TeamDesk Knowledge Base & Support

cooper collier  3/23/2016 4:13:04 PM

It's a great idea, and one I been meaning to implement in a couple of databases. I put it on the back burner because the client tends to use teamdesk as the smart phone contact list. So long as the number is displayed as a phone number the phone browser dials it.

I can certainly see wanting to take the contact from TeamDesk and import it onto email.
While I have not done it... its seems to be pretty straight forward.

VCF files are simply text files

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard

Pierre 5/24/2019 6:46:14 AM

Hello Cooper
Thanks for your comment

Converting the text from a VCF file to a contact seems indeed straightforward.

But how to retrieve the text of the VCF into TeamDesk ?

Kind regards,

Pierre

cooper collier  5/27/2019 9:18:01 AM

Pierre
Sorry for the delayed response. I turns out that getting V-cards into Teamdesk is not an easy process at all. I had some ideas, showing the idea is much to big to do via text. So I made a video. So here it is.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UuPCd2yxl_-1rSv8NqFeZiqzcQVZEIcK

Pierre 5/27/2019 10:59:34 AM

Hello Cooper

Thanks a lot - really a lot - for your help here.
Your video is very interesting and I am amazed you took that time to dig with so much application into this problem.


From the VCF-Text to TeamDesk
Your video illustrates very well how the variety of standard implementations makes the conversion a pain to encode.
Here we all use Macs and only have to deal with 3.0 VCFs (either we type the VCF or we retrieve them via a photo to VCF iPhone app). So this would ease the TeamDesk encoding.
It would still be such a pain to manage the option (the FN, SORTAS) that I really wonder whether it is worth the effort / or whether this is the right way.

I have quickly looked for existing translation options. ( VCARD TO CSV Conversion on Google).
There are some options - I will proof them further - I don't know if they can be connected to TeamDesk but I will dig it.
https://tribulant.com/vcard-csv/
http://labs.brotherli.ch/vcfconvert/
https://sourceforge.net/projects/bulkvcftocsv/


Then there is the .VCF file to VCF Text issue to deal with.
You mentioned ZAPIER (paying). I am curious to learn about alternative options.


I'd be happy and proud to show you something you don't know - not sure this can happen !!

Thanks again

Pierre

cooper collier  5/27/2019 11:58:58 AM

The trick is to get the contents of the file into teamdesk. Teamdesk does not open files, thus the need for one of the integration platforms.

You need the 3rd party to do the follow.

Accept a file, most like via email, it then need to open the file, then send the contents of the file to teamdesk.

Teamdesk can accept the output of the 3rd party app, using the Emailtodb (fairly easy) or RESTapi. (harder). Once you have the V-card contents into a teamdesk record, you just use the New Record Trigger to do exactly what I showed you.

One thing I that initially confused me was how to get email and send data. I discovered that most of the integration tools use what they call a WebHook to do that.

Zapier is the most popular, but I had found some other options when I was exploring a different process. But I found 3 others, each of these have a free level, for light use you may be covered.



https://www.integromat.com (try this first)

Microsoft flow.

skyvia.com