Custom Contact Field?

[phenixdragon]

I am thinking of making the switch from a Galaxy S III to a Lumia 920, and have been trying out the 920 for a few days now, but not fully until today. I just added my Google account which I use for my contacts as it allows me to have custom fields. But it appears these fields to not populate into my contacts on WP8. Is there any way to get them to show up?

 

[chrgeorgeson]

So custom fields are kind of the Achilles heal to Exchange Active Sync Accounts.

You see Exchange accounts push certain information like Calendars, Contacts, and Email to your devices. However in MS infinite wisdom when it comes to custom fields you cannot create them. MS gives you a few predetermined ones to use and that is it. MS 'solution' is the notes field.

I work in a corporate environment and I can tell you I run into this issue occasionally. I don't know why MS can't incorporate it but I can tell you they haven't.

Now your next question might be how come it works with my Android device? Well if you use gmail they in fact use EAS (begrudgingly) but also there own email pushing service (in conjunction with EAS) that isn't widely used that in fact allows custom fields.

I believe (and I could be wrong) the only way to add custom fields is to do so on a IMAP or POP3 account, manually on the phone again you might not be able to do this. If you can do this however you've lost the ability to get push services. However all the work you put into creating these contacts will be saved to skydrive and backed up so it's a one time pain in the a$$.

I hope I helped in some way.

By the way If i'm wrong about this please someone correct me. I'd love to know if this is possible.
-Chris

 

[phenixdragon]

So custom fields are kind of the Achilles heal to Exchange Active Sync Accounts.

You see Exchange accounts push certain information like Calendars, Contacts, and Email to your devices. However in MS infinite wisdom when it comes to custom fields you cannot create them. MS gives you a few predetermined ones to use and that is it. MS 'solution' is the notes field.

I work in a corporate environment and I can tell you I run into this issue occasionally. I don't know why MS can't incorporate it but I can tell you they haven't.

Now your next question might be how come it works with my Android device? Well if you use gmail they in fact use EAS (begrudgingly) but also there own email pushing service (in conjunction with EAS) that isn't widely used that in fact allows custom fields.

I believe (and I could be wrong) the only way to add custom fields is to do so on a IMAP or POP3 account, manually on the phone again you might not be able to do this. If you can do this however you've lost the ability to get push services. However all the work you put into creating these contacts will be saved to skydrive and backed up so it's a one time pain in the a$$.

I hope I helped in some way.

By the way If i'm wrong about this please someone correct me. I'd love to know if this is possible.
-Chris

I don't think you can add them again with IMAP or POP since they are only for mail and not contacts. I could be wrong, but I also don't see how.

 

[chrgeorgeson]

I don't think you can add them again with IMAP or POP since they are only for mail and not contacts. I could be wrong, but I also don't see how.

Right it's not the IMAP or POP protocol that is allowing the custom contacts it's the fact that it's not exchange.
When you create a new contact WP asks which account you want to file that contact under.
I still don't know if it will let you do it, I know on mail clients I can but not sure about WP.

 

[phenixdragon]

Gotcha.

I tried that out and still doesn't allow it. This is a huge set back for me. Probably after this weekend this phone will be going back with me sticking with Android. I want to like WP8, but there is just too many things causing me not to like it, such as this. Idealy, I would love to have all my contacts with Outlook.com but no custom contacts messes up some of my contacts.

 

[generalsu]

Gotcha.

I tried that out and still doesn't allow it. This is a huge set back for me. Probably after this weekend this phone will be going back with me sticking with Android. I want to like WP8, but there is just too many things causing me not to like it, such as this. Idealy, I would love to have all my contacts with Outlook.com but no custom contacts messes up some of my contacts.

I don't think the lack of custom field in WP8 has anything to do with sync protocols. If you check out the People app at live.com, the ability to create a custom field phone number, for example, is not available. WP8 simply discard custom fields when sync with Google Contacts. In other words, this is a WP8 problem, not a protocol syncing problem.