Call/Action Templates

Call/Action Templates are a special type of template that extracts fields from the contacts database to generate a new entry. A Call/Action template is identified by the presence of the Call tag:

~~call

This tag can be placed anywhere in the template's description field. There are many other tags that can be put in the description field to pull information from a selected contact. All tags should be in lower case and preceded with two tilde (~) characters as shown above.

When you select a Call/Action template by using the Template button, Pimlical brings up the contacts database in search mode, so you can select a specific contact. Pimlical then uses that contact to provide information for the template. If a field is missing or has no value, no error is generated and a blank string is returned instead.

The Call/Action tags are:

~~birthday - inserts the birthday year of the contact into an Action Tag for the appointment, and then sets the start/end date for the appointment to the month and day in the current year (since many calendars do not support dates far in the past). The template should not already contain the Action Tag birthday in the Action Tag field, if you use this tag in the description field of the template.

~~company - inserts the company name

~~fullname - inserts the full name of the contact

~~firstname - inserts the first name of the contact. If there are several names, this inserts all names except the last name.

~~name - inserts the last name of the contact.

~~sortname - inserts the company name if present, but if no company name, will use the full name of the user instead.

~~phone - inserts what is considered the main telephone number for the contact

~~phone[xxxx] - inserts a specific phone number whose label is xxxx. Label can also be a custom label that you defined for that contact.

~~allphones - inserts all the phone numbers associated with this contact

~~location - inserts the full address of this contact into the location field of the appointment record. Note that unlike all other tags, this tag puts it in the location field and not the description field. If there are multiple locations, it will insert the first location.

~~link - links this contact to the appointment record. In most cases, you would always include this tag in a Call/Action template as that provides the most convenient access to all fields in the contact record.

As with regular templates, you can use paired angle brackets to insert comments. Everything between the << and >> are removed when the template is inserted. That text is displayed in the template list, so you can use that to sort and more clearly identify what a template is for.

Examples

The description field for a birthday template might look something like this:

~~call~~fullname: Birthday~~location~~link

You would also likely set up the template with a yearly repeat, perhaps a custom color, birthday icon, and an advance reminder (to get notified say 10 days ahead of the birthday so you have time to mail a card or buy a present).

A template for a business contact might look like:

~~call~~fullname works for ~~company~~location

which would generate a description like: John W. Harris  works for Federated Consultants, Inc.. and then insert the address into the location field of the appointment.