[Design] Re: [Sum] Contacts Design

[Ed Bindl]

Just to let everyone know where contacts are right now, I've taken  
Ernesto's code from SoC last summer and updated it so that it's  
working with the current version of chandler.  Currently you can add  
a contact, and you can import from and export to vCard.  As of now,  
Contacts are a part of an Address book collection and only show up in  
the All view.  I've attached a screen shot to make it more clear.



-Ed

On Jul 5, 2007, at 4:57 AM, Mimi Yin wrote:

> On Tuesday, Ed and I took an hour-long whirlwind tour of all issues  
> relating to Contacts in Chandler. Here is the briefest summary I  
> could pull together on what we discussed. I'm not looking for  
> straight out answers to the huge list of questions below. There  
> needs to be a bit more context for each of them to have a  
> productive discussion.
>
> I am thinking that Ed and I need to loop in some brains from  
> development to proceed. Philippe, as Ed's mentor, I'm looking for  
> some assistance on next steps.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Mimi
>
> At OSAF we've talked about Contact Management in myriad ways:
>
> 1. A digital rolodex (Outlook, Palm, Apple Address Books) - would  
> probably need to support mobile devices to truly fill this niche.
>
> 2. A lightweight Customer Relationship Manager tool, a la  
> Salesforce. A way to manage relationships, where managing  
> relationships is essentially your job. Each contact entry is really  
> a profile complete with a history/log of your interactions with  
> this person: Calls, IMs, email exchanges, sharing history, mutual  
> contacts, etc.
>
> 3. A way to streamline and improve the PIM workflows we support today:
> + Using people as a handle to look for information, essentially a  
> way to enhance Search.
>
> + A way to manage tasks and events around people:
> - All the stuff I need to talk to so-and-so about, aka David  
> Allen's @Who Agenda list.
> - All the stuff I'm waiting for so-and-so to get back to me about
>
> + An easy way to collect and process contact info you get in the  
> course of your information management workflows
>
> So, which one of these do we tackle first?
>
> Proposal
> For probably pretty obvious reasons, I think it makes most sense to  
> start with Scenario 3: Support the PIM workflows we have today. In  
> doing so, we strengthen what we have already, making Chandler more  
> compelling as a PIM. I also have a feeling that we'll manage to  
> satisfy lightweight rolodex and CRM scenarios for some set limited  
> set of users, even if we remain focused on PIM workflows.
>
> What would this entail?
> Answering some hard modeling questions we've deferred until now :)
>
> 1. Are contact items like other content items. Can they be triaged  
> and stamped?
> In talking with Ed, we agreed that some contact-stamping scenarios  
> make more / less sense than others and many users will simply be  
> confused by the idea of managing Contact items as first-class  
> information items like Notes, Messages, Tasks and Events.
>
> However, I think there some compelling scenarios that are worth  
> experimenting with:
> + Note-->Contact You jot down a note with directions to a  
> restaurant you're going to tonight and then you decide to stamp it  
> as a contact for future reference and keep it around in the NOW  
> section until after your dinner date.
> + Email-->Contact You receive an email from your friend who's just  
> moved to Mexico. You want to make sure you keep track of that info  
> so you can send her, her birthday gift. You might stamp the message  
> as a Contact and add a Tickler to it to pop into NOW 3 weeks before  
> her birthday so that it pops up with her contact info just in time  
> for you to mail her your gift.
> + Addressing a Contact This is simply another 'single-item' sharing  
> scenario. Send contacts to others. Edit and Update them if necessary.
>
> + Contact <--> Task / Calendar It might be handy to use Contacts as  
> a way to keep track of David Allen-style @People agenda lists, in  
> which case you might want the Contact to show up on your Task list  
> and Calendar as a recurring 1:1 event, especially if the Contact  
> also has pointers to every item that references the Contact. This  
> scenarios will be less obvious to people though, but it's maybe  
> worth leaving them out there for now and see what people do with them.
>
> + Triaging Contacts If you understand the triage statuses to be a  
> way of deciding whether or not you're doing, deferring or done with  
> processing an item of information, then assigning triage status to  
> Contacts makes sense.  However, if you think of Contacts simply as  
> archival information, triage status is understandably confusing.  
> Would it make sense to add a 4th triage status for something along  
> the lines of Archive?
>
> 2. Edit/Update and Contacts
> Contacts should probably work just like other Items when it comes  
> to edit/update. The scenarios are pretty much the same.
>
> 3. Referencing Contacts,
> + Do items point to contacts or bits of contact info: email  
> addresses, nicknames, full names, IM buddy names.
> + Are contacts embedded in items as sub-items or is it just a  
> reference?
> + Do contacts point back to all the items that point to them? This  
> last feature would certainly enhance search workflows but would  
> also start us down the path of becoming a lightweight CRM tool.
>
> 4. Sharing and Contacts
> Morgen, Sheila and I have already spent a lot of time agonizing  
> over the many complicated sharing issues that come up as soon as we  
> have Contacts. Here is a poor-man's summary of them. I don't think  
> we need to have answers to all of these right away, but depending  
> on what other functionality we want to have and what use cases we  
> want to support, some of these will be more pressing than others.
> + If A and B share an item that points to a contact: C, do they  
> share that contact as well? Or just whatever portion of contact  
> information appears in that item.
> + If A and B each have their own contact for C, can we reconcile that?
> + What happens if A eventually shares contact C with B?
>
> 5. Contacts in the Faceted Sidebar
> + Are Contacts an application area? They currently show up simply  
> as a collection in the sidebar.
> + Do Contacts show up in the triage table along with everything else?
> + Do Contacts show up in the All application area or are they  
> cordoned off in some way? In a separate pane? In a floating palette?
> + Can Contacts be added to any old collection in the sidebar?
>
> 6. What set of attributes do we need / want for Contacts?
> If we don't have all the possible vCard options, how do we display  
> vCard attributes?
>
> These are the issues I think we need to discuss in the short-term  
> if not come up with fully-baked stories for. Below is a laundry  
> list of issues I think we can defer because they are more relevant  
> to the rolodex and CRM scenarios and less immediately relevant to  
> PIM workflows.
>
> 1. What are the different kinds of Contact?
> Traditional 'Contacts as an Address Book' Model
> + A Person?
> + A Business / Organization?
>
> More generic 'Contacts as a Profile Directory' Model
> + Location
> + Country
> + Model (as super-model)
> + Customer / Client
> + Product
> + Anything that you need to keep a 'Profile' record for.
>
> 2. There has always been a lot of controversy around what it means  
> to be a Group in Chandler as well:
> + Are Groups simply a short-cut for addressing emails or tagging  
> items?
>
> + Do Groups define teams and organizational structure (ie.  
> Marketing team, Murdoch Family, Sierra Club members)
> - Do individual contacts have different roles in different groups?  
> (ie. Director of Marketing, Dad, Treasurer)
>
> + Are groups the same as collections?
> + Can groups be defined around rules?
> + Can groups have inclusions and exclusions like Chandler collections?
> + Does each collection have a corresponding Contacts Group? Is that  
> Group gathered dynamically? (ie. All the people referenced by items  
> in this collection.) Or is it defined explicitly?)
>
> 3. Access Privileges
> + Are there ways to share parts of Contacts? Work info, but not  
> Personal info?
> + Can you share different parts with different people?
> + Do you / can you share all the things that are are part of the  
> contact log? ie. All the emails you've sent/received. All the tasks  
> you've assigned/received
>
> 4. What about stale contact info? Old email addresses? Telephone  
> numbers and Addresses? Ex-spouses?
> If an email points to an old email address and the email address is  
> updated on the Contact, do we update the email address on all old  
> emails as well?
>
> 5. User-defined attributes
>
> 6. Defining relationships between Contacts
> + A is spouse of B.
> + C is employee of D.
>
>

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