IPhone app and using phone.

[Jonathan Levin]

Hi Brendan.

Could you answer a question for me? I am thinking of buying the TapForm DB app for IPhone, sync my DB from my desktop computer to the iPhone. Currently, when I go into my Contacts (Apple) and select a contact, click on the phone number, I get a message “Call xxx-xxx-xxxx?” And I click OK. Phone dials number.

Does this work the same in the TapForm IPhone app?

[Brendan]

Hi Jonathan,

Yes, definitely. Except you’ll also be asked if you want to send a Text to the number too.

[Jonathan Levin]

Thanks Brendan.

I will be moving away from using Apple’s Contacts since there doesn’t seem to be an easy way for TapForms DB to sync back and forth with that. I realize that I can sync my contacts TO TF DB, but that would create a set of duplicates within TF.

Next question: Right now, when someone calls me who is in my Apple Contacts, their name appears on my iPhone lock screen since they are in the Contacts. If I completely delete my Apple Contacts, and only use the iPhone version of TapForms DB is there a way to have the name of the person calling show up as if I were using Apple’s Contacts? That would be awesome!

[Brendan]

No. That would be entirely up to the Apple Contacts database to provide that feature. Tap Forms can only dial out, it doesn’t handle incoming calls.

[Jonathan Levin]

Yeah, I kinda guessed that it would have something to do with Apple’s licensing or something like that???

So it looks like until I can sync TF DB TO Apple’s Contact and changes to Contacts reflect in TF (like Bento) I might just keep the un-updated of my Apple Contacts as they are and just be thankful that I have a DB that will work after updating to High Sierra. Can you put this feature request in the suggestion box?
Thanks.

JL

[Brendan]

If I could sync between the Contacts database and Tap Forms I would have done that already. That’s why in Tap Forms 5.2, the only option is to Import Contacts. There’s no Sync contacts function.

The problem is, Apple changes the internal ID used to identify contacts whenever Apple syncs its contacts with other devices. I don’t know why they do that or how they manage to still keep them in sync. It’s really annoying.

If I had a never-changing unique identifier that I could definitely refer to that always referenced the same contact from the Apple Contacts database, then I would be very happy and I could add Contact sync to Tap Forms.

I seem to remember hearing that before Bento was discontinued, they were going to remove the Contact sync feature because, although it worked fine when you synced with your desktop, because the iPhone came out and caused this unique identifier changing issue, Bento was going to be removing that feature at some point. I could be wrong about that.

[Author]

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