So, you’ve got this massive list of contacts in your S60-powered smartphone. Fantastic! But do you have them organized? One of the most often overlooked features of S60 is the ability to create Contact Groups. You can manage this on the phone, but you can also now use the Nokia Communication Center on your Windows-powered computer to manage these groups from your computer with ease. So, how do these Contact Groups help you manage your time better? I’m glad you asked.
Let’s begin with creating a few Contact Groups. Open your Contacts application, and then press the right d-pad to tab over to your Groups screen. Odds are, you don’t have any in here. To create your first group, simply press Options, and Create New Group. You can give the group a name, and then save. You can now click on the group to add people from your existing contacts list. Very easy. Alternatively, you can use the new Nokia Communication Center to create groups, and then sync those over to your phone. Unfortunately, there is no way, currently, to sync Contact categories from Outlook to your phone, so you’re stuck with either creating your Contact Groups on your phone, or with the Nokia Communication Center.
Now that’s done, let’s explore a few ways in which you can use Contact Groups to better manage your contacts, as well as notifications of incoming phone calls.
First, you can assign a specific ringtone to each caller group easily. This way, you can always have a better idea of who’s calling. For instance, my groups are ‘Bros’, ‘Chicks’, ‘Family’, and ‘Internet People’. My goal is to have every single contact fit into at least one group. This way, I can set each group to have its own ringtone, and then assign a different ringtone for anyone who’s not in my contacts list. By setting it up this way, I can easily determine who is calling based on the ringtone, without even looking at my phone, which is brilliant.
The second great way to really get some utility out of the Contact Groups on your S60-powered smartphone is within the Profiles on your phone. You may have noticed, but if you go into Profiles, and choose to Customize one, you’ll see towards the bottom of the settings that you can select which Contact Groups get through. This is brilliant if you have a ‘Work’ group, as you can create a special profile which, when active, silences the ringer for anyone whose number is listed in that group. For example, let’s say you leave work at 5p, every day. If you’ve set your boss as a contact, and put him in a ‘Work’ Contact Group, you could simply change your profile at 5p so that if he calls after you’ve left work, the call will not ring, and will eventually dump him into voicemail.
Another brilliant way to use Contact Groups is for mass messaging. Note that a single contact might be included in more than one Contact Group. This is useful if you have a group of people that you normally SMS, such as a group of friends that you hang out with, a group of classmates that you work with, or your coworkers, if you often use SMS to keep in touch. Once you’ve set them as a Contact Group, you can easily create a message that sends itself to everyone in the group, without having to manually choose each person each time you need to send a message. This is an extremely handy tool for coordinating plans for a night on the town, or any other instance in which you may need to broadcast a message to a set group of people.
To send a message to a group, you can either simply create the message, and then click in the ‘To’ field to add a contact. When your contacts list opens, tab over to the right to get to your Contact Groups, and select the group you wish to message. You can also open the Contacts app, tab over to your list of groups, and use the options menu to create a message. Either way, this is an extremely helpful tool to organize groups of people.
How do you setup your Contact Groups? Are you using this feature to its fullest? Do you have any other tips that can help you really manage your contacts effectively?
