Address Book needs attention

MagicDavid · 17 Apr 2006, 05:09 PM

Hi Guys

Been a while since I've posted here!

It's been great watching the new developments over the past few months; however I think there's an important area that's been overlooked.

Back in October I posted:
http://www.emaildiscussions.com/...threadid=37204

The Fastmail address book is pretty good - loads of fields, multiple variables per entry and easy to use. However, the major issue is there is no way for me to fully export my entries on to my desktop or access them in any other way than via the online web interface.

Yes, there are some basic export formats - but they don't include all the fields in the address book - which is fairly important.

Could you not build on to your current export formats a simple "full" export in an XML format so I can at least download my full address book to the desktop - mail merge and custom queries are impossible for me at the moment - which is a great shame, because I'd like (and rightly so) the Fastmail address book to be my central contact repository.

If you were prepared to spend a little more time on development then exposing the directory via LDAP would be great. I can then setup my mail client and word processing software to access the live data and can use open source software to make regular automatic snapshots of my contacts.

This would also ease my concerns around backup of my contacts – if for some reason the database was damaged or lost I’d still have my local copy.

If others would be interested perhaps they could show their support?

Great to see some momentum around development at the moment!

Thanks

David

17 Apr 2006, 05:09 PM	#1
MagicDavid Senior Member Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: England, UK Posts: 164	Address Book needs attention Hi Guys Been a while since I've posted here! It's been great watching the new developments over the past few months; however I think there's an important area that's been overlooked. Back in October I posted: http://www.emaildiscussions.com/...threadid=37204 The Fastmail address book is pretty good - loads of fields, multiple variables per entry and easy to use. However, the major issue is there is no way for me to *fully export* my entries on to my desktop or access them in any other way than via the online web interface. Yes, there are some basic export formats - but they don't include all the fields in the address book - which is fairly important. Could you not build on to your current export formats a simple "full" export in an XML format so I can at least download my full address book to the desktop - mail merge and custom queries are impossible for me at the moment - which is a great shame, because I'd like (and rightly so) the Fastmail address book to be my central contact repository. If you were prepared to spend a little more time on development then exposing the directory via LDAP would be great. I can then setup my mail client and word processing software to access the live data and can use open source software to make regular automatic snapshots of my contacts. This would also ease my concerns around backup of my contacts – if for some reason the database was damaged or lost I’d still have my local copy. If others would be interested perhaps they could show their support? Great to see some momentum around development at the moment! Thanks David Last edited by MagicDavid : 19 Apr 2006 at 11:46 PM.