Using FirstClass Contacts

From TechHelp - MCLA's Technology Help Center

FirstClass Contacts

The FirstClass Contacts area is essentially your electronic address book. It allows you to store names, phone numbers, addresses, and other information about your personal contacts. It also gives you the ability to maintain mailing lists.

Each user has the ability to create an contacts book in which to store mailing lists for groups of people or individuals who are regular correspondents. Contacts is helpful when:

• You frequently send messages to users outside the E-Campus system, and would rather not enter the full email address every time.

• You often need to send the same message to a group (two or more users) of people

Please note: Typically there is no need to enter people who are in the MCLA community in your personal contact list. The public contact list contains everyone in the MCLA community already.

For example, you may wish to create a contact called “Homer” which could be used each time you wished to send email to the person at “hsimpson@springfield.net”. Or, when addressing a message to a committee from your department, you could address your message to “Committee” instead of listing each member's name in the message.

To create a contact select “OPEN” then “Contacts Folder” from the FILE menu. If you don't already have one, FirstClass creates one for you. (You can also open your Contacts by double-clicking its icon on your desktop.)

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Adding Names to your Contacts and Mail Lists

To create a new contact

1. Click ‘File'
2. Click ‘New'
3. Select ‘New Contact'

You will be presented with an empty contact entry form that you can enter your personal contact's information in. After you have done so click the icon in your toobar that says ‘Save and Close'. Your personal contact will then be added you're your contact list.

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To create a new mail list

1. Click ‘File'
2. Click ‘New'
3. Select ‘New Mail List'

You will be presented with an empty personal mail list form. You must specify a name for your mail list. You can then enter each of the members of your personal mail list. Including e-mail addresses for people outside of the MCLA community or peoples real names that are.

Please note: Each contact that you enter must be on a separate line. (Hit ‘Enter' after each contact you type in.)

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Using Contacts Items

The names group names you've created are added to your contacts directory, accessible at any time when you address a message. To use them, simply begin by creating a message in the usual way, and in the “To” field, you need only enter the short name of the individual (“Tim” or “chris”) or group (“friends” or “committee”). The Contact items you create are not accessible by any other users. These items appear in your directory only.

There are two ways to e-mail a personal contact or mail list that you have entered.

• Within the contacts area you can browse through your contacts and mail lists. Once you have found the contact or mail list that you would like to e-mail, right click on it. Select ‘Create Mail To' from the menu. A new e-mail with the contact you selected will show.

• As explained above, when you are composing a new message you can enter the name of the personal contact or the name of the mail list by just typing it in. Note the difference between icons that may appear before the name of the contact

A person in your personal contacts is specified by this icon:

A person in the MCLA public directory is specified by this icon: