Although Chandler does not formally support Contacts, we’ve heard of a number of users managing contact information in Chandler nonetheless, albeit in unconventional ways that stretch the boundaries of what traditional Address Books are used.

The Common Datatrust Foundation, previously profiled here, also uses Chandler to manage Contacts, in a “lightweight CRM” (Customer Relationship Management) kind of way. However, instead of tracking “Customers” CDTF is keeping track of the broad range of people they are engaging with from researchers in academia to technical advisers and potential partners and board members.

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CDTF maintains a Contacts collection. Each person is a note. Most of the contacts are people I have worked with or have been introduced to through colleagues and friends. So I have endeavored to write up a short description of each person, how I know them, how much we’ve discussed CDTF and why and how they might be interested in what CDTF is up to.

As Grace and I continue to develop these relationships, we revise and update the Notes for each contact. Meetings on the other hand are tracked separately as Events in other Collections, depending on which area. It would be easier for us if we could somehow link the Contact Items to related Meetings. For now, we rely on Search to pull together a complete profile for each person.

We manage the CDTF Contacts collection like a task list. It’s almost always sorted by Triage Status. We have a small set of NOW - Contacts, people we are actively talking to (7 currently). An ambitiously long set of LATER Contacts (46), people we really should get in touch with or need to have follow-up conversations with. As we make progress and establish lasting relationships with people, I imagine some of our Contacts will go into the DONE category. For now, every person represents more work for us!

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Full Disclosure: Chandler Product Designer, Mimi Yin is on the board of The Common Datatrust Foundation and is also married to Alex Selkirk.