[odb-help] International Addresses, Importing Yes/No data

[Rich Cowan]

Good Afternoon from cloudy and cold Boston!
We received three questions, two of them from warm and sunny California!

Here are the questions and responses.  (I don't always include original emails,
because we haven't yet set up a system to prevent automated software from
"harvesting" email addresses out of our web archive.)  Our web archive is at:
http://lists.democracygroups.org/mailman/listinfo/odb-help

in case you want to review previous posts to this list.


1.  Trupti from Power of Love asked about Yes/No data (say you wanted to import
data that already had a column for "No Money Calls" or "Don't Share My Name").
The question was what the format of the incoming data needed to be.

The answer is that the incoming data must be:

"True" or the number -1    to be true  (case does not matter, any nonzero 
number is ok)

"False" or the number 0    to be false

If you have "Y" and "N" you must convert these to the correct values before
importing.  We will make a note to add this to the user manual.


2. Marianne from Our Bodies Ourselves asked about International addresses;
this question was also posed by Trupti (see below).

The answer is that in all versions prior to 0.9.3, you could squeeze 
international
into ODB as follows (assuming you are mailing from the U.S.):

-- for canada you could use the zip code as postal code and
    the canadian province could go into state.  ODB will print a canadian
    Postal code (entered as H1K in the zip and 1T3 in the zip+4 fields)
    as H1K 1T3, NOT H1K-1Te.  So a typical address might look like
    John Alphason
    34 White Terrace
    Edmonton, Alberta
    CANADA       H1K 1T3

    this might work for mexico as well, or the postal code could go in the
    street name area along with the city.

- for overseas, ODB lets you type the words AIR and MAIL into the zip and zip+4
   fields.  This is generally ok if you only have a few international 
contacts. So
   here are a few examples (data changed to preserve confidentiality):

Gerita Nair
'Aatirona' , 13/272, P&T Quarters Road
Poothole,Trichur 220 014, Kerala
India,   AIR MAIL

Monica Lopez
PO Box 41-695
Mexico DF 11000
Mexico,   AIR MAIL

Raoul Hall
331 Pool St., Totnes
Lancaster, T59 54J
England,   AIR MAIL


In 0.9.3, there is a new ODB setting called ShowCountry.  If you turn that
setting on, ODB will add a 5th line to the address in case you really need the
extra room.  This not very well tested, but those of you who want to be guinea
pigs, let me know and I will send you the new release before anyone else
gets it.  Of course, to actually use the ShowCountry setting your database has
to have a country field.  So we will have to update our conversion program
(expect that to occur around May 5) or walk you though the process of
manually adding the field if you need it before then.  The development still
has a couple more days though, before that is available.  It might be better,
if your organization has a small number of international contacts, to stay with
the methods outlined above.  That is because we have plans in version 1.0 to
allow a 5th address line, in the case where someone works at a large
organization and their contact will actually be linked with a contact from the
Groups area of ODB.  Five lines is still a reasonable length, but when you try
to go to six lines, they will not print out on standard labels.

-rich cowan


At 07:45 PM 2/27/03 +0000, Trupti Naik wrote:
>Rich,
>
>I took a couple weeks off and back to working on the data base.  I 
>installed the new version and was able to successfully import the file, 
>with trouble!
>Thank you for your help.
>
>You mentioned that you were looking at the internationalization of ODB.
>Will this include support for foreign addresses and phone numbers?
>When are you anticipating developing this functionality?
>
>Have a great day!
>
>Trupti