Chapter 6

Contacts and Calendars

As much as technology moves forward, everyone still needs a reliable address book and calendar. There are several tools for the Mac to help you manage this information. Some applications are dedicated to one task (like Apple’s Address Book) while others seek to manage contacts, calendars, and more (like Microsoft Outlook). This chapter takes a look at the best tools for managing calendars and contacts on your Mac.

Contacts

 Apple’s built-in Address Book is a good tool for contact management. Shown in Figure 6-1, Address Book is a virtual version of that book of names and addresses everyone kept in a drawer a generation ago.

Figure 6-1

Apple’s Address Book

 

You can create a new contact in Address Book by clicking the + (plus) iconic button below the names column in the left pane of Address Book or by pressing Command+N. The new contact field is shown in Figure 6-2.

Figure 6-2

A new contact in Address Book

 

Address Book includes a default set of fields for each new contact but you can add fields by choosing Card ➧ Add Field. There are several additional useful fields. The Phonetic Last Name field, for example, is helpful if your contacts have unusual names. The URL field lets you add a contact’s Web site to his or her contact card. You can add specific fields for individual cards or you can edit the default template (Choose Card ➧ Add Field and then the desired submenu option). If you have trouble remembering names, drag a picture of your contact on top of the picture placeholder, shown in Figure 6-2, and you can digitally keep a face with the name. The Company check box in the address card can be selected to convert a contact from an individual to a company, like from Steve Jobs to Apple, Inc. The contact will then be alphabetized by the company name instead of the individual’s name.

The Birthday field in Address Book works directly with iCal. Any birthday you list in the Address Book can automatically synchronize to your iCal calendar. (iCal is covered in further detail later in this chapter.)

You should also create a contact for yourself. In it, list all your contact information and then make it your contact card by choosing Card ➧ Make This My Card. Once you do so, any component of Mac OS X that needs your contact data, such as a letter template in iWork Pages, will automatically fill in your contact information.

The Address Book window contains two panes. The right pane has the contact details. The left pane contains two columns: groups and individual contacts. You create groups by clicking the + (plus) iconic button at the bottom of the Groups column. You can create groups for any logical organization of your contacts, such as clients, vendors, and co-workers. Whenever I go on a trip, I create a group based on the trip. In it I put contact information for all the people I plan to meet as well as information on the hotels, restaurants, shuttle services, and other contacts I may need access to quickly.

Address Book also lets you to create smart groups. Smart groups are similar to smart mailboxes in Apple Mail: You set up criteria and Address Book automatically populates the smart group with all contacts matching the criteria. A smart group could examine the notes section of every contact in your Address Book database and flag any contact containing the words Smith Proposal, for example. Smart groups lets you easily keep track of all your contacts on a big project. Another useful smart group is shown in Figure 6-3; it examines all the contacts in your Address Book database and selects any contact with a birthday in the next 30 days.

Figure 6-3

An Address Book smart group

 

In addition to organizing your contacts, groups are useful for e-mail. You can type a group name in an Apple Mail recipient field to automatically populate it with all the individuals in that group.

Address Book is integrated throughout the operating system, letting you use your contact data in many places. For example, you can:

• Drag a contact (or group of contacts) into an address field of a new e-mail (covered in Chapter 5).
• Drag a contact onto a new Pages letter to automatically fill in the addressee’s information (covered in Chapter 11).
• Drag a group of contacts on a Numbers spreadsheet to create a membership list (covered in Chapter 15).
• Extract contact data from e-mail messages using data detectors (covered in Chapter 5).

This integration throughout the operating system is Address Book’s killer feature and the reason it has so few competitors.

Address Book provides several approaches for synchronizing your contact data. The easiest is with MobileMe. If you are a MobileMe subscriber ($100 per year), Address Book automatically synchronizes your contact database with the MobileMe service. You set this up through the Accounts pane of the Address Book Preferences dialog box, shown in Figure 6-4, or through the MobileMe system preference. Once your contacts are synced with MobileMe, you can access them through the MobileMe Web portal or, if you are an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad user, directly on your mobile iOS devices. So, if you’re at lunch with a client and she tells you her assistant’s name, you can add it to the contact card on your iPhone and know it will also appear on your Mac.

Figure 6-4

The Address Book Accounts pane in the Preferences dialog box

 

You can also synchronize your contact database with Yahoo contacts or Google contacts in the Accounts pane of the Address Book Preferences dialog box, shown in Figure 6-4. If you use the Google or Yahoo services for e-mail, calendaring, and contacts, syncing provides an easy way to take advantage of Address Book’s built-in Mac OS X integration and still use your Google or Yahoo contacts.

Finally, Address Book interfaces directly with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 or later. Setting up synchronization with Microsoft Exchange is simply a matter of typing in your Exchange username and password (synchronization is covered in detail in Chapter 21). The Exchange contacts are synchronized separately from your other listed contacts, allowing you to keep your work and personal contacts separate. Depending on your network’s Exchange settings, you can have a read-only access or a full synchronization of the Exchange contacts.

Web Contact Tools

Web-based tools for managing contacts are on the rise. With an increasingly mobile workforce and the relatively small data size of contact databases, it makes sense to put your contacts on the Web. Using the Web, employees and co-workers can all have access to contact data from any computer or mobile device.

Google Contacts is one service for managing your contacts online. It synchronizes with your Google account and works particularly well if you use Google’s Gmail (covered in Chapter 5) and Google Calendar (covered later in this chapter).

Because of the tight integration between Address Book in the operating system and the easy ability to synchronize with other contact applications, I recommend you use Address Book to manage the contacts on your Mac.

Some companies are taking online contact management one step further with CRM (customer relationship management) Web services. Salesforce.com (www.salesforce.com) and 37signals’ Highrise (www.highrisehq.com) are two popular CRM services that work on the Mac.

These services track contacts, leads, and other tools to work with clients and synchronize with Microsoft Outlook and vCard (the format for Apple’s Address Book). In addition to providing contact management, they provide tools to help you follow up on sales leads, track existing transactions, and better manage e-mail. Because they are Web-based, the software is updated “in the cloud” and does not require extensive IT support. Pricing for these CRM services depends on the size of your business and the tools you select. The customer relationship management industry is in its infancy and will no doubt expand in coming years.

Calendars

Using a digital calendar is great. You can also print it, back it up, and even put it on your phone. Mac OS X has some fantastic desktop and online calendaring tools depending on how you work.

iCal

 iCal, shown in Figure 6-5, is Mac OS X’s built-in calendar application. iCal works much like Address Book. It has a left pane with a list of calendars and a right pane that shows the details. The right pane can display a daily, weekly, or monthly view of your calendar items. The iCal interface can also display to-do items (covered in Chapter 9).

Figure 6-5

iCal’s week view

 

Using iCal, you can create calendars for different aspects of your life. For example, you can create calendars for specific projects (which can be helpful for to-do items as covered in Chapter 9). To create a new calendar, click the + (plus) iconic button at the bottom of the left pane in iCal or choose File ➧ New Calendar.

To create a new iCal event, press Command+N or choose File ➧ New Event. Using the Inspector (accessed by selecting any iCal event and pressing Command+I), shown in Figure 6-6, you can modify the details of any calendar entry including adding alarms or sending out invitations to potential participants.

In addition to creating your own calendars, you can also subscribe to publicly available Internet calendars. Apple keeps a list of subscription calendars for iCal at www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/calendars. At the time of this writing, the list contained more than 200 calendars ranging from U.S. holidays to golf tour dates. You can also subscribe to third-party iCal calendars by choosing Calendar ➧ Subscribe and inserting the calendar’s URL. URL calendar subscription also works with Google Calendar (covered later in this chapter).

Figure 6-6

iCal’s event inspector

 

iCal features tight integration with Mac OS X. You can create a birthday calendar by checking the Show Birthdays Calendar option in the General pane of iCal’s Preferences dialog box; iCal creates a separate calendar with birthday events for every contact in your Address Book that has a birthday field entry.

Apple Mail’s data detectors (that read your e-mail and find contact information, covered in Chapter 5) also work with iCal. If you receive an e-mail with a request to meet for lunch tomorrow at noon, Mail sees the event in the e-mail text and lets you add it to iCal (demonstrated in Figure 6-7).

Figure 6-7

Mac OS X’s data detectors at work to add an appointment from an e-mail to iCal

 

You can set up synchronization for your iCal calendar in the Accounts pane of the iCal Preferences dialog box. There are several options.

• CalDAV is an Internet standard that lets users access and modify scheduling data on a centralized remote server. It is similar to IMAP for e-mail (covered in Chapter 5). Because the calendaring data is on a server, multiple users can access it for planning and sharing calendar information. CalDAV was added to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. More recently, Apple embraced CalDAV further with the MobileMe service; the MobileMe CalDAV scheduling allows users to send invitations and share calendar data, two of the biggest complaints against iCal in years past.
• iCal also supports Microsoft Exchange 2007 and later. As explained in Chapter 21, you can enter your Exchange credentials in iCal and automatically synchronize with your Exchange server. Exchange calendars appear as a separate calendar in iCal, and you have access to view and modify the data as provided by your network administrator. The Exchange support in iCal, however, does not match that of Microsoft Outlook, covered later in this chapter.
• Like Address Book, you can also synchronize your calendar data with Google Calendar and the Yahoo calendar. Because so many companies are adopting the Google online applications and Google Calendar (covered later in this chapter), the ability to synchronize Google Calendar with your native Mac OS X calendar is important.

iCal is missing several features commonly found in other calendaring applications. These include the ability to set recurring to-do items and the ability to share calendars on the same network. iCal has been much maligned by calendar power users because of these missing features. Although Apple has answered some of these complaints with CalDAV integration and MobileMe synchronization, there are still unhappy iCal users. This, in part, led to the development of BusyCal.

BusyCal

 BusyCal ($50; www.busycal.com) bills itself as "iCal Pro." I can't disagree. BusyCal, shown in Figure 6-8, closely resembles iCal but provides several essential features. Most important, BusyCal can sync calendars with other users on your local area network without requiring a dedicated server such as Mac OS X Server (covered in Chapter 20). You can publish your BusyCal calendars on your network with read-only or read-and-write access. Using BusyCal, a small office can share calendars and avoid the expense of a dedicated server. BusyCal also syncs with Google Calendar (covered later).

Figure 6-8

BusyCal’s week view

 

BusyCal includes a number of features missing from iCal. BusyCal lets you create recurring to-do items. BusyCal also includes a list view, not available in iCal, that allows you to create a list of all events in your calendar and sort by type, calendar, and other criteria.

Mac OS X has a centralized calendar data file where iCal gets its data but BusyCal also saves to the same location. As a result, you can open and modify your calendar data in both iCal and BusyCal. MobileMe also looks at the same data set so your BusyCal data syncs automatically to MobileMe.

Google Calendar

Just like Google turned the world of e-mail on its head with Google Mail, it has done the same with Google Calendar (http://calendar.google.com). Google Calendar, shown in Figure 6-9 is a simple to use and powerful free Web-based calendaring system.

Figure 6-9

Google Calendar’s month view

 

You can register for the free Google Calendar as part of your Google account. The Google Calendar interface is noticeably Web-based. It does not have the typical Mac OS X feel but it is functional. The left side of the window includes a list of calendars. The right side includes the calendar data. The calendar can be displayed in day, week, month, four-day (showing the next four days), and agenda views. On the left side of the Google Calendar window, you can see a list of your calendars, and manage their setting and sharing preferences.

There are several ways to add a new event. One way is to click on the date in Google Calendar and insert the event details. Like Gmail, Google Calendar is keyboard-shortcut-friendly, so you can also create a new event by pressing N. (You can jump to today by pressing T.)

Like its other online applications, Google Calendar has fantastic sharing support. You can share your calendars with co-workers and friends, giving them read-only or read-and-write access. You can also make your calendars public. Alternatively, you can choose to share only the times that you’re available for new events. With these controls, you can tailor your calendar sharing as liberally or conservatively as you want. Because it’s a free service, your co-workers can do the same. Many progressive workplaces are switching their entire calendar system to the Google Calendar.

Google Calendar can also serve as the go-between for many calendaring systems. For example, as covered in Chapter 5, you can use Google Calendar as an intermediary between a Microsoft Exchange 2003 server and BusyCal. Google Calendar also associates a Web link with each calendar, making it easy to publish or import the calendar into another application, like iCal.

With the development of Internet protocols (such as CalDAV) the days of all work calendars being managed through a specific Exchange-like centralized server are over. Calendar sharing and modification are much easier now with these software tools. Over the next several years, it will be fascinating to see how calendars in the workplace change with the rise of CalDAV and Web-based calendaring.

Integrated Calendars and Contacts

Mac OS X also offers integrated tools for managing your calendar, contacts, and e-mail, but you may want to go beyond them. In that case, two of the best tools are Microsoft Outlook and Daylite.

Microsoft Outlook and Entourage

 Microsoft Outlook ($200; www.microsoft.com/mac) is a welcome addition to Mac OS X. Outlook for the Mac, shown in Figure 6-10, was first released with Microsoft Office 2011. (Microsoft Outlook replaces Microsoft Entourage software from previous versions of Office.)

Figure 6-10

Microsoft Outlook’s month view

 

As explained in Chapter 5, I am not a fan of Microsoft Entourage. It had, in my opinion, several fatal flaws, chief among them was how it stored data. The Microsoft Entourage database includes all your e-mail, contacts, and calendar items in one single database. The smallest corruption in the database can lead to a complete loss of your data. Entourage’s large, constantly changing, database also caused trouble with Time Machine backups (covered in Chapter 2).

Microsoft Outlook fixes both of these problems by using an incremental database that easily backs up to Time Machine. Outlook brings many of the tools familiar to Outlook users on Windows computers to the Mac. Plus, Microsoft Outlook features the best Microsoft Exchange integration of any software application available on the Mac. Although Apple’s built-in iCal and Address Book supports Exchange servers, Outlook supports more of Exchange’s sharing and collaboration tools. For example, Outlook uses the Exchange Web services protocol and lets you use shared Exchange accounts; Mac OS X Mail does not. Outlook supports only Microsoft Exchange 2007 and later, so if your office runs on an Exchange 2003 server, you are out of luck.

The user interface in Outlook 2011 received a much-needed upgrade. Like the other applications in the Microsoft Office suite, Outlook now uses the ribbon-style interface which groups types of features together and allows you to transform the toolbar by clicking different portions of the ribbon. The ribbon is shown in Figure 6-10.

Creating and organizing calendar events is also easier with Outlook 2011. Shown in Figure 6-11, calendar event creation gives you several options to customize and share your calendar events.

Figure 6-11

Creating a calendar event in Microsoft Outlook

 

Likewise, the user interface and contact windows received an overhaul. You can arrange contacts by group and update contact information easily. The best candidates for using Microsoft Outlook are those who are comfortable with Outlook on Windows. Although developed by separate teams, the applications have similar functions and workflows. With the improvements and modifications in Outlook 2011, Microsoft now has a worthwhile alternative to the built-in calendar and contact management systems in Mac OS X.

Daylite

 Daylite ($190 per user; www.marketcircle.com/daylite) is another integrated tool for managing your mail, contacts, calendar, and tasks. Shown in Figure 6-12, it is intended as a full-service business productivity application allowing you to manage a company's projects, sales, contacts, appointments, and e-mail. The Daylite system is fully networked, allowing users to access and modify data for other users. It can also be modified for particular industries. I've seen it used widely in the legal industry. It is also used in real estate, sales, manufacturing, and other businesses.

Figure 6-12

Daylite

 

Team calendaring is easy in Daylite. To schedule a meeting, you pick the co-workers you would like at a meeting and the calendar shows you who’s busy and when. The calendar in Daylite also includes project-planning components, allowing you to see key milestones for existing projects.

The contact database also works over your office network. Everyone on the Daylite network can add and modify contacts. Daylite color-codes contacts by their relationship to the business, such as customers, employees, and vendors. With color coding, it is easy to figure out who does what when looking through the contact list. Because the entire system is integrated, when you click on a contact, you can also see related appointments, tasks, e-mail, and notes to that contact.

Daylite’s project-management component allows you to define and manage projects and team members. There is also an iPhone application that lets you access your Daylite database on the go.

Both Daylite and Outlook go far beyond mere contact and calendar management. Both products focus on collaboration and are particularly useful with teams of employees working on a single project.

Shipping with Your Mac

What if your business requires shipping products to customers? You no longer need to spend your afternoons at the post office. Software exists to purchase postage, process, ship, and track your packages. Endicia (starts at $16 per month; www.endicia.com) is a reliable application for just this purpose.

It is an approved vendor of the United States Postal Service and accommodates domestic and international shipping. You can customize your postage with your company logo and change your plan depending on your shipping volume. It works directly with the Mac OS X Address Book and, unlike several of its competitors, does not require a long-term contract.