The Palm PIM apps are great, for what they do. But they don't let users store anywhere near as much data as some want. Larry Garfield takes a look at Chapura KeyContacts, with far more details than the Palm Address Book can muster.
Despite having as many security holes as Swiss cheese, Microsoft Outlook is still the most widely used desktop organizer and mail client in the world. The Palm OS Address Book applications have been able to sync to Outlook with third party software for a long time, but Outlook includes far more fields and details on each contact. Chapura KeyContacts 1.1 fills that gap with an Address Book replacement that duplicates nearly all of Outlook's contact management abilities, but only if you have a specific setup. If you do not use Microsoft Outlook on a Windows system, stop reading now, KeyContacts is of no use to you. If you do use Outlook on Windows, KeyContacts is a nice program.
The handheld
The 318 KB KeyContacts closely resembles the built-in Address Book, as it should. At first glance, the main List View is almost the same as the default program, except that the words "Look Up" are missing (the lookup field is still present) and on color devices the program will give every other record a light blue background, although the color can be changed. (Mmm... eye candy.) The most important difference is the title bar, which displays the name of the current Folder as well as a drop down list trigger to select any folder on the device. (For the non-Outlook users in the audience, Folders are essentially super-categories, each of which has its own set of categories. That allows for a "Work" Folder, in which there are categories for "Marketing Department", "Executives", "Development", and so on.)
 | KeyContacts looks a lot like Address Book, but can show full records in List View
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Tapping on a record opens it, as one would expect. The Details View and Edit View forms looks just like the built-in application, with a few very important exceptions. Firstly, there are more fields available. We don't mean one or two, we mean more than twice as many as the built-in Address Book. KeyContacts includes 40 different Outlook-compatible fields, ranging from 19 kinds of phone number to three different addresses to web address to Spouse's name and Anniversary. As with Outlook the name field is a single, unified field rather than separate First and Last fields, although the name can be filed by first name, last name, company, or a combination thereof. Editing each of the fields works the same as on the built-in application.
Secondly, a given record can be placed into any number of Categories within its current Folder. The Category selector calls up a full-screen dialog that lets the user check off the categories in which the record should appear. However, there does not appear to be a way to move a record from one Folder to another on the handheld. New records go into the Folder the user was in when the record was created, and stay there unless moved on the desktop. Still, it's much better organization than the built-in Address Book has.
To support all of these new-and-fun features, KeyContacts does not use the built-in Address Book database, as do most replacement apps. It is possible to transfer existing records in the Address Book to KeyContacts using an undocumented "infrared loopback" feature of the Palm OS, which Chapura explains on their web site. If the user is already using Outlook on the desktop via Chapura PocketMirror, bundled with most new Palm OS devices, then that step is unnecessary.
 | And that's only a few of the fields KeyContacts offers. Oy!
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KeyContacts can set any contacts as a beamable business card, and the List View is customizable to show all contacts for a given record or just one (the default). It does not take direct advantage of any of the high-resolution APIs (Sony HighRes, HandEra QVGA, or PalmSource High Density) or virtual graffiti, but as it uses only standard form elements it runs fine on all of them. It provides partial support for scroll and jog wheels, but not as much as the built-in Address Book does on the HandEra 330 and Palm Tungsten T. The wheel will scroll through the list, but selecting a record still requires tapping on the screen.
The desktop
On the desktop, of course, KeyContacts syncs to Microsoft Outlook. The Conduit's Settings screen, accessible via the Palm HotSync applet, lets the user select which Outlook Folders to synchronize to the handheld, and individually change the HotSync rules (synchronize, desktop overwrites handheld, etc.). Folders on the desktop and handheld need not have the same name, but the handheld does not preserve Folder hierarchies. Each Folder is synchronized separately. Outlook itself functions just as it would otherwise.
We should mention one important issue with installation, however. While many Windows programs claim that the user needs to reboot their computer after installation when that is not really the case, KeyContacts really does require it, even on our Windows 2000 test system. Attempting to synchronize before rebooting will not work, but fortunately only results in obscure and meaningless error messages in the HotSync log. We find it very strange that a program that does not tie into the OS at all would require the whole system to be rebooted, although whether that is due to KeyContacts or Microsoft Outlook we are not sure.
Conclusion
For users that do not use Microsoft Outlook on Microsoft Windows as your desktop PIM, KeyContacts is of very little use. For users that do use Outlook on Windows, however, KeyContacts is a valuable tool that extends the features of the built-in Address Book without extending the learning curve. The learning time on KeyContacts should be about 5 minutes or less for reasonably knowledgeable users.
The search and indexing ability could be a bit more advanced, such as the excellent tab-and-filter system in iambic Agendus nee Action Names Datebook, and better one-hand operation is always welcome. It would also be nice to see Chapura open up their new record format, so that 3rd party conduit developers could write conduits to bind the excellent handheld application to desktop programs other than Outlook and offer support for Macintosh or GNU/Linux users. Still, at present we can recommend KeyContacts for everyone who uses Outlook and Windows, and for no one that doesn't.
Chapura KeyContacts is available now from the Chapura web site for $24.95 USD. A 21-day trial version is also available.
- What's positive: More fields than you can shake a stick at, clean and easy interface
- What's negative: Limited wheel/one-hand support, Windows/Outlook only
Overall: 
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