Advanced management address book
Contact Manager (or C@M) software is a complete and functional solution to ensure a regular monitoring of electronic address books related to individuals and companies. Contact Manager is an electronic tool to help in the management of contacts and prospects and offers of track maintained relationships daily. Contact Manager can be classified in the category of the customer relationship management (CRM) software.
Via an organization governed by a primary interface and access to categories of description of the data (contact, company, billing, etc.). These descriptions are store in a directory several files corresponding to distinct databases.
Contact Manager offers a series of facilities for an individual businessman, a small and medium company.
Two software distributions
Contact Manager is available in 2 distributions: Freeware-Adware (free of charge) and Shareware. The Shareware distribution requires a paid license to use all of the functional without restrictions. The Freeware distribution is free, but offers a functional restricted and enough classical management.
Contact Manager is a tool primarily aimed at small and medium-sized companies, organizations of association type and independent businessmen or account managers, but also to the individual wishing to a simple tool of access and taking in hand, but enough advanced, for the monitoring of personal contacts and relations.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
In addition to the conventional name, first name, phones and multiple addresses, Contact Manager offers a conservation of extended, as e-mail information, note-taking, recall of dates of anniversaries, actions tracking and customization of fields useful for a specific purpose. Management proposed in Contact Manager is mainly separated on 2 axes of Contacts:
- The physical person
- The company
The advanced appearance is put forward with fields provided for the designation of a function and a list of colleagues/employees. Added to this is the ability to classify each entry in one or more Categories and thus promote direct access to a group of contacts.
In the Shareware distribution, the main security is ensured by the possibility to encrypt data files, by a password which will then be asked to each opening of the base. The data is also protected by a backup mechanism simplified and integrated into the software.
First Use
For first use, the software is accessed via a this notification icon right in the Windows task bar and, more specifically, from what is called "The Windows notification area". Right click on the Contact dining icon allows to display a menu and launch the main interface by selecting item Cont@ct Manager display.
This access mode can be changed by a direct launch from the main interface. This change is accomplished by option accessible from the item "Configuration"... of the same menu since the notification icon.
The first step to use the software is to create a Contact Manager database. Via the main menu or the main icon bar, the user is prompted to select an empty directory. In this directory, the software records information (database, configuration, etc.) and, by default, automatic backups. The creation of the Contact Manager database, the software displays the database properties screen. This screen offers to enter optional information, such as a title and annotations for descriptions on the basis, but also the choice of configuration, as for example the background color of certain areas of the user interface and the selection of the files of conservation of data from the Database. By default, it is advisable to change nothing in terms of these options.
How Data content is displayed?
Display each Contact or company uses a special mechanism built around XML format content (eXtensible Markup Language) and XSL format style sheet (eXtensible Stylesheet Language). In summary, the style sheet (XSL) is independent of the content of the data (XML) and allows multiple and various displays. The role of this style sheet is to describe the viewing information contained in an XML file, to automatically generate a file in HTML format (Hypertext Markup Language). The HTML format is nativally recognized by internet browsers. This format is used by all of the Web sites of the world. Contact Manager uses an internal browser to display the information in the main interface. This operation is transparent to the user, but it means also that it is possible to display the data with any internet browser (IE, Mozilla, Chrome, etc.).
The XSL file is external to the software. This means that it is quite possible to modify this style sheet to get a fully customizable display (color, font, display location, etc.). It is a very open feature, but requires expertise or the use of specialized software. Indeed, XSL is a computer language that works as a programming language. By default, Contact Manager offers a XSL file for each management domain (Contact, Company, Billing,...). Therefore, it is not necessary to learn the XML and XSL languages. Its use is transparent to the user.
