I learned several new things about iOS Contacts when I wrote a book section on entering an Explorer’s Contacts.
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Contacts can be added to an Explorer’s iPhone in several different ways. They can be typed in the iPhone directly or typed into the Contacts.app on an Explorer’s iCloud account. A Guide or other person may also share their contacts by Message or Mail (see user guide on sharing contacts). There are also ways to share many contacts at once 1 that can save time for some Guides.
Whether Contacts are shared to an Explorer’s phone or entered as new there are ways to make them more useful and less confusing. Keep the list relatively short at first — usually family members, aides, key friends and support staff. When you’ve assembled your list choose a few, ideally 3-8, to be “Favorites” (see below). Even if an Explorer never uses the Favorites list the iPhone’s increasing intelligence can use that knowledge, including automatically bypassing “do not disturb” settings. I’ve summarized recommendations for entering Contacts in table form, I’ve omitted fields that I haven’t found a use for (social profile, instant message, etc):
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Contact field(s) |
Recommendation |
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First and Last name and Company
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For businesses or organizations leave the name fields empty and enter the Company only. If you want to create an entry for a couple, like “Aunt Emily and Uncle John” put this into the Company field. |
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Phone |
When a call comes in the iPhone uses this number to display a name. So while you want to enter as few numbers as possible to reduce confusion, you may need to include a Favorite’s work number if they call from there. Tap on the default “home” label to specify if this is an “iPhone” or “mobile” or “work” or “home 2” number. |
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As with the phone example this information will be used to lookup an email correspondent. Most people have multiple emails, in general you want to put as few as possible here. Again tap on the label to specify “home”, “work” etc. |
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Ringtone and Text Tone |
Don’t skip over these! You may want to enable “Emergency Bypass” for some callers, particularly if an Explorer enables “Do Not Disturb” to avoid pesky calls they truly need to get (obviously be thoughtful about this). You can set distinct ring or text tones for key people. |
|
Address |
Even if an Explorer never looks at Contacts, much less sends a letter, this information is used by Maps and other apps for directions. Include it for places that an Explorer may travel too. Don’t forget to enter the Explorer’s own home and work addresses, many parts of the iPhone rely on this information. |
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Add Birthday (but not other dates) |
If you add a Contacts birthday it will show up on the iPhone calendar and Siri will answer question about when it is. You can add other dates, like anniversary or custom labels (Adoption Day) — but they are currently seen only in Contacts. Siri and Calendars.app don’t use them. |
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Add related name |
If you define a relationship here Siri will understand commands like “Call my brother Tim”. Instead of typing a name in use the “i” text button to select it from the Explorer’s Contacts list. |
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Add Field: Nickname and Phonetic. |
At the bottom of the edit screen there’s an “add field” text button. If you click here you’ll see choices like “Phonetic last name”, and “Nickname”. Both of these features work well with Siri and you should add them where appropriate 3. |
Once you’ve finished editing and saved contact information you will return a screen showing completed contact information. From there you can “Add to Favorites”. You can also choose to share an Explorer’s location with a specific person (See ____ for a detailed discussion on location sharing.)
1 See http://tech.kateva.org/2017/12/sending-multiple-contacts-to-ios-user.html.
2 Power user tip: If several contacts in a house share an old-fashioned landline then incoming calls will show one of those contact names. For our own home I put our home number in a special contact called “Home Number” and removed it from individual family member contacts.
3 There are other ways to train Siri to recognize names, but I find this is the easiest. As of the time I write this nobody knows how the “Pronunciation” field is used, my guess is that it’s used by iOS’s built-in screen reader. That’s an accessibility feature for visually impaired persons.