Contacts are the people you interact with. You can add contacts to your personal list in the Launchbar. You can also manage your own Groove contact.
What do you want to do?
Adding new contacts
To search for and add new contacts to your contact list in the Launchbar, do the following:
- Click Add Contact.
- In the Find User dialog box, enter the name or text you want to find.
Details
You can search using "Full Name", "First Name", "Last Name", "Business E-mail", or "Personal E-mail". The search will return all contacts in which a match is found in any of the valid fields. For example, the search string "john" would return contacts named "Andrew Johnson" because "john" is the first four characters in the "Last Name" field. As a rule of thumb, the more specific you make the search string (by typing more characters), the more specific and exacting your search result will be.
You can rearrange the order of the columns in the Find User dialog box by dragging them. You can also remove columns (except for "Full Name") by right-clicking any column header and unchecking the name of the column to be removed. You can restore a removed column by right-clicking any column header and checking the name of the column to be restored. Any changes you make in the Find User dialog box apply only to the current search session. All defaults settings are restored the next time you open the Find User dialog box.
- Optional: Check Include Public Groove Directory if you want Groove to include this directory in the search.
- Click Find.
- If Groove finds a contact match, select it in the list.
Status icons display next to contacts in the list to allow you to see if they're currently online. However, contact matches found in the Groove Public Directory always initially display with an "Unknown" status icon until you select them and add them to your contact list.
- To see more information about a selected contact match, click Properties.
For example, you might want to take steps to verify the contact's identity.
- Click OK to add the contact to the list.
Adding a workspace member to your contact list
As new people become members of workspaces you belong to, you may want to add their contacts to your personal list. Right-click the member you want to add and select Add to My Contacts.
You can also add a member to your contact list by dragging.
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Saving a contact as a file
You can save a contact as a file. You could then send the contact file as an attachment in an email.
- Right-click the contact and select Save Contact as File....
- In the Save Contact Info As... dialog box, select the location in which to save the contact file, and click Save.
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Sending a contact to other people
You can send a contact to other people as a file attachment in an e-mail message or in a Groove message.
- Right-click the contact.
- SelectSend Contact via E-mail-Selected Contact.
- Enter one or more e-mail addresses in the To: field.
- If desired, edit the subject and text message.
Note that the standard text message includes instructions for downloading Groove, in case recipients don't have Groove accounts yet.
- Click OK.
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Verifying contact identities
Verifying the identities of the people you use Groove with is strongly recommended to alleviate the risk of sharing sensitive information with unintended people. Depending on your Groove installation, many contact identities may already be verified by an administrator at your organization. Groove indicates verification status of people in your contact and member lists using the following colors:
- Black: Not verified.
- Green:Verified by you.
- Teal: Verified by your organization.
- Blue: Verified by your organization but outside your domain or cross-certified.
- Red: Name conflict. If two contacts have similar names Groove displays them in red, regardless of their verification status. See Resolving name conflicts for more information.
The communication policies applied to your account identity determine your ability to interact with other Groove users depending on their verification status. These policies may do any of the following:
- Prohibit you from communicating with any users who are not verified by an administrator in your organization.
- Warn you before allowing you to communicate with users whose identities have not been verified. In this case Groove opens the Contact Verification Alert dialog box described below.
- Allow you to communicate with any contact without any warning or restriction.
Your organization's verification of other Groove users may provide you with enough assurance about their identities. In some cases, especially if you are working with highly sensitive information, you may also want to manually verify a user's identity.
Responding to the Contact Verification Alert dialog box
The Contact Verification Alert dialog box displays if you try to communicate with users whose identities have not been verified, and communication policies for your account identity are set to warn you about such users. You can do any of the following:
- Select users and click Verify Identity. Follow the instructions in the next section for manually verifying a contact identity.
- Click Properties to view contact properties for a selected user.
- Click Continue to ignore the user verification alert and continue with the activity.
- Click Cancel to cancel the activity you were doing that resulted in a user verification alert.
Manually verifying a contact
Groove assigns a unique "digital fingerprint" to each contact identity. A digital fingerprint appears as a long, random looking string of letters and numbers (with punctuation marks for readability). These digital fingerprints are used for manually verifying the real-world identities of Groove contacts you see in your workspaces and contact lists. You can also view the digital fingerprint assigned to your Groove identity.
To manually verify a contact identity, do the following:
- Right-click the contact (or workspace member) you want to verify and select Verify Identity....
The Verify Identity dialog box displays information about your current relationships with the selected contact, such as workspaces you share, the number of messages you have exchanged, and your organizational relationship. If you do not have any relationships with the selected contact, the Verify Identity dialog box instead provides instructions for verifying the contact's identity by checking their digital fingerprint.
Note Note: If Groove detects that there are two or more contacts that have the same, the Verify Identity dialog posts a warning message that advises you to assign as alias when you verify this contact.
- Do one of the following:
- If you are sufficiently assured of the contact's identity from the information you see, click Verify.
In the Verify Identity As dialog box, enter an alternative name for the contact if you think you need one, and click OK.
- If you are not yet sufficiently assured of the contact's identity, and want to take more steps to verify their identity, click Still not sure? - Check fingerprint.
Follow the steps in the Verify Identity dialog box for checking the contact's digital fingerprint, and click Verify.
In the Verify Identity As dialog box, enter an alternative name for the contact if you think you need one, and click OK.
Unverifying a contact identity
Although rare, you may occasionally have reason to change the verification status of contacts that you have manually verified so that they display as not verified.
- Right-click the contact (or workspace member) you want to unverify and select Verify Identity....
- Click Unverify.
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Resolving contact name conflicts
When two or more contacts have identical display names, their names display in red in contact lists, workspace member lists, and on their contact information cards. Groove considers display names identical if two (or more) names match exactly after removing leading, trailing, and multiple embedded spaces and converting the name to lowercase text.
For example, "Ann Beebe" and "Ann Beebe" will result in a name conflict. However, "Ann Beebe" and "AnnBeebe" will not result in a name conflict.
It's important to distinguish between contact names so you don't accidentally start Groove activities with the wrong contact. To do so, you can create an alias name for any of the conflicting contact names.
Additionally, in some rare cases, a name conflict may result from having obsolete contacts stored with your account. For example, perhaps a contact has activated a new Groove account, and has abandoned all activities in the previous one, but used the same display name for both. In this case, you can also hide the contact as described below so that it no longer displays in any of your contact lists.
To resolve a name conflict, do the following:
- Right-click a name showing a conflict, and select Resolve Name Conflict.
- Do any of the following:
- Click View vCard... to see details for the selected contact. This might help you distinguish between contacts of the same name.
- Click Alias Contact... to open the Alias dialog box where you can enter a unique display name for the contact.
- Click Verify Identity... to go through the steps of verifying a contact's identity.
- Click Done.
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Creating an alias for a contact
You can display any contact (other than your own) under an alias. This is useful if you're having trouble distinguishing between contacts who have the same name.
- Right-click the contact and select Alias Contact.
- Type an alias name and click OK.
The alias name displays in place of the original name. To see the contact's original name you can open their contact information, or point at the alias name to display a pop-up window that shows the original name.
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Deleting a contact
To delete a contact from your contact list in the Launchbar:
- Select the contact you want to delete.
- Press the DELETE key and click Yes to confirm the deletion.
Contacts you delete from the contact list in the Launchbar may still appear in other contact lists, such as the To: drop-down lists in the Send Message or Send Invitation dialog boxes. This is because Groove stores contact information for all Groove users with whom you interact in an aggregate list called "Known Groove Contacts". This includes contacts you've added to your Launchbar contact list, plus members of your workspaces. Keep in mind that you may commonly have workspace members who are not also in your contact list.
You cannot delete the contacts who appear in your Known Groove Contacts list. However, you can at least hide these contacts.
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Hiding a contact
Groove contacts may sometimes become obsolete for a variety of reasons. If you have obsolete contacts, you can hide them so that they're no longer listed in drop-down menus that show contacts.
- Select Options-Contact Manager.
- Select the contact(s) you want to hide.
- Click Hide to place the selected contacts in the Hidden Contacts list.
- Click OK.
Note Hiding a contact will not automatically resolve an associated name conflict. If a contact you want to hide appears as a name conflict, see Resolving name conflicts for information.
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Viewing diagnostic information about a contact
You can view the diagnostic information for selected contacts. You may occasionally need to see this information for technical support purposes. If you need to send diagnostic information to a support technician, you can copy and paste the information in the Diagnostics dialog box into an email.
- On the Options menu, click Contact Manager.
- Select the contact you want.
- Click Diagnostics.
To copy information from the Contacts pane, right-click and select Select All, then right-click and select Copy.
To copy information from the Awareness or Network Diagnostics panes, click Copy to Clipboard.
- Click OK.
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Viewing contact properties
To view the "properties" for any contact, right-click the contact and select Properties. From contact properties you can:
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