The Proper Care and Feeding of Windows Live Categories

A question I’m hearing a lot lately is “what’s a category, and what’s it good for?” I’ll try to briefly answer both those questions, and give you an idea of what you can do with this feature.

First, categories are created and managed in a several places. This feature is related to your contacts, and as such, it appears in applications that involve them. So you’ll see it in Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, and possibly elsewhere. The extent of what you can do with a category depends on where you are using it. For example, you can create categories in Messenger, but you cannot in Photo Gallery, but you can use them in both places.

The picture on the left shows my categories. I divide categories into purposes. The most apparent purpose for a category is to group similar types of people together. But another less obvious purpose, and you’ll see several of this type in the picture, is for setting up permissions. So, categories like friends and family have specific meanings that those contacts in them are one or the other, but other of my categories, like “Can leave notes” is are not as clear. I’ll cover that later in this post.

Also, another important concept to keep in mind is that there is a many to many relationship between your contacts and your categories. This means each category can contain several or all of your contacts. But it also means that any given contact can be in one or more of your categories. This multivalued nature of categories gives them a great deal of flexibility.

How do you create a category?

1. Go to the People Page http://people.live.com
2. Click on “Manage categories”
3. Click the “New” link. (There is also an “Edit” and “Delete” link.)
4. Fill in the boxes with the appropriate information like the name of the category you’ll be creating.
5. You can add users by typing their names in the second box. Take note that there are other easier ways to do this, but this gets you started.
6. You can also edit and delete categories. but you must first have one or more selected by checking the box next to the name. Deleting a category does not delete the contacts in it. They just lose that category, but continue on otherwise as if nothing happened. If you edit a category, then you can change the name or see who’s in it and add or delete members. Very handy!

Where can I use a category?

1. In Messenger. If you have the “Organize contacts by category selected then you will see each contact under the categories they belong to. You can also manage categories in Messenger. You can copy, move, and remove contacts from a category by right clicking the contact. You can manage categories in Messenger by right clicking a category to rename it, edit it, or delete it. You can also manage who’s in the category here. In order to see this view open Tools>Options>Layout. At the bottom is an “Organize contacts by…” section. Select “Categories” from the list and choose the options you want.
2. In Photo Gallery. Contacts in Photo Gallery are thought of as “People Tags,” and the categories you set up group these tags together in logical units. If you click a person’s people tag then you’ll see all the  pictures that are tagged of that person. If you click on a “family” category then all the people tags for all the contacts in that category (of family) will be selected. And the result is that you’ll see all the pictures from your family.
3. In Mail. You can send email out to a category of people. This is like sending to a mailing list. In my list on the left, you’ll notice I have a category called “Politics” and if I mail to that category, and if you’re in it, you’ll get that email. One easy way to do this in the web client is to click the “To:”, “Cc:”, or “Bcc:” button in a new email. A contact selector will open which has three tabs. The center tab is for categories, and if you select one or more of these then everyone in the category will receive the email. So, sending an email to my “family” category results in each family member receiving it. You can do this in the desktop client, but the process is different. There the categories and contacts are mixed. Just find what you need.
4. Lastly, you can use categories to set permissions. A lot of people are doing this. It certainly makes managing your Live Network a simpler task. Now, setting these permission is deserving of its own post, and many have been done. But, here is an example of how you can do it. My first category of this type is “Can leave notes.” There is nothing inherently special about this category. I could have called it something like “QWERTY” and it would work just the same. If you’ll go to your Profile page, you’ll find the Notes area at the bottom. And at the end of that section there’ll be a link “View more.” Click it. This takes you to the full Notes page. At the top of this page is a link “Edit permissions.” This takes you to the “Permissions for notes” page as shown on the right. By default, many of the things you can set permissions for come pre-set with either “Everyone (public)” or “My network” preselected. This is fine, if you want to share everything with everyone. I used to do this with Notes. I let anyone who wanted to leave a note do so. But I started getting notes from strange people, and I decided to lock them down. So, if you can see and add notes on my Profile page, then you’re in one of these categories that I have checked off on the right.
   
   Here are some things to consider. First, you must be in one or more of the selected categories in order to leave Notes on the profile page. It’s not required that you be specifically in the “Can leave notes” category. It’s just a special category for contacts that don’t belong in any of the other ones that can also leave notes. I use it for people who are not family, friends, etc.
   
   For example, I have decided that any of my family members can leave notes. I do this by making sure that this category has a checkmark giving it permission. As such, they DO NOT also have to be in the “Can leave notes” category. In fact, many of my contacts fall into several groups that can leave note, but may not fall into the one specifically for it. For example, Several family members are also favorites. Either of those categories also gives you the power to leave notes! To have this option you must be in at least one of the selected categories.
   
   So, how do I use this? When I add a person to my network, I am provided the options to add the contact to any number of categories. I have three I use for almost all new adds. First, I add them to “Can leave notes” then some to “Can see profile” which also allows them to leave notes (because of the checkmark), and finally to “Virtual Buddies” if I have never met the person and don’t really know them other than online. Virtual buddies do not get to leave notes because I haven’t checked the box for that as shown on the right.
   Some people can see my profile. I figure that if I have allowed you to see it, then you are probably OK to leave notes too. This is just something I decided. You might think differently.  Should you want to see who you’re granting these permissions to then click the little blue number next to the permission. A list of contacts in the category will appear.

The bottom line is, if I remove you from any of these categories, then you cannot leave a note. Notice the last item on the Permissions page. It’s for Individuals. Rather than add and remove on a person by person basis, it is so much simpler to simply add them to a category. Categories are easy to manage. I wish Windows Live could excluded by category too. Then we could exclude all the “Bad guys” without losing the “Everyone (public)” category. But wishes are like…

Finally, you can manage the categories from the People page. If you click the link for the category on the left, then all the contacts for that category appear. If you select one, by checking its box, then you can “Remove from this category” or you can add that contact to one of the other existing categories from the “Categories” dropdown list. Also, you can create a new category right here.

This post just touches on some basic ideas for using categories. Once you start using them, you’ll stumble upon other useful techniques, but this post should get you started. There are a lot of things not covered as well as certain important functionality that seems to be missing entirely. For example, there is no list of categories a person belongs to regardless of editing those categories. You just have to figure it out for now. Maybe they’ll add this in a future version as it seems an oversight. So, I hope this clears up any confusion you have about categories and how you can use them.

-Jeff