, encryption and TrueCrypt etc.

letters about categories

I use Open Contacts just a while and have linked people to my customer-companies. I linkes them e.g. with responsibilizy (e.g. IT-Leader )

I would like to get a list of all IT Leaders from category customers to send them an email.

Filtered by category then by relationship? If so, some coming planned features will make this possible: In the Search window, you will be able to select categories, and relationship. Of course, this won't be a tomorrow release. Just stay tune.

Is this possible (only getting the list out of oc - sending email could do another program).

You can do this in OC, pls read the manual for details. And you can do it through mail merge as well.