Calculating last name from the built-in contact field

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Bumble

• July 07, 2014 16:43

I have an App with just the built-in Contact field and an DOB field and need to display the table based on their last name. So I created an Calculated field for it. How do I extract the last name out of the Contact field? @Contact doesn't work. Thanks.

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• Official comment

  

  Jacquelyn May

  • July 16, 2014 21:05

  Hi Bumble,

  I'm afraid there wouldn't be a way to do this, since you cannot use Contact fields as variables in a calculation field. Is it possible to store your contacts in an app instead of using Workspace contacts?

  https://help.podio.com/entries/27368048-Importing-Contacts-Using-a-Contacts-app

  That way you could store first/last names in different fields right from there.

  Do you think that could work?

  /Jacquelyn - Podio

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  Paul Self

  • April 25, 2016 20:34

  Has then been any solution to "unsimplifying" the Contacts field and being able to extract a First Name? Every App for contacts I make has to be created seperatly so that I can get First.

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  Rainer Grabowski

  • April 30, 2016 09:47
  • Edited

  Hi Bumble,

  if I understand you right, you have a contact field/Type Workspace contacts. There must have benn a misunderstanding by Jacquelyn - or by me) - but that contact field is available as a variable in a calculation field., But only the content of Name field. @contact returns the content as an array, you have to parse it to a string bei adding .join()

  To get the name of the contact you can do:

  @contact.join()

  That shows you the name, how it is entered. Normaly "FirstName LastName" or "FirstName MiddleName LastName".

  The LastName you can extract:

  var fullname = @contact.join();
  fullname.substring(fullname.lastIndexOf(" "));

  This works fine if there is no suffix like "FirstName LastName, jr." or "FirstName LastName jr.". You can do some checks if there's a suffix.Often a suffix contains a dot or is separated by a comma.

  fullname = @contact.join();
  getLastString = fullname.substring(fullname.lastIndexOf(" ") );
  check = getLastString.indexOf(".") > -1 || fullname.indexOf(",") > -1 ? fullname.substring(0,fullname.lastIndexOf(" ")) : fullname;
  lastname = check.substring(check.lastIndexOf(" "));
  lastname.replace(",","")

  This doesn't cover all possible cases , e.g. for a name entered as "FirstName LastName junior" the result would be "junior" or for "LastName Firstname" = FirstName, but the result for "LastName, FirstName"  would be "LastName"

  Rainer
  rg@delos-consulting.com

   

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  Helge Klein

  • March 01, 2017 17:15

  Luckily Jacquelyn's answer is incorrect. As Rainer explained the way to get the name from a contact field in a Podio calculation is:

  @contact.join()

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  Rainer Grabowski

  • March 11, 2017 10:30

  @helge
  Have a look at the date of Jacquelyn's answer: July 16, 2014
  The calculation fields have been introduced some weeks before, in May 2014 (if I remember right). And at that time not all field types have been available in calculation fields. E.g. Contacts have been added a bit later. So for July 16, 2014 Jacquelyn's  answer has been correct.   

  Rainer

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