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Looking for a Special Contact Manager

BigRedGonzo

Android Expert
Jan 12, 2010
915
253
Winston-Salem, NC
Here's what I'm looking for. IDK if it exists or not, but surely somebody here can tell me. I want a contact manager that will allow you to have family groups. Not groups like the Gmail contact groups, but you put in one address and one home phone number and then you can add multiple people that share that same information and also put in their personal cell number and e-mail address. I use a piece of software for an organization that I oversee and the contact section of the software is set up in a "Family-centric" fashion. I enter a "household" with address, phone, etc... and then attach individuals to that. Each individual can have multiple phone numbers and e-mail addresses, but they are attached to the household. This allows me to enter several individuals with common address and home phone very easily and when I access an individual the household address and phone is listed as theirs. It really makes since and saves a ton of time when entering multiple people. I can also have a name and phone number and when I find out where they belong, I just attach them to the household.

Anyway, with all that said, does anyone know of an android app that would do something similar to that?

Thanks for any and all help,
BigRedGonzo
 
Not exactly the same but quite a lot and even some manufacturer provided Contacts application has this feature called Group. You can then add individual contacts into this group. Then upon open this group, you can access all those contacts within that group. Does this work-around work for you?

Yea, I'm familiar with the Group concept and use it, but that's not really what I'm looking for. Here's what I really want:

John, Mary and Katie Smith are a family that I keep in my Contacts. Currently, I have a Name, address, e-mail and phone information for all of them listed in my contacts, but each is completely independent of each other. Now what I'm after: I put John Smith in as a contact. I enter his name, home phone, cell phone, address, city, state, zip etc... I go to enter Mary, since she is a family member of John's, I enter her name and then tell the contact manager that she is in the same family unit as John Smith, so Mary inherits John's home phone, address, city, state and zip and maybe even a master e-mail address. The only information that I then have to enter under Mary's entry is her name, personal e-mail and cell phone (maybe a work phone) and she's done. I view Mary's contact information and all the address, etc... stuff is already in there. The same with Katie. Later on, they decide they need a bigger home and move, I go to the family information, enter the new information (in one place) and all three entries' addresses are updated. One physical change and all three get updated. It would also be nifty if the solution to this problem allowed you to text the Family as a group.

I have a ton of families in my address book. So currently when one bit of common information changes, I have to track down all the other entries and make the same change. A contact manager that had this functionality would be outstanding.

While I'm wishing, why doesn't someone (especially Google) update their software so that instead of city, state and zip, you enter zip and it autofills the rest. I wrote an Access based package for a friend years ago to manage their clients that did this simple functionality and don't see why it can't be incorporated into the smartphone contact managers. Now, in the US, all zip codes are fixed to one city, so the information is static. A simple database (which I'm sure already exists in the public domain) would make this a simple "enhancement."

I shall stop wishing now and hope someone knows of a package that will make me happy.

BigRedGonzo
 
Upvote 0
I must admit that this sort of thing would help me as well. I wasn't looking for this particular feature but one thing I found 'way back when' was what you've found. That is, if I had a 'Mr and Mrs' in my contacts then, as soon as I had a couple that had separate email and/or mobile numbers I had to have separate entries for both. I use Outlook (2010) on my PC as my 'master database' and sync with this and you can't do that with OL either (or at least I haven't found a way). So that's what I did - have separate entries for family members at the same address who may share the same landline telephone.

If you could just edit the 'common' bits of their contact details it would make life a little easier. But in my case, even if a couple moved, it wouldn't be that hard to change both sets of details, especially as this happens/would happen very seldom. Also, I'm not convinced that the Android contacts database structure would accommodate this sort of functionality. Not saying that from a position of real knowledge, just that most of the contact apps. utilise the Android structures and data and none provide the functionality you're after. On top of that I'm not sure if there are any desktop contact managers that give what you want and so, Android not having provided any 'richer' functionality in this area, is unlikely to have thought of it.

As for 'auto-filling' address details, even Outlook doesn't provide this. In the UK at least, very few websites do either. There are some where you enter your post code (zip code for the US!) and a 'choice window' pops up with the known addresses in that post code and you choose yours to auto-fill the rest of the address. Again, in my case, I usually enter things into Outlook if I need to add a contact so it isn't top of my list of 'must haves'.

So, not a solution to your problem, just my perspective on it.

Dave
 
Upvote 0

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