3.9 Contacts

Enhanced Address Book (EAB) is the essential part of RCS applications. Its main feature is to show who from the Contacts is an RCS user. This information is shown in the main Contacts list in a form of a special icon. When a user clicks the RCS action icon a set of new icons will appear for the voice only call, video call and chat.

The actions refer only to over IP services among ONNET numbers (i.e. other RCS users). If a user wants to make a call or send an SMS to a GSM number he has to click on the contact and open the contact details view where the paid call and SMS options are.  

The Contact list supports following functions:

• search contact 
• filters: Vippie users only, all contacts, favorites
• add new contact 

Mobile versions of the RCS clients use the native address book (aka Terminal Address Book) as the source of Contacts. The app keeps a copy of the native contacts locally. The contacts data are extended by additional information related to the RCS service. In order to learn who from the native Contacts is already an RCS service user, the app uploads the Contacts’ phone numbers and names to the EMCD. The method used is contacts.ashx. The data are stored in the api.contacts table.

Before the phone numbers are uploaded the softphones normalize their formats to E164, i.e. the country code and number. Without any leading international prefixes.