Other Software Tools
From time to time an idea for a software tool percolates to the top of the ExactCAD software development consciousness. Whenever this happens, the results will be added here.
Phonebook A generic phonebook program that works in any environment that uses Microsoft Directory Services. Find anyone in the directory with very loose search terms.
This purpose of this tool is to make it fast and easy to look up phone numbers and email addresses. It queries the corporate Directory Services (LDAP) database to get this information.
The search parameters are very flexible. You can put in almost any combination of the first few letters of a person’s first and/or last name. First name first or last name first; it doesn’t matter. Just start with the first letters. If you put the first name last, make sure you put a space between the first and last name. But if you are putting the first name (or letters from it) you don’t need to use the space.
For Example, any of the following will work to find John Smith:
smi j
j smith
jsmi
JOHN SMITH
There are a few combinations that won’t work, but it’s fairly powerful. Experiment a bit and you’ll see how lazy you can be about what you type in to search for.
After entering the text in the Search box, you can either hit the Enter key or push the GO button on the tool. Both methods will launch the search.
Now the fun doesn’t stop when you get the results. A single click in any cell of the results list will copy the contents of that cell to the Window’s Clipboard, so you can then paste it anywhere else you want to. No need to right click and select Copy, or hit CTRL+C or anything. Just one click, then paste elsewhere.
And if you want to send an email, double click the email address and a blank email to that person will start using your default email program.
A couple of cool things to note about this utility:
– It stores no data. It relies entirely on the corporate Directory Services data. Data is queried, gathered, displayed, then it vanishes when a new search is done or the program is closed.
– It’s very small. Only 35Kb for the executable.
– It requires no configuration. If Directory Services is operational when it runs, it works. If not, it doesn’t get any results.
– It’s totally free. Share it with whomever you’d like.
