vCards are really nothing more than electronic business cards. The Internet Mail Consortium owns the format, after it was proposed by the Versit consortium, which consisted of Apple, Siemens, IBM, and AT&T.* Now, more often than not, you receive an e-mail message with an attached .vcf file.
Attached vCard (or .vcf files) in your mail message can be easily imported into your Lotus Notes Personal Name and Address Book (PNAB) simply by double-clicking on it and Viewing the vcf file. Lotus will provide a dialog box showing you the vCard file (like any other attachment) but with a prompt to Save. If you click on Save, the contents of the vCard will be added to your PNAB as a new Contact.
(from the Lotus Notes Client Help database - you knew that you could find this in there, didn't you?)
That is all well and good, but how do you create a vCard to send to your contacts/customers? That is fairly easy.
Create your personal contact information as a Contact in your PNAB. Some fields that you ought to fill out are First Name, Last Name, e-mail address, Company Name, phone, mobile, fax numbers, and your address. Once you have finished with your contact information, save the Contact.
Now, select and export your Contact as a vCard file.
Decide if you want ALL data to go into the vCard or just the basics (the basics should be fine):
Click on OK.
You have now created a vCard and can attach it into your next e-mail to your customers or contacts.
Link: Internet Mail Consortium: vCards
Link: Wikipedia: vCard
Technorati tag: vCard Show-n-Tell Thursday SnTT
* - from Wikipedia entry on vCard
Comment posted by Nathan T. Freeman03/01/2007 07:52:10 AM
Homepage: http://nathan.lotus911.com
Gregg, I don't know if it's still active, but the OpenNTF Mail Experience used to have some pretty extensive code for including vCards in all your outbound messages. I wrote an interface in years ago where you could set your preferences with your details, and it would attach a properly formatted file to every message.
It probably doesn't see much usage, since I don't think it's documented. But it's in there. Feel free to steal it. :)
Comment posted by Charles Robinson03/01/2007 08:08:47 AM
Homepage: http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com
Gregg, pretty nifty tip. Now if only there were a way to automatically include the vCard on all outbound messages. Oh wait, Nathan responded!
Nathan, I'll be digging that up shortly, thanks for the heads up!
Comment posted by Gregg Eldred03/01/2007 02:34:54 PM
Homepage: http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf
@Nathan and Charles - I have to say that I am surprised by your responses. I thought that this was a dumb tip, that "everyone" knew about how vCards and Notes interact.
And to the inclusion, can't you add it in your signature file? Just a thought.
I am glad that you liked this one.
Comment posted by Bruce Elgort03/01/2007 10:32:38 PM
Homepage: http://www.bruceelgort.com
@Nathan,
I believe the feature is still in the template:
http://www.vinceschuurman.com/vince/home/ndt4.nsf/(LUBlogContent)/200601211715
Comment posted by Ray "The Lion King" Bilyk03/06/2007 12:50:17 PM
Homepage: http://www.thepridelands.com
Just a reminder to watch the filename of the .vcf file. A customer of ours had a problem sending us email until we realized that the message included a .vcf file that included the company's website as part of the filename... dot com in file attachments are a no go here.
Comment posted by Gregg Eldred03/06/2007 07:07:18 PM
Homepage: http://www.ns-tech.com/blog/geldred.nsf
@Ray - Thanks for the tip!
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