Patent ID: 7822761

Claim:
A groupware computer system comprising: a groupware server; a groupware client coupled to the server over a network; a contact information repository configured to store contact data of users in personal contact lists associated to individual users; a contact management module coupled to the contact information repository and configured to create, modify, and retrieve contact data of users; and an automatic determination of contact information (ADCI) module being configured for: querying the contact information repository for all personal contact lists that contain contact data of a first user to obtain a set of relevant contact lists; determining an owner of each relevant contact list, wherein the owner sets a status of a visibility flag, wherein the status is selected from a group consisting of: true and false, and wherein the visibility flag controls access to the relevant contact list; determining the status; determining a contact frequency of the owner of one of the relevant contact list from the set of relevant contact lists with the first user in response to determining the status as true; selecting a next relevant contact list in response to determining the status as false; determining an age of contact data comprised in each relevant contact list; calculating a ranking score for each relevant contact list from the contact frequency of its owner and the age of contact data comprised therein; selecting a predetermined amount of relevant contact lists in order of descending ranking score; and retrieving contact data of the first user from the predetermined amount of relevant contact lists.