 3. Using Trillian
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 3.1. The Contact List
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 Meta Contacts
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What is a Meta-Contact?
A Meta-Contact is a contact list organizational tool normally used to consolidate several accounts associated with one individual. For example, if "Arthur" was on AIM, MSN, ICQ and IRC, all of those accounts combined into a single Meta-Contact entry so that his status can be determined by looking only at one entry, rather than 4.
How do I create a Meta-Contact?
Before beginning, all of the desired accounts must exist in the contact list. Then:
- Select by Ctrl+clicking on each account.
- Right-click the selected set and choose "Create Meta-Contact".
- A box will ask for a name to call the Meta-Contact (it can be anything since it's local-only).
- That's it!
Once finished, the Meta-Contact can be placed in a group or left in it's own group.
Questions:
Q: Why does it open and close all the time?
A: The MetaContacts are set to "auto-expand" by default. This allows them to only show their contents when you mouse over them so that they don't always take up precious space on your contact list. You can turn this off and have it behave more like a group by going to Preferences->Contact List and unchecking "Auto-expand Meta-Contacts".
When Auto-expand is turned off, to expand (or compact) a Meta-Contact, click on the icon next to the Meta-Contact name. To send a message to a Meta-Contact, double-click directly on the name.
Q: Does the account order inside of a Meta-Contact matter?
A: Yes it does. When you double-click a Meta-Contact to send a message, Trillian will determine which account is used based first on the order that the account appears within the Meta-Contact and second on the availability of the account.
To set the order or preference, drag accounts within a Meta-Contact just like you can in a normal contact. Put the preferred account at the top of the list and it will become the default account. If the preference changes, re-order the accounts within the Meta-Contact. When you double click on the metacontact now, it will first look at the order of the accounts within the Meta-Contact. If the preferred account is not available (the user is away or offline on that account) then the first available account will be used.
To manually override the default account, right-click on the Meta-Contact and choose "Send Message to". A listing of all accounts for the Meta-Contact will appear to select from.
Q: What if I want to send it to an account other than what Trillian picks, do i have to reorder it everytime?
A: No. A Meta-Contact behaves like a group, so you can always click on the sub-entries and use them like before
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