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Expected results:

Hello there,

I would love to be able to see and manage my caldav groups (also known as categories - I'll use both words indifferently) of contacts within the Address Book.

I'm thinking of a equivalent of what can be done using TB-Sync add-on in conjunction with its counterpart "Category Manager".

This would include ability to:

• Filter contacts by category (example: https://github.com/jobisoft/CategoryManager/blob/TB91/screenshots/catman002.jpg)
• Send e-mail to a group
• Edit categories a contact belongs to within the Address Book (adding a contact to an existing group or a new one, removing them from one or all groups,...)
• Edit categories on multiple contacts at once

Thank in advance for considering it.

It seems there are two ways to handle groups: categories (CATEGORIES: in each vcard) and vCards (KIND:group and MEMBER: in a dedicated vcard). Some information are available here: https://github.com/mstilkerich/rcmcarddav/blob/master/doc/GROUPS.md.

CATEGORIES is the most important one, that’s what most implementations actually use. This is the only feature that seems missing to me to be able to switch from CardBook (my address book add-on for years) to the native implementation now that Thunderbird 102 landed a renewed address book.

(In reply to Bruno Pagani from comment #2)

CATEGORIES is the most important one, that’s what most implementations actually use. This is the only feature that seems missing to me to be able to switch from CardBook (my address book add-on for years) to the native implementation now that Thunderbird 102 landed a renewed address book.

Think so too - to filter an address book, this is really valuable! I use it frequently.

I vote also for this feature.

+1

So I would also vote for those missing groups . A very handy feature as seen in add on Cardbook.
Also categories are missing as available in CardBook.

Aleca, do you have this in your new address book work anywhere already?

Is there an RFC which defines the Category field for vCard v3 or v4? If so, the first step would be to add support for it in the UI.

Categories in VCards v4 are defined here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6350#section-6.7.1
(v3 here: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2426#section-3.6.1)

Besides CATEGORIES as mentioned by Jeremie, there are also MEMBER and KIND for groups in v4.

For Android there is an free and opensource app DAVx5 (formerly named DavDroid) to synchronize calendars (CalDAV) and contacts (CardDAV). They use X-ADDRESSBOOKSERVER-MEMBER and X-ADDRESSBOOKSERVER-KIND for v3 - see manual page. This is actually also what the add-on CardBook uses for v3.

The MEMBER is something for Bug 1668791.

Let us keep this bug for Categories. Since it is a property per contact, it should be added to the list of editable properties in the address book. Adding functionality to use Categories as lists in TO or CC is a second step.

We definitely want this, not sure how soon but definitely before next ESR.
We should regroup and define an action plan to properly implement it. Having categories/tags would solve soooooo many issues with mailing lists and would make the address book very very usable with large amount of data.

It might also be nice to have a context menu item or toolbar button available in the address book UI, in order to easily add or remove (multiple) contacts to or from a category. I can also recommend to always look at the add-on CardBook for ideas of how it should be presented to the user.

I hope categories will come soon in the new version - until this, i use the V 91 - i need the Categories in my 4000 contacts. Thunderbird is for me as salesman a great CRM program. And if thunderbird adressbook would be able so search in any fields, it would be even better.

For everyone interested in the Thunderbird address book who uses a lot of CATEGORIES: there's currently a bug that you might want to be aware of: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1792399

Had a meeting with Alessandro and we agreed that I can start working on this.

(In reply to John Bieling (:TbSync) from comment #16)

Had a meeting with Alessandro and we agreed that I can start working on this.

With respect to the screenshot in the phabricator link:
As distribution lists cannot be synced with Android they have little meaning to me in a CardDAV address book any more.
Therefore they should be replaced with the categories in the tree pane, as it is in CardBook.

We do both. CATEGORIES will be used to tag contacts just like we can tag emails. And KIND:group with MEMBER: will be used to sync distribution lists (Bug 1668791). And IIRC correctly, both can sync on Android with DAVx5 (https://www.davx5.com/manual/technical_information.html#contact-groups)

(In reply to John Bieling (:TbSync) from comment #19)

We do both. CATEGORIES will be used to tag contacts just like we can tag emails. And KIND:group with MEMBER: will be used to sync distribution lists (Bug 1668791). And IIRC correctly, both can sync on Android with DAVx5 (https://www.davx5.com/manual/technical_information.html#contact-groups)

Thank you. These options are "either - or" in DAVx5. When one creates a new address book DAVx5 asks which way groups/labels shall be used. When the network address book is configured to use categories as tags, currently on Android I get an empty contact when there is a distribution list in Thunderbird (using CardBook because of the categories).
Will there be a respective setting (or automatic feature) for Thunderbird address books to either show the distribution lists or the categories in the tree pane?

That is currently not planned.

(In reply to John Bieling (:TbSync) from comment #21)
A CardDAV address book with categories that does not show the categories in the tree pane does not make much sense for me. Or is there a reason that this feature shall be missing compared to CardBook?

+1 From me. Having this feature in standard Thunderbird and not relying on AddOns would be really helpful to us. Lists are a much wanted and needed feature and having categories as an intermediate (till vCard 4.0 KIND:Group and Member are widely implemented) would help us a lot as sogo dropped its own carddav plugin (which supported lists) after TB 68...