ideas are welcome: merging duplicate contacts to 1
Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 7:56 pm
hi,
i'm thinking about a new feature request, to merge or duplicate contacts to 1 contact.
(not binding contacts together - i mean clean merging together, so that there are no duplicates, and also all informations from different account types -> are merging all informations together)
the challenge is:
i have 4 different accounts and in every account i have a contact: "Example Mike"
in 1 account i have name + picture + email address(facebook account) - often the picture is only in facebook or in skype)
in 1 account i have name + phone number + email address(google account)
in 1 account i have name + group + organization + office phone number(Exchange account)
in 1 account i have name + phone number (SIM card)
as you can see in my example - there are a lot of informations, which i want to catch/merge together ...
and i want now: to copy all informations from many contacts(which are looking like duplicates) into 1 contact.
so, the logic must handle:
.) when is a contact existing multiple times ? (or must the user select the contacts manually ?)
.) how to find identically contacts ? or only bind system merged contacts ?
.) what happen if multiple pictures are on selected contacts ?
.) what happen if multiple items will be found ? (multiple mobile numbers) which phone number should be prefered to use for copy to new one ?
.) how should the whole process work ?
so, before i can think about how to make this function we must clearify how the process should be working ...
first idea is:
1.) selelct (multiple-select mode) -> then click on "Merge selected contacts"
2.) select destination account (this means, where all informations will be bring together)
....> then the function should check all informations:
a) read all information (*priority must be defined in code) and choose all informations - related on *priority list
b) ten show a list of all informations - and pre-select (related on *priority list) the informations.
c) user will see the item with all informations and can now decide or change settings - and then press "Save" or "Cancel".
....> if "SAVE" -> then the function should save data to destination (if contact exist there, then add the informations / if not existing, then create new contact + all informations inside)
*Priority: needed for which account type informations wins ?
1.) EAS (the business account, and mostly best maintained)
2.) Google account (mostly email address and self created contacts or imported from another system)
3.) MyPhone (mostly phone numbers are stored in local)
4.) SIM card (mostly only old contacts with old phone numbers, and nothing more, because SIM is very limited)
5.) Facebook (often real picture and real birthday)
6.) Skype (skype user are having mostly wrong birthday dates, so lower priority, and pictures are often fantasie pics)
7.) all other unknown SNS types (LinkedIn, etc..)
well, this could be working for merging some duplicates merging all data together in 1 contact
but, what - if user wants, that function should do all automatically and do this for all contacts in 1 shot ?
any ideas ? ideas are welcome ...
i'm thinking about a new feature request, to merge or duplicate contacts to 1 contact.
(not binding contacts together - i mean clean merging together, so that there are no duplicates, and also all informations from different account types -> are merging all informations together)
the challenge is:
i have 4 different accounts and in every account i have a contact: "Example Mike"
in 1 account i have name + picture + email address(facebook account) - often the picture is only in facebook or in skype)
in 1 account i have name + phone number + email address(google account)
in 1 account i have name + group + organization + office phone number(Exchange account)
in 1 account i have name + phone number (SIM card)
as you can see in my example - there are a lot of informations, which i want to catch/merge together ...
and i want now: to copy all informations from many contacts(which are looking like duplicates) into 1 contact.
so, the logic must handle:
.) when is a contact existing multiple times ? (or must the user select the contacts manually ?)
.) how to find identically contacts ? or only bind system merged contacts ?
.) what happen if multiple pictures are on selected contacts ?
.) what happen if multiple items will be found ? (multiple mobile numbers) which phone number should be prefered to use for copy to new one ?
.) how should the whole process work ?
so, before i can think about how to make this function we must clearify how the process should be working ...
first idea is:
1.) selelct (multiple-select mode) -> then click on "Merge selected contacts"
2.) select destination account (this means, where all informations will be bring together)
....> then the function should check all informations:
a) read all information (*priority must be defined in code) and choose all informations - related on *priority list
b) ten show a list of all informations - and pre-select (related on *priority list) the informations.
c) user will see the item with all informations and can now decide or change settings - and then press "Save" or "Cancel".
....> if "SAVE" -> then the function should save data to destination (if contact exist there, then add the informations / if not existing, then create new contact + all informations inside)
*Priority: needed for which account type informations wins ?
1.) EAS (the business account, and mostly best maintained)
2.) Google account (mostly email address and self created contacts or imported from another system)
3.) MyPhone (mostly phone numbers are stored in local)
4.) SIM card (mostly only old contacts with old phone numbers, and nothing more, because SIM is very limited)
5.) Facebook (often real picture and real birthday)
6.) Skype (skype user are having mostly wrong birthday dates, so lower priority, and pictures are often fantasie pics)
7.) all other unknown SNS types (LinkedIn, etc..)
well, this could be working for merging some duplicates merging all data together in 1 contact
but, what - if user wants, that function should do all automatically and do this for all contacts in 1 shot ?
any ideas ? ideas are welcome ...