Patent ID: 7788296

Claim:
A method for use with a computer-based processing system for use in managing incident-related work and that has a user interface, the method comprising: providing an address book that is accessible to the computer-based processing system, the address book containing a plurality of entries that persist independently of incident durations and wherein at least some of the entries comprise entity contact information for corresponding entities; receiving, via the user interface, new entity contact information associated with a given incident and an entity in the address book; storing that contact information to provide new stored entity contact information that is available independent of given incident duration that is independently stored as compared to the address book, and wherein the new stored entity contact information can be different from entity contact information for the same entity as contained in the address book; providing for establishing a link between the new stored entity contact information and a corresponding entry in the address book to thereby associate information that corresponds to a same entity, such that the link can facilitate subsequent processing of at least one of an incident and new entity contact information by permitting a user to display, for the entity, either the entity contact information for the entity as is contained in the address book and the new entity contact information for the entity as is stored by the computer-based processing system; wherein establishing a link comprises providing an indication, via the user interface, to reflect a linked status as corresponds to the new stored entity contact information, wherein the linked status shows, when the new stored entity contact information and the corresponding entry in the address book are linked but contain differing information, whether the differing information is due to edits to the new stored entity information or edits to the corresponding entry in the address book.