If you keep your cards on a network using an LDAP server, you can share access to them, browse other peoples address books, or maintain a shared set of contact information for your company or your department. This is the sort of feature you'll want to use if your company has a list of vendors and clients that needs constant updating. If you share calendars as well as address books, people can avoid duplicating work and keep up to date on developments within their workgroup or across the entire company.
Example 5-2. Sharing Address Cards and Calendar Data
Ray wants to schedule a meeting with Company X, so he checks the network for the Company X address card so he knows whom to call there. Since his company also shares calendars, he then learns that his co-worker Deanna has already scheduled a meeting with Company X next Thursday. He can either go to the meeting himself or ask Deanna to discuss his concerns for him. Either way, he avoids scheduling an extra meeting with Company X.
Of course, you don't want to share all of your cards— why overload the network with a list of babysitters or tell everyone in the office you're talking to new job prospects? If you keep cards on your own computer, you can decide which items you want to make accessible to others.
To learn how to add a remote directory to your available contact folders, see the section called Managing the Contact Manager in Chapter 9. Once you have a connection, the network contacts folder or folders will appear inside the External Directories folder in the folder bar. It will work exactly like a local folder of cards, with the following exceptions:
Network folders are only available when you are connected to the network. If you use a laptop or have a modem connection, you may wish to copy or cache the network directory and then synchronize your copy with the networked version periodically.
To prevent excess network traffic, Evolution will not normally load the contents of LDAP folders immediately upon opening. You must click Display All before LDAP folder cards will be loaded from the network. You can change this behavior in the Contact Preferences window.
Your ability to view, change, add, and delete contacts depends on the settings of the LDAP server.