Tag Archives: Address Book

Merlin – Address Book Contacts on Mountain Lion

Posted on by

I would like to add resources into my Merlin project from the mac Address Book. When I look in the Merlin library the Address Book icon is there but I can’t seem to get it to populate with any contacts. When I drag and drop a contact from my Address Book on to the resources list, it adds a new resource but doesn’t provide any of the contact information. I am using the latest Merlin for Mac OS X version on a current OS X 10.8.x (Mountain Lion)- Can you help?

 

When working on Mountain Lion, you should allow Merlin to access the Address Book contacts. If this is not the case, Merlin won’t be able to list those contacts in the Library or provide contact information.
So please check System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Contacts > … 

Merlin – refresh resources’ address

Posted on by

In Merlin you can utilize contacts from Address Book, MS Entourage or LDAP server as resources for your projects. We have described in the past how this helps when working on multiple projects and require a pool with “master resources“.

The idea is simple. As a mac PM you probably already use Address Book or MS Entourage to manage your contacts, so why entering this data again and again for each and every one new project? You simply insert a contact from the library in your Merlin project and Merlin links to the contact of the source application. If you click on the icon or  displayed next to the name of the resource, the relevant application will be started and the person in Address Book will be displayed. As the resources are linked to the relevant data record, all modifications you make in the source application can reflect back in Merlin.

To refresh the contact information of inserted resources, Continue reading →

Getting the primary email address

Posted on by

When you drag an Address Book card onto an activity, either directly from the Mac OS X Address Book application or out of Merlin’s “Library” dialogue, it will get assigned to this activity and appear in our project management software as a resource. This resource remains linked to the original entry in the Address Book. Changes in the Address Book card, will get transferred automatically to the various Merlin projects where this resource has been assigned to.

Sometimes there could be an issue though in recognizing the prime email address and setting this for the resource. We had reported this issue to Apple in year 2004 as tested the first version of Address Book, but a solution had not been released yet.

Fortunately there is an API to the Address Book, which developers can use when wanting to create add-ons for it.
Taking advantage of this fact we have created an Address Book add-on solving the issue of primary email address and phone number. Our primarily in 2005 released add-on, repairs Address Book and helps Merlin getting the appropriate data for the resources. You can get it for free and it is very easy to install.

  • You download the Address Book Add-On
  • You extract the zip archive and copy the 2 included files into the following directory “~/Library/Address Book Plug-Ins” (~ : stands for your home directory)