Contacts: Improve handling of multiple address books

[FBachofner]

It would be great if Contacts would have an easier way to show what is in a particular address book (or, possibly, group of books).

Right now, if a user has multiple address books, the _only_ apparent way to show what is in a single (or multiple) address book(s) is to turn off (i.e. uncheck "enabled") ALL the "unwanted" books.

It would be fantastic if "views" for each address book (similar to the "all contacts" view) could be placed in the left pane.

Clicking on such a "view"(or multi-selecting from multiple books somehow) would then show only contacts from selected books in the middle pane/column (i.e. the contacts pane)

For my clients and me, this (current) limitation is about the _only_ significant irritation with NextCloud, making contacts substantially less useable.

[skjnldsv]

SO listing the addressbooks as clickable entries out of the settings menu and on the navigation?
@jancborchardt what do you think? I always thought the addressbooks were too hidden in the settings. We could list them as a collapsible entry just above the settings, like we do with trashbin for example?

[FBachofner]

@skjnldsv this is an interesting, slightly different approach to what I was thinking.

I think it could work well and, properly implemented, _might also more clearly expose to users how to add address books_. Look for example at recent issue 1635 to see how various people have trouble with this.

Thanks for your consideration!

[jancborchardt]

So, the default case and most often used for regular people will be 1 address bool, that's it. Other products don't even really have the notions of different address books. It's different groups and that's that.

However, we can improve the design for people who do worl with multiple address books. It shouldn't mess with the default experience though. So how about:

• The normal experience stays like it is
• If there are 2+ address books, the display is more like in the Mail app, with subheadings for the address books (like the accounts in Mail) and a unified list too.

[mburnicki]

Hi, I'd just like to leave a note here:

Currently I have about 2800 contacts in 45 address books, private ones, business ones, shared with specific groups of other people, etc.

There are about 100 contact groups that share contacts from different address books. I consider groups as a second way to sort contacts.

For example if you have a huge number of items or objects you could group them either by forms (round or cornered) or by colors (red, green, ...) and of course the resulting groups would intersect with each other. In a similar way I use address books and contact groups.

If you have such a powerful instrument like nextcloud, it would be a pity if there were restrictions preventing you from working in a comfortable way with a huge numbers of contacts / address books / groups just because most users have a very small number of these all.

BTW, it's really a pity that even with NC 18.0.7 and Contacts 3.3.0 it is still not possible to have contact groups sorted by name in the left pane. That's really annoying if you want to add a contact to a groups and have to scroll slowly to not miss the group you are looking for.

[FBachofner]

Hi @jancborchardt

So, the default case and most often used for regular people will be 1 address bool, that's it. Other products don't even really have the notions of different address books. It's different groups and that's that.

Perhaps you are limited in your use / investigation of alternative products?

In servers such as Radicale, Baikal, and various others, multiple contact books (and calendars) for sharing within an enterprise is a first class feature.

Clients such as CardBook (a Thunderbird extension) deal with multiple address books very well (indeed, see that project as a good way on how to present multiple calendars.

Unfortunately, if this is not addressed well in Nextcloud I forsee relatively poor uptake in the enterprise.

We have scores of users in different companies using other solutions because of this single limitation (i.e. too difficult to manage / understand multiple address books) in Nextcloud.

And for what it's worth . . . we ourselves (a small IT consulting company) only use Nextcloud for "testing" purposes because of this missing feature.

[FBachofner]

Hi @mburnicki

If you have such a powerful instrument like nextcloud, it would be a pity if there were restrictions preventing you from working in a comfortable way with a huge numbers of contacts / address books / groups just because most users have a very small number of these all.

Thank you so much for your detailed usage notes. We are similar users and don't use Nextcloud because of this significant limitation.

It has always seemed that the Nextcloud use-case has prefered "small" (i.e. home?) users over enterprise. The address book feature has always stood out to us as an example of this.

Even so, it is surprising that this doesn't get more attention, because even a family can _easily_ have 1000s of contacts spread out across 4 or 5 users.

[ Think of school contacts alone: my two kids have about 700 contacts in their school alone. If they were in different schools, this would be compounded. We don't of course, want to sync all those contacts to our phones, so we segment them into different books so that not everything syncs. Then add in my 1000+ business and political contacts, family contacts, etc. . . .

Attempting to manage it in Nextcloud is _really_ clunky -- and _much_ easier in other products. ]

[FBachofner]

Hi @jancborchardt

So, the default case and most often used for regular people will be 1 address bool, that's it.

I would hasten to add I do not disagree that this is the most common use case for Nextcloud.

Even so, an installation will have an administrator, and this person may want to have access to many (or all) address books (for example, to help unskilled / untrained / untrainable users manage their address books).

In the IT field we often forget just how many problems users have even with "basic" features. For example, we have a number of clients who are in their 70s and have basically zero concept of how to categorize contacts etc. However, they have definite need for multiple categories, book and other segmentation techniques because they are (often) wealthy [(and as a result have _tons_ of contacts (wealth tends to enhance "exposure" to more people)]. Such users need to be able to have assistants deal with subsets of their data where mere "tags" or categories are not enough.

The (advanced) management of Nextcloud contacts makes this unwieldy at best. Usually it is unworkable long term, especially as we generally plan to hand such clients off to non-IT expert "personal" assistants.

[call-me-matt]

Just out of curiosity: I was wondering if you could still use Nextcloud but manage your contacts and address books on your mobile devices directly or with a third party application (like the mentioned Cardbook) from your computer.
Or is it that with Nextcloud sync fails if you want to set more than one address book, so that it is not possible for your use cases how you manage contacts?

[mburnicki]

@call-me-matt Yes, of course this is possible.

Fortunately, the contacts app discussed here is just another frontend to the contacts database in nextcloud, which can be accessed by any carddav client. Similar with the calendar stuff for which there is another nextcloud web app, but you can use any caldav client to synchronize calendars.

In fact most of the time I'm using Thunderbird with Lightning and Cardbook extensions on my PC and laptop to synchronize calendars (I also use several of them which are shared with other groups of people), and DAVx5 on my Android smartphone. Until recently I've been using the CalDAV Sync and CardDAV Sync apps on my smartphone, but the current version of DAVx5 has a few nice features which makes it easier to use.

Even though there have been interoperability problems for quite some time, the current versions fortunately interoperate pretty well, and I see only very few compatibility problems.

The contacts web app also works fine, as far as I've seen, but the user interface has quite some room for improvements, in my opinion.

[skjnldsv]

BTW, it's really a pity that even with NC 18.0.7 and Contacts 3.3.0 it is still not possible to have contact groups sorted by name in the left pane. That's really annoying if you want to add a contact to a groups and have to scroll slowly to not miss the group you are looking for.

Incoming in 3.4.0 :)

[jancborchardt]

Sorry, did you all read the rest of my comment? I clearly address this:

• If there are 2+ address books, the display is more like in the Mail app, with subheadings for the address books (like the accounts in Mail) and a unified list too.

That should cover the big cases with lots of address books as well. The unified antry could also have subentries for groups shared between address books.

[FBachofner]

Hi @jancborchardt

Sorry, did you all read the rest of my comment? I clearly address this:

• If there are 2+ address books, the display is more like in the Mail app, with subheadings for the address books (like the accounts in Mail) and a unified list too.

I'm so sorry. Somehow I did not properly understand your comment. Maybe I initially stopped at "The normal experience stays like it is" and anticipated you meant this would not be worked on.

That should cover the big cases with lots of address books as well. The unified antry could also have subentries for groups shared between address books.

YES, this! Having a unified list _in addition_ to listing multiple address books is exactly right. This way an advanced user can more easily "drill down" while a neophyte can just use the "all contacts" (or whatever you will call the unified list) feature.

Thank you again and sorry I did not completely read or understand your original post. I am _very_ glad this may get attention soon!

[FBachofner]

Hi @call-me-matt

Just out of curiosity: I was wondering if you could still use Nextcloud but manage your contacts and address books on your mobile devices directly or with a third party application (like the mentioned Cardbook) from your computer.

This is totally workable for an individual user and/or single business entity. We continue to test almost every version of Nextcloud and always look at this again.

_However_, as I mentioned our use case _also_ frequently entails helping manage datasets for clients. It is fairly unworkable to use Cardbook to manage multiple datasets we do not need to use actively _ourselves_.

The idea would be to log into a clients' Nextcloud instance (as an administrator with access to all NC instance address books) to manage those books from the web client. [ In your alternative (which is, of course, technically feasible) a consultancy like ours might have a Cardbook with scores (or even hundreds) of address books. Another approach might be to have multiple Thunderbird profiles, but that would present other challenges (including needing to copy/sync? such profiles onto multiple people's workstations -- where there is the possibility of multiple authorized assistants, at least). ]

BTW, DAVx5 mentioned by @mburnicki is an awesome project for syncing between desktop and Android phone or tablet. We highly recommend (and use) it internally and with clients.

[FBachofner]

Thank you all for your interest in this feature request.

I am thrilled it looks like the NC contacts app will be getting more attention!

The sorting feature @skjnldsv mentions is coming in 3.4.0 is a good first step. :-)

[skjnldsv]

Sorry, did you all read the rest of my comment? I clearly address this:

• If there are 2+ address books, the display is more like in the Mail app, with subheadings for the address books (like the accounts in Mail) and a unified list too.

That should cover the big cases with lots of address books as well. The unified antry could also have subentries for groups shared between address books.

I don't understand what that means.
Addressbooks in the appnavigation? Out of the settings menu?
This doesn't make sense on how we manage contacts. It would split groups?

[skjnldsv]

Coming from #1773

@jancborchardt what about another settings in the bottom for address books?
I feel it would be much easier to understand :)

• Separate settings from address books
• Better enable/disable visual cue
• Easier to find
• Maybe we could also add a star or something to define an AB as default https://github.com/nextcloud/contacts/issues/1767

We need to consider this again as for 99% of users they will have at least 2 address books now (since 19 and the recently contacted feature). Which means people needs to have a way to understand what is going on (received this question a few times already)

[skjnldsv]

Decision:

• Let's not have another settings toggle
• Implement checkboxes to toggle
• Move whole settings into a Modal settings
• Move the create addressbook input into a button + ActionInput

[PatriceVigier]

We/I need
Separate address book
Separate address book setting
Thank you for your work

[binarykitchen]

Any news? This is bugging me.