Managing Addressbook
From Ekiga
Contents |
Managing my contacts with the Address Book
The Address Book is a feature which allows you to find users to call and/or to save locally your list of persons that you call on a regular basis. It respectively loads the list of users from the LDAP directory and will store locally their addresses.
Basics of the Address Book
To open the Address Book window, select Chat → Address Book.
To your left there will be a list dialog showing the Servers you have added to the list as well as a list of local Address Books. The defaults are the Ekiga.net white pages, the personal address book from Novell Evolution (http://www.novell.com/products/evolution) and the call history.
- Ekiga is able to use several types of address books, allowing to search for remote contacts, and bookmark local contacts. The most common address book type is the LDAP directory where you can find information about registered users. Ekiga is able to browse any LDAP directory and use a specific attribute as calling URL.
For example, you could have an LDAP directory in your company, with a specific attribute containing the local extensions of all your colleagues. Ekiga is able to use such an LDAP directory. Simply select in Address Book → Add an LDAP Address Book, and fill the form.
- Ekiga is also able to detect other Ekiga users on the LAN using the Bonjour technology popularized by Apple (tm).
That supposes you have a local mDNSResponder daemon running on your computer (which is the case for GNU/Linux).
- Finally, Ekiga is able to bookmark contacts in the local address book, shared with the Novell Evolution (http://www.novell.com/products/evolution) suite.
FIXME: Avahi, here we talk about "Bonjour", elsewhere we talk about "Rendez-Vous"...
How to search users ?
To refresh the list of users for a specific address book, simply click the Find button. It will search for all users in that address book.
You can contact (call) people by double clicking on their highlighted field. (For ekiga 2.0.x only: You can also Drag-and-Drop to call a specific party by selecting the highlighted field and dragging it into the Main Window.)
In certain cases you will want to search specifically for a person name, his or her call URL, or his location in the Ekiga white pages. The address book window allows you to apply filters when searching for contacts.
- The Ekiga white pages will allow you to look for users in your region. It returns a limited number of results corresponding to your search. (not yet possible??)
Adding an Address Book
To add an address book, select Chat → Address Book → Address Book → Add an LDAP Address Book. A dialog will appear. You then select the type of address book you want to add.
Enter the book name and the various parameters and select ’OK’ and the new address book should now appear in the address books list.
- for the filter template, a "$" is replaced by the search string, whatever was entered in the search dialog box. No other substitutions are performed.
- for custom attributes, the value must be either a URL or a simple value. If it's a simple value, a "sip:" URL prefix will be tacked on before displaying it.
- If you do not know what parameters to use for a remote LDAP address book, please ask them to your administrator.
The address book parameters can be changed at any time by selecting Action → Address Book Properties when the address book is highlighted.
It can also be deleted by selecting Action → Remove Address Book.
Managing remote and local contacts
Add a new contact to your local Address Books
To add a contact to one of your local address books, simply select the address book you wish to add the contact and select Contact → New Contact. The option of adding a New Contact will appear and you may now enter his name and VoIP URL as well as other settings. After complete select ’OK’ and now your contact has been added.
- You can only add contacts to local address books.
Add a contact from an Address Book (White Pages, remote LDAP, local Address Books)
You can also add a contact from the white pages (or any other local or remote address book) by selecting the highlighted contact, right-cliking on the contact, and choose New Contact.
How to group contacts ? (work, family, friends,...)
Use the roster in the main window, and right-click on it.
FIXME: You can add a contact from the history window. About ILS Addresbooks ? Confusing about managing Adressbooks/contacts...
