Nokia Beta Labs

Why not implement categories, as in Outlook. It's asked for for years now by a lot of users. A lot of users sync with Outlook. I do and I have a category Personal and a category Business (and some more). Use these same categories to choose what contact(s) (category) should be used for what service. Category Personal for Friend View, category Chat for chat and categorie Business for whatever other service. It's flexible and users can create their own category naming to make it easy for themselves.
For those who do not use Outlook, make PC Suite work with the same categories instead of groups. Why is the implentation of categories such an issue with Nokia?

I agree with most of what's been said above. The lack of integration with my Nokia Chat buddy list was the first thing I noticed, as it indeed seemed silly.

I think, the key is, allowing me the option. While managing a massive buddy list on my phone is a hassle, I would definitely like to see a pop-up that says, 'You currently have friends on other Ovi services, would you like to add them to this service?' followed by the ability to select all (easily bring the same group of friends around with you) or allow me to select which ones are copied over, similar to creating an SMS, where I can check the boxes of those I want copied.

I also want to second (or third, or whatever) that Nokia take a closer look at the existing category options in various services that S60 owners use. I would imagine that a large majority of S60 owners who sync their phones, do so with MS Outlook. While I personally don't use categories there, that's only because they're currently useless in any application other than Outlook. If they were copied over to my phone, as Contact Groups, you can bet that I would use them, as I'm a huge proponent of Contact Groups, specifically as they are currently implemented in S60.

This also brings up the multiple phonebooks that are available in several of the S40 phones announced for developing markets. Why isn't this available on S60, specifically with the Eseries (but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't add another feature to Eseries without putting it on Nseries. We're still pissed about the Active Standby plugins). Why not have a work phonebook and a personal one?

I failed to stress on saying if cataloged or grouped, Most important would be the source before asking for, friend, buddy, work. Because in the end you wanna know from which source your data came through. Example would be IM, using Nokia chat where mobile advantage lays compared to contacts from other sources(meaning taking advantage or knowing they are capable of certain mobile social utilities).

I agree with most of what has been said Tommi. Ive meant to mention this issue before but did not get around to it.

I also choose not to use facebook, for it will integrate all my contacts in one place, where i enjoy having it separate.

In my opinion to reach an in between solution is something i see should be applied all over the board for nokia.
Having always the option to integrate certain data(not just contacts) from various sources at the discretion of the end user, if decided not to, an option to draw single info.

An example would be: For me i arrange my contacts based on location(primarily) I have 2 lives one in the USA, and old one back home. I dont care an need to know where my buddies are or what their doing, or will i be contacting every moment, but i will for the people in my current surrounding.
OK i should say this to over the email service but ill give the example here. I use nokia email service using gmail(primarily my mobile email account, and everyday life, private, professional) Then i use msn messenger(for my personal, friends from back home an other). Now i love the fact msn creates a tab under my contacts, and is not mixed with my main contacts, BUT when it comes to accessing msn contact via the nokia email service its not able to. That would be the best solution for me to divide certain data, but the ability to choose to mix it up, or leave it alone, but able to access the info via applicants.
Other opinions may differ, and i welcome it.

The starting point to all services is the contact list anyway. The applications/services can manage their separate lists, but it all has to be based on one common contacts database.

Soon (?) as services merge under Ovi, the contact list would serve as
- switchboard, to see who is available in which service
- discovery source, to invite the friends to connect in a certain service
- storage of all kinds of "social" connections
- driver of customer loyalty for Nokia
(http://www.renegadefanboy.com/2008/11/how-to-save-nokias-ovi-from-dying/)
- valuable mass-marketing tool for Nokia ;-)

If I have my contacts safely stored by Nokia, all my connections stored by Nokia and the presence of my friends also stored by Nokia (inside an Ovi service or as a gateway to outside services), then I would really think twice before going through the hassle of collecting these ever again. :-)

Friends View is the future of mobile computing - location-based services are the way forward and Nokia has the best mobile platform at this point in time. I hope N will continue to develop hardware which increases the ease of using positional services - for instance not having to open the keypad to acquire a GPS signal as I do with my N95. Not too worried about merging contact lists as location tracking is still quite novel and not something I'd want all my contact to be able to do. Cheers :)

Surely one answer is additional controls within Friend View; share a single contact list across all the Nokia Account services, but by default give no access. So, if I add a new contact via Nokia Chat, they don't automatically get access to FriendView, but do now appear in my list of friends but with "no access to your location". Then, have a facility for granting them "approximate location" or "exact location" information; they are some people who don't need (or I don't want to have) my exact location, but knowing roughly where I am is still important.

By adding these additional "accuracy" controls, including a "no access" option, we can benefit from the advantages of a single contact list, but without the concerns you rightly raise over who has access.

I agree with the Categories idea though as well; implement the two together; I add person x, and put them into category "work", where "work" gets "approximate location", whereas I add person y into category "friend" or "best friends" and that category gets "exact location" (which would be a lot easier to manage for the user, although I suspect more work for Nokia to develop). Of course, you should be allowed to have a best friend who also works for the same company, who would then get the more precise location information.

Yes, usecase profiles would be great. But then Symbian wide.

I wished the grouping in the contacts of symbian would finally be used properly. Meaning that Mail4Exchange sync properly syncs these. Also the private/public in calender should be changed to groups and properly synced. Meaning work appointments with the Exchange server at work, private appointments with nokia sync/gmail sync. And hobbie, second job synced to another account i.e. a shared gmail agenda setup. Then having a timed profiles/profiles (like mail4exchange sync profiles setting) that activates a usecase group with selected groups for chat, incoming call filtering and taskreminding. And yes, tasks need groups/categories too. Like a lists that filter on this month, this week, today, urgent, group sorted etc...

People have different roles, some are parrallel and some are not. A phones working mode should reflect and respect that.

oops, the link is> http://pablo.poo.cl/ncs.jpg

When you discuss contacts, don't think of Ovi accounts at all. I have one list of contacts that's managed outside my phone and synced every now and then. Contacts are the people you know. Real people in real life. One contact is one individual and I shouldn't be forced to have him or her twice in any data base.

Contacts have accounts at services. When my friend Max Müller has a Nokia Chat account, this account is a contact detail just as his phone numbers and his postal address.

If Friend View and Nokia Chat are the same service or two services is more or less a matter of service definition, not of the way you manage contacts. - If Nokia decides it's one service, then Max Müller will have one more contact detail that will control both parts. If there'll be two services, there'll be two new contact details, one for each. (Nokia already does this on the Maemo platform.)

So basically it's a management decision about what the service is, it's not about how contacts are handled. This needs to be improved, though. Everything should be part of the central contacts management.

Oh, there's a challenge: Because desktop aapplications and online contact databases usually know little about these innovative contact details, syncing tends to break this model and delete data. A device that handles service details in such a way would have to find a way around this to allow the classic contact details to be part of the syncing while application-specific data is kept in the background and re-applied later.

It's work enough keeping an up-to-date personal address book without having to add relationship meta-data, and I'm willing to hazard a guess that most people make no use of the Groups feature of the Nokia Contacts application.

So no matter what the mechanics are of the contacts / groups in the Nokia cloud, what I'd *really* like to have are groups that are formed automatically based on my activity, both on-device and on the web.

For example, if my device is in Bluetooth proximity to a contact's device during work hours, then it's likely that they're a "work contact."

Similarly, if Friend View places me regularly in the same location as someone every night, then they're likely a family member or close friend.

Plazes already does this to some tentative extent: when I go to invite contacts to an activity, I see a list of "usual suspects" presented to me -- other that I've invited to activities before.

Im sure Im going to repeat some of the great ideas above. Here is my thoughts, I hope they make some sense.

What about in the contacts section of a device, have more options. Like check boxes and such to select other services your contacts use. Like, I have my girlfriend, she decides to use Nokia Chat, I can check off that she is on it, then add her either gtalk or ovi name. Hvae one tab for close friends and family, and another for friends that you contact online.

Then take it a step further, have it sync with ovi, so you can add and edit your contacts on a web interface too.

I dont know how hard this would be, but how about, In contacts, the device "sees" the communication apps you have on your device. Back to my GF again, the device has all my communication apps listed, and I can check ones that she is using, and also check the ones she is not. For these she would get an invite or a web link with an offer to join.

I hope this makes sense, I was just thinking out loud. lol

I agree with roma, Stephen Wing, dirk, Chris and others. There should definitely, positively, absolutely only be ONE contacts list. The ability to categorize/group them should be an absolute that is respected by all Ovi applications.

Separately, but this only works for some devices like the e71, you can switch between a work and personal profile on the phone which could be "greatly" leveraged moving forwards if (and probably more likely when) it becomes the standard for S60. Side not here - unfortunately Nokia seems to like to categorize things too much so will probably not include this capability on just a "consumer" phone, because who uses regular phones for business (touch of sarcasm here).

I can't believe there is any reason not to have a single list. The only discussion should be around how to best present and use that list on a mobile interface. As obviously it will need to be easy to set up 'i only want x people on my im list' or 'i don't care if my boss is near me' :)

As people said, multiple services can be catered for with a flag on each contact.

The other aspect to remember is that the contacts should be fully syncable with multiple other services (google, apple, windows etc etc).

I have to admit, I was expecting Friends View to automatically merge with contacts in Nokia Chat, and thought I was going mad not being able to find away of importing them, then I read Ricky's comment about it on SG. Doh, how can Nokia NOT have enabled this with such an application.?? Seems silly not to.

Many user will sync their contacts with Outlook or similar ...we do with Windows Contacts (Vista Business). We stopped to sync with Ovi or any other possibility, because finally will be sync problems or data loss with data in outlook etc..
In my opinion one set of contacts is okay, doesnt matter if it is business or private. All the messenger i use on phone or computer are private and business contacts mixed, without any problem.

It should work with brightkite ... It would be brilliant !!!

I vote for more or less the same writen here. The first thing I thought was just the same as #1, that you're in one way making a really big convergence in a really small device but then the software is quite the oposite. And the birthdays example was also my first thinking. Then I thought again things similar to what's writen. You should use groups in contacts (just because they are there NOW) to make all this kinds of separations by service.

Also, we want not only nokia contacts integration, but as other say here, we also want contacts sync with exchage and with gmail contacts. It's all about the real convergence in the services what we really need right now.

Should we have only one set of contacts whom we can interact with in multiple ways, or should we have multiple sets of contacts for different services / use cases?

Aren't you going this way now? The 5800 doesn't present a kind of solution in this case where you can check out messages, emails, registers, rss feeds etc from certain contacts? What if you add to it the nokia friend view with last known location on friends?

Nokia was all about convergence. Convergence of several gadgets in only one device. But your software doesn't reflect that as much as it could. For years that I regret that calendar/birthdys/contacts are not connected. When we enter a birthdate in the contact details it should automatically appear in the calendar. This is only one example.

for me the solution is software convergence. Let the machine understands everything as only one. If a contact has a page on myspace or facebook, let it be all in one place. Maybe you should stop thinking that the contacts are just a list of telephone numbers, but yet they're little folders where the phone number is just one of the pages...

Cheers

In my feedback, I've asked for the same - my initial solution would be utilizing Contact groups, as it is present in the phone and (i guess) base of Ovi in the future.

"By utilizing contact groups, separation of posts or location could become possible (to friends, family, contact or public)."
http://www.renegadefanboy.com/2008/11/friend-view-the-good-the-bad-and-t...

This is valid for all web services and social networks:
1. classification of contacts into different levels (groups)
2. disable functions based on groups

Example:
1. if someone is a Friend (not in the social network way, but really ;-)
2. they could search for me in Ovi based on my known details and could find me in FV or Chat
3. Based on my switchboard rules, they could:
3.a. immediately put me on their chat/FV contact list
3.b. immediately chat to me
3.c. immediately see my presence in FV (Share on Ovi etc.)

or

1. if someone is just a "contact"
2. same as above
3. Based on my different definition:
3.a. put me on their contact list w/o confirmation
3.b. chat to me
3.c. see only posts from me on FV, but not location

etc.

The good news, that most of the social network sites DO NOT make a differentiation. All contacts are friends. It would be nice if Nokia could deliver the first mainstream social address book, which makes this differentiation.

(I did notice the "social address book" expression in many Nokia job ads. Gimme now ;-)

Sorry, took too much time to write my comment - I just repeated #2-4.

Some additions. Using the gps/nokia chat stuff. You could change profiles per location. Meaning being at work, sets the work profile, being at the gym, sets the gym setting. Being at home sets the home profile. Including the networkpreferences for local wifi. The profiles and stuff should on demand be able to be overruled (like bluetooth, only for 10 minutes or until new profile change). Chat could reflect the location profiles. So people know that you are some where or doing something. (Work, home, offline, gym, girlfriend's house) etc... Euh, I never go to the gym :-P

Yesterday I started to use Nokia friend view and because of that was forced to create a Nokia Account and because of that I also realised I could sync my contacts and calendar on Ovi.

I thought it could be very nice to be able to sync my contacts and calendar, so I did that also. I find it very nice. I thought it could be very nice to work in Ovi and change things there, so I test to change one contact in Ovi and sync it to my phone, but data for that contact was suddenly removed.
I have now understand I am not able to work like that, because sync on Ovi is not reliable yet.

I think it more important to fix this type of basic functionality before doing integration with other type of applications.

I agree with all of the above but for me the key thing is context.

I want a single unified set of contacts across the device, but I also want those contacts to be grouped to give me easy access to the contacts I'm interested in in a specific context.

For me the seperation of 'context' is a real step towards an intelligent device.

When I'm at work I want quick access to my work contacts. I want my phone profile set to silent, I want presence status set to 'At Work' etc.

As soon as I leave the office I want quick access to my personal contacts, I want my phone profile set back to general, I want friends to be able chat to me.

This 'context' as I see it is about more than changing your ring volume etc as the current profile supports. Its about changing the way I want to access information on the device and let poeople access my information and status.

When I'm in a given context i generally only want to interact with people associated with that context. Its not likely I'm going to want to call my manager at work when I am out at a party on Saturday night, or than I am going to want to call my mates at 10am on a monday morning.

Of course these contacts still have to be accessible - i'ts just that access to elements associated with a given context should be easier to locate. Think of a seperate tab in the contacts pane for diffeent contexts - the tab shown by default is the one associated with the given context.

The seperation of context also blends nicely into other usecases. Calendar for example - again, when I look at my calendar at work, I just want to see items in my work context. If I want to see what I am doing on the weeknd I can still access that information, but my calendar is not cluttered.

This conext can be manual - I.e. I manually set my context from a list or automatic based on time\day or geographic location.

Of course the key about this context is that all information has to be accessible, its just that the accessibliity of relevant information can be improved by using the given context.

Anyway, just kinda thinking out loud about this stuff, be intersting to see what people have to say...

Friend list/groups is definitely the way to, as implemented by Facebook, Gmail, and Nokia's Contacts application. Then you should be able to share your location/photos/whatever with particular 'groups' and/or individual contacts.

A single list of contacts but divided in to simple categories like: "Work", "Friends", "Other" would be easy to setup. (think most of this is already within the V-Card framework.)

The idea of location sensitive Contacts is very interesting. But you need to have an easy way to manage these! Hopefully Ovi will mature enough to take over some of these functions.

Contacts should be part of your Nokia Account and every service that use the nokia account should have access to these contacts. Think that every application is a new service associated to your account.
[picture: http://pablo.poo.cl/ncs.jpg]
1 nokia account has 1 or more asociated contacts (those contacts are nokia accounts too, that is the reason of the loop)

1 contact has only 1 nokia account.

1 nokia account has 0 or more services

The relation between the nokia account with the application is the way to know if I have that application, so if another user in my contact list install the same application he will appear in the contact list of that application.

Now, if we add a nokia account field in the phone contacts application we can get everything in sync

--
Pablo

My bigger issue isn't contact integration across apps, it's application consolidation across identities.

Nokia chat is nice, but nobody knows me by my Nokia/Ovi ID. It's great that I can talk to people on GoogleTalk using Nokia chat, but they need to know me as my Google ID AND my Ovi ID. This is not practical.

I would like to see applications on the mobile that allow me to appear as myself on different services, while exploiting the Nokia innovations (GPS-based information, etc). This includes public services such as Google and Yahoo!, as well as private/corporate XMPP services.

When you read a comment by a user you're not friends with, it should show their profile to allow you to add them as a contact. Since it's hard enough to find and add folks, make it easier. Remember, this used to be called a friend-of-a-friend network.

How are friends organized? It's not by order added, alphabetical, or by location...

This is a nice application, but I think it's too complicated. All your contacts are stored in, well, the contacts of your phone.
You should be able to send you GPS location to any group of ppl from your contacs via simple SMS so that it then would applear in their GPS programs as a location or a favourite. You often need to tell your location to random people, so having a dedicated contac list for that is impractical, no matter what list it is.
Since favourites apear throughout different GPS programs, this should be a cross-platform thing. Meaning that I should be able to SMS my GPS position to owners of any phones, not just Nokia and without any client applications.
I think this should be the core concept, and then you could build on application on the top of it.

Many good requirements posted here, I like it.
Nokia could dig a bit, look into its archives, etc. Nokia (I was in the team at the time) was instrumental in defining the Liberty ID-WSF People Service, a spec for a standard, open,web service that has your Contacts/Friends or whatever you like to call them. It supports hierarchical grouping and within the context of the Liberty IDentity-based Web Service Framework also enables the "consolidation of identities" as asked in comment 16 above. This is all 3-4 years old now, and SOAP based, but the People Service spec and some ("white") papers about it could serve as some good inspiration. One can always do a REST version of it. In any case it is the ideas that are important, more than the actual specification.
An introduction paper is at: www.projectliberty.org/liberty/content/download/387/2720/file/Liberty_Fe...
and the actual spec at: http://www.projectliberty.org/resource_center/specifications/liberty_all...

Its very simple, for a long term solution. Nokia devices should support ovi contacts in nokias contact system. Now future applications can pull the ovi info. At the moment there is no way to collect, organise, & sync, without a workaround. Its funny how nokia created the service, but no support yet?lol i dont blame them, big moves an changes an all, they just gotta speed up they dont want to give a bad impression entering the service medium.

How about integration into the phone's contacts. Allowing it to be optional. Add a "friendsview userid" as a field, or "nokia chat username".... Or just "nokia username", with check boxes of ovi, friendsview, nokia chat stating whether or not you want to use that user in that related app. It would be a centralized manager.

I think, there is no reason to not have one contact list.

But a few options would be nice.

For one, i like the idea i had in my deviantart account.
if i add a frind, i can choose, if i want notifivation about new pics/drafts/blogs and messages from him.

Also nice is the Black List in my FritzBox. I can choose, which contact is allowed to call me at night and which not.

So, why not insert these option into the contacts. Make a set of standard settings for all new contacts. Somethink like, is allowed to call around the clock, not gps charing.. If i want to change this i can go into the contact and change it for this person only.

Oh, and by the way, ovi sucks. Sync tibbled all my contacs and appointments, and there is no way to delete the complete calender. :(

Eismaus

Why not use the address book as a single repository for all contacts. One could then create contact groups for different apps and different situations and retrieve the one(s) applicable. This way the friend finder etc lists will be sync'd w/the calendar.