Adding Group Support for External Contact Sync Solutions

We are all familiar with the AOSP contacts app, named People. One of its key features is the ability to create groups and to sort your contacts using said groups. However, this feature was coded in such a way to only work when the user is using a Google or an Exchange account, leaving users who use alternative, external contact sync solutions in the dust.

Most of these alternate solutions implement CardDAV, an open protocol implemented by various solutions for use with contact data. Here at Omni, we embrace third-party opensource solutions, being one ourselves. So when community member CRCinAU raised awareness of this issue to Pulser, our team's friendly security guy and opensource advocate, he promptly uploaded a patch resolving this, and it has been merged after testing. With the patch, all external contact sync solutions may take advantage of groups within the native Omni contacts app without hassle. One FOSS solution DAVdroid promptly tweeted this, showing their support. CRCinAU also wrote an article on the positive news. This feature has already been implemented into our nightly builds, so if you use such a solution, go check it out in the People app!

The FOSS community has a place near and dear our hearts, and is of great importance to us. On behalf of all of us here at Omni, we are glad to be able to lend a helping hand to other FOSS projects and encourage others to do the same.