Request: Contact Manager

[Anenga]

I have over 100 Contacts. Sometimes I want to know information about one (such as e-mail, buddy info etc.) so I have to open my offline list (which is memory intensive for me). Sometimes I can't remember which IM they're on, which medium they use etc.

A Contact Manger would be alike Outlook's Address Book. It would manage metadata (data elements) for each contact which I can fill in, or import from them. This would be also be searchable, and dynamic to where I can add my own custom metadata fields.

In addition, perhaps there would be a way for each Trilly user to manage their own user details (Trillian ID?). I can right click a user and go to "Import Trillian ID" and it would import that information and store it locally. I would be able to search through my contacts by name, phone number, etc. I could cluster users into groups (metacontact support) and edit their metadata information, possibly click "E-mail All" and it would send the nessasssary CC info to my default mail application.

When I view a Trillian ID (for a user) it will tell me which mediums they use (so I know if they can support Voice Chat (Y!M) or DCC (IRC)). I should also be able to click one button and it adds all their IM falvors to my contact list. I'll know when I added them to my contact list, last known sign-on, and view chat history.

If you need to, I could possibly whip up some sample images in PSP?

[SnakeAnarchy]

a good ideai have about 400 contacs and its really painfull to search on the offline contacs folder

[Aubrey]

Fantastic!

[Anenga]

Originally posted by Aubrey
Fantastic!
Thanks =)

[ameoba]

Nice idea, Anenga!

[Anenga]

^bump^

[bmark]

Pretty cool idea!

[Leviathan]

In addition to this thread's request, I would like to have the ability to select accounts from various mediums that belong to this person., then give them an order of importance. Say I have a friend named Bob and he uses ICQ and MSN. I prefer MSN, so I would add both his ICQ and MSN accounts to his "profile" and flag MSN as being higher on the preference list. When he comes online, he comes online with both ICQ and MSN, but ONLY the MSN entry would show up in the list instead of both mediums.

Basically this would create a meta-entry of some kind in the list and hide the actual medium entries for a given person. No matter what medium is currently active for a given contact, the same "name" would always appear in the list without having to rename ALL of Bob's entries (say he has an ICQ, AIM and MSN entries each for home, school and work.. ack!). I don't care where he is or what medium he's on (unless he's on more than one, then the preferred one gets my attention), I just want to know he's there.

If Bob were online and his MSN account was in control of the meta-entry and he sent me a message via AIM, then the AIM account would take over the meta-entry until the chat was complete. If Bob and I are chatting in AIM and he sends me a message in MSN, then a second entry for Bob would show up in the list for the MSN account. This would also mean Bob has no life and I should /slap him around with the alias plugin someone also needs to write ;)

Anyway, I REALLY hope someone takes this part on.. I have a lot of friends who just HAVE to have accounts everywhere, and even have multiple accounts. It's hard to keep track of, and would help cut my (and probably a lot of others) visible contact list down by a 3rd or more.

[beeblebrox87]

Originally posted by Leviathan
[B]I<snip>/B]

Thats the whole idea of metacontacts, which are one of the major new features in Trillian Pro.

[folio]

Cool idea!

-folio

[Aubrey]

This going anywhere?

[Anenga]

Originally posted by Aubrey
This going anywhere?
I hope so :/

[Aubrey]

Anybody working on this?

[AncientFaith]

Could someone tackle this, please? This would be a godsend for me. The person who made this plugin would go down in legend and the bards and minstrels of the future would write songs about him/her.

Damn....gotta lay off those rennaisance faires.....

This would be a highly-useful plugin, though!!!!


AncientFaith

[TrillHunter]

Wait for Pro 1.1. This type of thing should be a lot easier then (not necessarily easy, but easier).

[Flash]

I hope something like this would be implemented in Trillian as an basic contact feature. With additional info like that, already provided by Trillians "buddies.xml", plugin developers could go far with additional plugins for contact managment and so on... (e.g. outlook synchronisation, Caller ID Plugin, ...)

[Sjoerd]

I was thinking of something like this; but a bit more detailed as this one though.

Yet, I have not thought of implementing it into the xtrainf box, nor will I if I take this job on me.

And, one thing, I would never like a dialog box *that* high!

And come-on, real name too please!

I know nothing about programming in C, but I do have some basic algorith knowledge. ( Just thinking, what the program would do step-by-step, like a Program Structure Diagram. )

I also have some basic experience with other programming languages ( Pascal, Basic(:eek:) ), no, a bit more as 'hello world'.

Not sufficient though to make a plugin, but I could *try*.

I have VC++ 5 already, and the sample plugin, so in theory I could make them :). ( Not thinking about my knowledge :P )

But, I'm not even thinking about going to try :P.

[Flash]

I hope this contact info box gets implemented by the Cerulian Team first. If implemented as basic Trillian feature, a lot of programmers can base their plugin functions on the new "extended" buddies.xml (=contact datafile).

- Birthday Calendar Plugin
- CallerID Plugin
- Contact Synchronisation with Outlook Adresses
- ...

I wouldn't like to have a second Buddies.xml with additional contact info.
This would only end in chaos. As basic feature, this "little adress book" could be easily used by every other plugin.

A suggestion for integrating additional info in the Buddies.xml:

<buddy
uri="ICQ:1%3A21468193%3ADominik%20Jonas"
phone="123"
fax="123 "
mobile="123"
street="xyz"
city="xyz"
code="xyz"
country="xyz"
birthday="xyz"
...="xyz"
note="xyz"
>
Dominik%20Jonas
</buddy>

[Anakha]

Originally posted by Flash

A suggestion for integrating additional info in the Buddies.xml:

<buddy
uri="ICQ:1%3A21468193%3ADominik%20Jonas"
phone="123"
fax="123 "
mobile="123"
street="xyz"
city="xyz"
code="xyz"
country="xyz"
birthday="xyz"
...="xyz"
note="xyz"
>
Dominik%20Jonas
</buddy>
Or even, as this is XML we're talking about:

<buddy uri="ICQ:1%3A21468193%3ADominik%20Jonas">
<phone type="mobile">+115145848494</phone>
<phone type="home">+1545787997</phone>
<realname>Dominik Jonas</realname>
<address type="home">
<street>23 anytown</street>
</address>
<address type="work" />
<notes><![CDATA[Anything you bloody well like!]]></notes>
<!-- ...And so on... -->
</buddy>

Just an idea...

[Sjoerd]

<buddy medium="ICQ" number="21468193">
<phone type="mobile" number="+115145848494"/>
<phone type="home" number="+1545787997"/>
<name type="nick" name="Dominik%20Jonas"/>
<name type="first" name="Dominik"/>
<name type="last" name="Jonas"/>
<name type="title" name="Sir"/>
<address type="home" street="Anytown" housenumber="23" zip="90210" city="Beverly%20Hills"/>
<birthday month="June" day="24" year="1987"/>
<notes>Famous%20idiot?</notes>
</buddy>
This looks a *bit* clearer to me :).

I feel like starting a similar plugin, but I won't!

[AncientFaith]

Awww....c'mon...PLEASE??? :)



AncientFaith

[quietbritishjim]

For the many people like myself that use Microsoft Outlook, I think the easiest and most flexible way of doing this would be to use metacontacts and this requested plugin (http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37126) (oh look, it's one of my requests ;)). No use reinventing the wheel.

[Neelix]

Originally posted by quietbritishjim
For the many people like myself that use Microsoft Outlook, I think the easiest and most flexible way of doing this would be to use metacontacts and this requested plugin (http://www.ceruleanstudios.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=37126) (oh look, it's one of my requests ;)). No use reinventing the wheel.

And for those of us who don't have MS Outlook and are not interested in Outlook for its own features? :-)

[Daij-Djan]

As the Hunter said, wait for 1.1 with this.

[c_wyz]

A temporary hack solution that works for me is to rename every single contact with the person's actual name (It's much easier to do that as you add them). Then to find someone just press the first letter of their name and it scrolls through all the J's or something. Not ideal but it works.

As for giving preference to certain mediums in MetaContacts: just rearrange the order to what you want (the first one being the one that activates when you click on it). Usually I ask the person which he/she prefers and have it in that order. (So if I want AIM then MSN I'd but the AIM one first) If he happens to message me on the MSN one then as long as I'm replying in the same window, I'm using the MSN.

And for phone numbers etc, I've just started typing them in the personal notes section.

None of these are ideal solutions but they don't require plugins.

C.