Address Books are used to store information about your contacts: names, fax and voice numbers, e-mail addresses, pager IDs, etc. You use the Address Books panel to create and remove address books, to update data stored in address books and to retrieve address information from records in address books.
Address Book Format
Address Books consist of records: each record describes an individual contact or a group. A contact record contains the person's name ("primary name"), company name if any ("secondary name") and various addresses. Each record can have one address of each type supported by the CommuniGate Server. For example, if your server has FaxGate and PagerGate installed then each individual record in an address book can contain a fax number, a pager ID and an e-mail address (e-mail is always supported by the CommuniGate Server).
Opening the Address Book Panel
When you compose a message in the CommuniGator application, you can click the "Recipients" icon to open the Address Books panel on the right side of the Mailer.
The panel contains the pop-up menu indicating the name of the open address book, and the list of the records in that address book. The bottom part of the panel displays the service type icon and the address entry field.
Inserting Records Into Address Books
To add a record to an open address book, click the New button. A dialog box appears and allows you to enter the primary and the secondary names. Usually you will enter the person's name in the first field, and the company name in the second one.
Other fields in the dialog box are used to enter various addresses. Each field has an icon indicating a service supported by the CommuniGate Server: fax, voice, pager, e-mail, etc. You enter the address information into some or all address fields, and mark one of the addresses as the default one.
Entering Phone Numbers
Addresses for some services (fax, voice) are actually phone numbers.
Besides digits, phone numbers can include symbols "." (point), "(" and ")" (parentheses), "-" (dash) and " " (space) as separators. These symbols are ignored when the system dials a number.
The uppercase letters are allowed and converted to digits: 800-WXY-DEFG is a correct number and means the same as 8009993334.
The modem controlling symbols "," (comma), "@" (at-sign), "!" (exclamation point) are allowed and used when the system dials a number via a modem.
All other symbols are prohibited in phone numbers.
When you specify a phone number, always include the area code. If a number is local (i.e. in the same area), the system will skip the area code automatically when dialing.
To enter an international phone number, use the symbol "+" (plus), then the country code, then the area code and then the phone number itself: +77 88 999 5656 is a correct international phone number.
The system automatically detects the type of the number (local, long distance, international), and adds the proper prefixes and suffices to dial the number correctly.
If you want to enter a number that should be used "as is", i.e. if you don't want any prefix and/or suffix to be added to the number, put the symbol "-" (dash) in front of the number: -4567.It is useful if your company uses an in-house phone system, and a prefix is used to make even local calls; in this case calling a number inside the in-house phone system requires no prefix being added. So, you just type "-" and the internal phone number: -4567, and the 4567 is dialed.
Entering E-mail addresses
E-mail addresses should be written following the Internet RFC822 specifications. Usually an e-mail address is written in the following way: username@domainname.
To address a local user (i.e. a user registered with the same CommuniGate Server), you can omit the @ sign and domainname of your Server: if the domain name of your CommuniGate Server is mycompany.com, and the user you want to send a message to is registered as Tom, you can enter his address as Tom@mycompany.com or just Tom.
IF A USER NAME CONTAINS SPACES, EITHER SUBSTITUTE THEM WITH '_' (underscore) OR ENCLOSE THE NAME IN QUOTE MARKS: to send a message to the user John Smith type either: John_Smith or "John Smith". If your server domain name is mycompany.com, you can type either:
Michael or Michael@mycompany.com
"John Smith" or John_Smith@mycompany.com or
"John Smith"@mycompany.com.
Creating, Selecting and Removing Address Books
You can use several address books to better manage your contacts information. To create a new address book, chose New... from the pop-up menu in the Address Books panel. A dialog box appears and allows you to enter a name for the new address book.
After an address book is created, its name appears in the pop-up menu of the Address Books panel. Address books are stored as files in the CommuniGator Modules Folder inside the Preferences folder. You may copy an address book from there and e-mail it to anybody if necessary.
To use records in some address book, select its name in the pop-up menu in the Address Books panel. The selected address book opens and the list of its records appears in the panel.
To remove an address book, open it and then choose "Remove <address book name>" from the pop-up menu.
Modifying Records in Address Books
To modify a record, select it in the records list and click the Edit button.
You can select one or several records in the list and copy them on Clipboard using the Copy command from the Edit menu. Then you can Paste them into some other address book.
You can copy addresses from some message and paste them into an address book. If an address contains a comment, the comment is stored as the primary name of the record, otherwise addresses are inserted as unnamed records.
Removing Records from Address Books
To remove records from an address book, select those records in the list and choose Clear from the Edit menu.
Server-based Address Books
When several users want to share contact information, address books can be created on the CommuniGate Server computer. All users have access to server-based address books.
To create a server-based address book, choose New from the pop-up menu in the Address Books panel. Enter the new address book name, and select the Place on Server option.
The list of address books in the pop-up menu consists of two parts: one lists server-based address books, the second one lists the local address books.
A special server-based address book "Local Users" contains e-mail addresses of all persons registered with your CommuniGate Server.
Retrieving Addresses from Address Books
Since each record can contain addresses of various service types (fax, e-mail, etc.), you should specify the type you need. The pop-up menu in the bottom part of the Address Books panel contains icons of all service types available. When you select a service type in that menu, all records that do not contain addresses of that type are shown dimmed in the list.
When you compose a message you can use address books to specify the recipient addresses. To retrieve addresses from an address book, open the Address Book panel, select service type, select the records you want to use, and click the To button. The addresses of the specified type are extracted from the selected records and inserted into the recipients list of the message you are composing. If you select the (•) service icon, the addresses marked as default ones are extracted from the selected records.
Entering Temporary Addresses
To specify a recipient address without making an entry in an address book, open the Address Books panel and select the service type. Then type the address into the field on the right side of the service type menu. Click the To button to insert this address into the recipients list.
Exporting Information from Address Books
You can place the information from an address book into a file as a tab-delimited text. Open the address book you want to copy into a file, and choose "Export <book name>" from the pop-up menu.
The standard dialog box appears and allows you to specify the name of the text file to keep the address book contents. The first line of that file will contain the names of the services, other lines will contain record names and addresses in the order specified in the first line.
Importing Information into Address Books
You can convert address information stored in a file as a tab-delimited text into an address book. Open the Address Books panel, choose Import from the pop-up menu, and select the file to convert.
The first line of that file should specify the names of services, other lines should contain the primary and secondary names, and the addresses of various service types in the order specified in the first line.
