Feedback re BT Essential Digital Home Phone

[Bob1944]

BT have upgraded my broadband and telephone service to Full Fibre, with digital voice.  They supplied a Smart Hub 2 router and I purchased a BT Essential Digital Home Phone (from eBay).

I don't know whether anyone at BT reads messages on this community forum.  However, some aspects of the BT Essential Digital Home Phone require improvement, so I thought I should offer this feedback
  
I had stored many telephone numbers on my previous DECT phone, so I didn't relish the task of transferring the details manually to the new phone,.  Fortunately, I discovered the option to import the data into the Smart Hub digitally.  But that involved a vcf file, which was easier said than done!

Fortunately, the complete contacts list from my Android mobile phone is synchronised with the Hotmail address book on my windows computer.  Consequently, I was able to use an Excel spreadsheet to extract the data into a csv file with the following fields:

Home Phone
Cellphone
Work Phone
First Name
Last name

I deleted all other fields.   Then,  I had to replace +44 with 0 - and replace + with 00 for other countries.   I also needed to remove all spaces from the telephone numbers.  The next stage involved a script, which created a text file with the following lines for each contact:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:4.0
FN:[First name] [Last name]
N:[Last name];[First name];;;
TEL;VALUE=uri;TYPE=home:tel:[number]
TEL;VALUE=uri;TYPE=cell:tel:[number]
TEL;VALUE=uri;TYPE=work:tel:[number]
MEDLODY:0
ACCOUNTID:0
DFTNUM:0
OWN:0
END:VCARD

I renamed the txt file as a vcf file - and imported it into the Smart Hub2.

That seemed to work perfectly, until I discovered that the firmware was programmed to sort contacts by the person's first name, instead of the last name.  That might be the way they do it in China but surely, a phone book should be configured to sort by the person's last name.  Consequently, I had to re-write the script to switch the first and last names.

So this is feedback for BT:
Please program your phones to sort all contacts by their last name
Would it be possible for the Smart Hub 2 to import contacts data as a simple csv file, which would be much easier than having to convert everything into the vcf format?

[imjolly]

Your Post will help others but this has been covered on the forum previously with I structions on how to transfer contacts. Remember if you factory reset your hub you will lose all the contacts so ensure you keep the vcf file

[VeteranISPUser]

Hi @Bob1944   Just one comment, there is no need to remove the surplus fields, they are ignored during the import function. If you import the csv file (or any other supported format) into Gmail contacts (I use a temporary account) it exports a perfect .vcf file, quick and simple. All my central contacts are stored in Outlook with the numbers formatted without spaces etc. in the base data. A refresh from Outlook to SH2 only takes a few minutes.

[Bob1944]

Thank you. I didn't know that.
Like you, I exported everything from Outlook. But even if removal of the surplus fields was unnecessary, it only required a few clicks. But why does the BT product sort contacts by the first name. I still had to switch the field headings, to overcome that issue?

[rbz5416]

---

@Bob1944wrote:
But why does the BT product sort contacts by the first name.

---

Probably because that's how BT handsets have always sorted contacts as far as I can recall. So switching the sorting order for DV would make little sense.