TF integration with Contacts, Notes, and Calendar Apps

[Anonymous]

It would be nice if Appointments, Anniversaries, and Notes created in TF also appeared in the the Calendar and Notes apps. Any plans for adding this type of Personal Information Management (PIM) feature?

I see that TF already integrates with the Contacts App, so that when new contacts are added/edited, changes appear in the Contacts App. I guess Mail app too. That’s a nice feature.

Since Contacts and Calendar apps lack basic features (e.g., Contacts lacks grouping and Calendar lacks Year view), it might be even better for TF to offer its own versions of Contacts, Notes, and Calendar in a Suite of apps which include TF.

[Brendan]

Unfortunately Apple doesn’t provide an API to access the calendar or notes. But as soon as they do, I will be sure to integrate with it.

[Adrian Lambert]

Eventkit?

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/datamanagement/conceptual/eventkitprogguide/Introduction/Introduction.html

For reading and writing to calendars and reminders?

This would be a great implementation if it could be done.

[Brendan]

Hi Adrian,

My original reply was from 2009. EventKit wasn’t there at that time I don’t believe. I didn’t actually get around to integrating with EventKit though. I know I should though.

So much to do, so little time…

Thanks,

Brendan

[Adrian Lambert]

Hi Brendan,
Yes, I had realised that when I posted. Just wanted to give it a poke to see what happened. I reckon it’d be a game-changing feature.

I like the way that you’ve integrated contacts. Seems a no-brainer to let the OS do the heavy lifting in that department. I guess calendars aren’t so easy.

With calendars integrated I’d see your app binding the OS’s CRM components together in a much more integral way that would allow small businesses freelancers and pim users to design something that really suits them perfectly. I use the OS for almost everything because it’s quickest and simplest, and it’s all exportable.

Go on, spend a little time on it, what a feature bump that would be for your app!

Here’s hoping,
Adrian

[Brendan]

Hi Adrian,

Thanks for the bump. Agreed, having Calendar integration would be great.

Brendan

[Glen Steinson]

Hi Brendan,

I’d like to add my support to Adrian’s request.
I’m a financial advisor and can think of multiple great ways that I could further utilize your app if it had iCal integration.

Please point me towards where I can find out more about the Contacts integration. Thanks.

[Brendan]

Hi Glen,

To integrate contacts, you simply need to add a Contact field type to your form. Once you do this, you can link a contact from your existing Contacts database into Tap Forms. That’s really all there is to it. When you access that contact within Tap Forms, you’ll have all the data that’s in the Contacts database for that contact. However, the data is really separate from the Tap Forms database. The only thing stored in the Tap Forms database is the first and last name plus a reference to the contact record. So when you view the contact’s details, you’re actually viewing the details as provided by the Contacts database, not actual data stored within Tap Forms.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Grey Drane]

So how do we go about using data in the Contacts database in our forms? Does it need to be reentered into Tap Forms fields? Is there a way to automate this? I’m thinking about things like displaying a customer address in an invoice form, for example.

I just bought TF yesterday, so apologies for the newbie question, but I haven’t been able to find info on this in the online help or forums (only tried for about 15-20 minutes, give or take).

Cheers,
Grey

[Adrian Lambert]

That’s a great question Grey. I don’t have an answer for you but it would be incredibly useful if there was a way to connect to specific iOS contact fields.

[Grey Drane]

Yep. I don’t have a million customers, so for now I’m just reentering the data into TF fields manually. That’ll also minimize the damage if the Contact ID gets messed up by iCloud syncing, but it would be nice not to have to retype everything.

[Brendan]

Hi Grey,

I’d definitely like to expose the other contact fields to Tap Forms but at the moment all it does is copy in the First and Last Name fields into the Tap Forms database along with the not so “unique” identifier. It would definitely be great to be able to drag out into a custom layout any of the sub-fields of a Contact field. That’s fine for display and layout purposes, but then for editing it would get into a special case of having to update the Contact database instead of the Tap Forms database. Although I could just make those read-only. You’d still have to use the Contact popover to edit the data (since that’s a control provided by Apple with direct access to the Contacts database). And also it probably wouldn’t work for searching unless I copied in all the data from the Contacts database into Tap Forms, but then keeping that all in sync is a job on its own.

So lots to think about, but definitely a good idea.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Grey Drane]

OK, thanks!

Grey

[sunshine]

Hi Brendan,

If there was deeper integration between Contacts data and Tap Forms, then how challenging (or not) do you think it would be to create a set of related forms to provided decent CRM functionality? Looking at apps such as Contacts Journal CRM on the App Store it looks as though a lot of the key functionality could be obtained via a competent user of Tap Forms, who would then have a decent amount of control over how their CRM system looks and functions.

Just a thought…

Best regards

[Peter Vrijlandt]

In my workflow the TapForms Addresses form is used as the central database. From there the Contacts and Calendar are populated. The field names in Tapforms must correspond to the field names in Contacts. This is not really necessary, because the fields can be remapped during import in Contacts, but it makes importing easier. After the Birthdays are imported in Contacts, they show automatically in Calendar.
These are the steps:
1) Select all addresses in TF.
2) Export records as ‘.csv’ with settings:
– file encoding: ‘Macos Roman’
– delimiters: Unix(LF) and ‘comma’
– date format: YYYY-mm-dd
– selected fields:
Last Name
First Name
Middle Name
Street
Postal Code
City
Country
Phone (home)
Phone (work)
Mobile (home)
Mobile (work)
Email (home)
Email (work)
URL (home)
Birthday
Group
3) Delete all records in Contacts.
4) Import csv file in Contacts; check if the fields are mapped correctly. With me remapping Postal Code, URL (home) and Group is necessary. Group can be mapped to Note field of Contacts, because then in Contacts you can make a smart group, based on the data in the Note field.

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