A User's Guide to Evolution
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# Sharing your Cards

If you keep your cards on a network using an LDAP server, you can share access to them. Actually, the server software takes care of that, and also determines who is allowed to see and change them. This is the sort of feature you'll want to use if your company has a list of vendors and clients that needs constant updating. If you also share your calendars, people can avoid duplicating work and keep up to date on developments within their work-group or across the entire company.

Example 2. Sharing Address Cards and Calendar Data

Ray wants to schedule a meeting with Company X, so he checks the network for the Company X address card so he knows whom to call there. Since his company also shares calendars, he then learns that his co-worker Deanna has already scheduled a meeting with Company X next Thursday. He can either go to the meeting himself or ask Deanna to discuss his concerns for him. Either way, he avoids scheduling an extra meeting with Company X.

Of course, you don't want to share all of your cards— why overload the network with a list of babysitters, or tell everyone in the office you're talking to new job prospects? If you keep cards on your own computer, you can decide which items you want to make accessible to others.

To learn how to set up your connection to an LDAP server, see the section called Managing the Contact Manager in the chapter called Advanced Configuration. Once you have a connection, the network contacts folder or folders will appear inside the `External Directories` folder in the folder bar, and will work exactly like a local folder of cards, with the following exceptions:

- They are only available when you are connected to the network. If you use a laptop or have a modem connection, you may wish to copy or cache the network directory and then synchronize your copy with the networked version periodically.

- To prevent excess network traffic, `Evolution` will not normally load the contents of LDAP folders immediately upon opening. You must click `Display All` before LDAP folder cards will be loaded from the network. You can change this behavior in the Contact Preferences window.

- Your ability to view, change, add or delete contacts depends on the settings of the LDAP server. For example, you may read all the entries in the public Netcenter directory (available by default in the `External Directories` folder), but you may not change or delete any of them.

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