Patent ID: 8364663

Claim:
A method for creating an index array for a plurality of contact data objects, each contact data object comprising a plurality of fields, comprising: receiving the plurality of contact data objects from an email server; in response to the receiving, generating an index token for each of the plurality of contact data objects as a function of at least one of the plurality of fields of the contact data object, wherein the generating comprises: for each of the plurality of contact data objects: converting a value of each field of the contact data object into a text string, if the value of the field is not a text string; and determining the first character of each text string of the value of each field wherein the generated index token comprises each of the determined first characters, wherein the index token generated for each contact data object does not include duplicate determined first characters; creating the index array including elements corresponding to each of the plurality of contact data objects based on the index token for each contact data object, wherein the creating comprises: for each contact data object of the plurality of contact data objects and the corresponding index token generated for each contact data object: for each character of the corresponding index token: determining a character set value for the character, wherein the character set value is a unique numeric code representing the character in the character set; and storing a pointer to the contact data object in the index array element corresponding to the character set value wherein the index array includes one element for each character set value of the character set; and further comprising embedding the received plurality of data objects and embedding the created index for the received plurality of data objects into a search form for display to a user.