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10 Minute Guide to Microsoft Exchange 5.0

- Lesson 20 -
Managing Contacts with Schedule+

 

In this lesson, you learn how to use the Schedule+ software to track and manage all the people you contact for business or for personal reasons. You also learn how to use the information you accumulate in a productive way.

The jargon for this type of software is "contact management," and it's more than just a little black book. You can use your contact listings to quickly enter appointments or tasks related to specific contacts, or you can group contacts that share a common bond so you know who has to be contacted when a particular issue arises.

Entering Contacts

To enter information about a contact, move to the Contact tab and click the Insert New Contact button on the toolbar. This brings up the Contact dialog box (see Figure 20.1), which has four tabs. The Business tab is selected by default when you open the dialog box. To move to a different tab, simply click it.

Use the Business tab to enter information about this contact. Its fields are self-explanatory (refer to Figure 20.1). Use the Phone tab, shown in Figure 20.2, to track all the phone numbers for this contact.

Figure 20.1 The Business tab of the Contact dialog box lets you enter information about this contact.



Figure 20.2 You can track every tyoe of telephone number for a contact.

When you look at either the Business tab or the Phone tab, you see icons that look like a telephone. If you have a telephone attached to your modem, you can click one of the telephone icons, and your modem will dial the number next to the icon. Your modem line becomes a voice line, and you will be prompted to lift the receiver to talk to the person you called. Of course, you have to have a telephone instrument attached to your modem to take advantage of this feature. After you call a contact once, the contact's name is placed in a calling log that functions as part of your contact tracking efforts (see Figure 20.3).

Figure 20.3 If you have a modem you can call this contact with a click of the mouse.


Calling Log When you click a telephone icon to make a call to a contact, it is added to a log. The log's file name is CALLLOG.TXT, and it's located in the directory where your Windows operating system is installed. This is a plain text file that you can open with any text editor (or any of the text word processors that came with your operating system). There is a line of text for each call you made to a contact, including the name, telephone number, date, time, and duration of the call. You should make sure to edit this file occasionally so it doesn't grow too large to work with comfortably.

The Address tab provides a place to store a home address and phone number for the contact, in addition to the spouse's name, the contact's birthday, and the date of the couple's anniversary.

The Notes tab is a place for you to write comments or notes to yourself about this contact. In addition, this tab provides four user-definable fields, named User 1 through User 4, that you can use to enter data that helps you sort your contact list. For example, you might decide to use the User 1 field to indicate your relationship with this contact. You can invent codes so that the data you enter in User 1 is consistent, such as Family, Customer, Vender, and so on. Then you can select contacts by code to produce a list you can use for a specific purpose.

After you finish filling out the information in the Contact dialog box, click OK. The name is added to the list on the Contact tab (see Figure 20.4).

Figure 20.4 Click a name, and the related details appear on the right side of the window.

The list is on the left side of the window. When you select a contact in the list, details about that contact appear on the right side of the window. You can click any of the tabs to display the information you need.


Quick Contact Entry You can also enter information about a new contact right at the Contact tab listing. Just click the first blank row, enter the last name, press Tab, and then enter the first name. You can then enter the detailed information in the appropriate places on the right side of the window.

Connecting Tasks with Contacts

If you need to follow up with a contact, perhaps by making another telephone call or sending information, you can create a task that's connected to the contact. To do so, follow these steps:

1. Click the appropriate contact name to select it.

2.
Click the right mouse button to see the shortcut menu.

3.
Choose Task from Contact. When the Task dialog box opens, the contact's name is in the Description box (see Figure 20.5).

Figure 20.5 Link a task to a contact using the shortcut menu, and the contact name is automatically inserted in the Description box.

4. Enter additional text to remind you of the task (for example, add the word "call" in front of the contact's name).

5.
Set the date for the task and any priority specifications you need, and then click OK.

Connecting Appointments with Contacts

In much the same way you connect a task with a contact, you can use the shortcut menu to connect an appointment with a contact. To try it, follow these steps:

1. Click the contact name to select it. Then right-click it to see the shortcut menu.

2.
From the shortcut menu, choose Appt. from Contact. The Appointment dialog box opens with the contact's name in the Description box.

3.
Specify the date, time, and place.

4.
(Optional) Set a reminder if you want to.

5.
Click the Attendees tab to add any additional attendees.

6.
Click OK when you finish entering information into the dialog box. The appointment is displayed in your schedule.

7.
(Optional) If you have invited additional attendees, a Meeting Request message form appears, with the attendees listed in the To box and all the necessary information already filled in. You can add a note if you want to. Then click the Send button.

Sorting Your Contacts List

You can sort the contacts in your Contacts list by several criteria. To establish a sorting scheme, follow these steps:

1. Choose View, Sort to display the Sort dialog box (see Figure 20.6).

Figure 20.6 You can choose any category to sort and sub-sort your contacts list.

2. In the Sort Contacts By list box, select a category for the first level sort. Then select categories in the two Then By boxes to set up secondary sorts. All the categories from all the tabs of the Contact dialog box are available as sort options.

3.
Specify Ascending or Descending for each sort level.

4.
When you finish, click OK. Your Contacts list is sorted by the categories you selected. The sorting scheme you design becomes the default for your Contacts tab.


Only One Sort Level Is Required You don't have to use all three sort levels when you design your sorting scheme. There is a choice of "none" available, and you can select it for level 3 (or for both level 2 and level 3) if you want to.



Quick Sort Instead of trying to enter new contacts in the correct sort order in your Contacts list, you can just enter new names on the blank lines of your Contacts list. Then, after you've completed all your entries, choose View, Sort Now. The new entries are placed on the list according to your default sorting scheme.

In this lesson, you learned how to enter and manage contacts and how to link those contacts to tasks and appointments. In the next lesson, you'll learn about delegating mail functions so that others can take over some of your e-mail chores (or the other way around).

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