Adding fields to Business Card QR code generator

[florencew60574261]

Hi, I am using the QR code generator in InDesign, to create V-Card QR codes. I have 4 telephone numbers that need to show on the V-Card and there are only 2 telephone number fields in the generator form.
Is there a way that I can edit the generator form or add those 2 telephone numbers?
Thank you in advance for your help.
Flo

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

ID's QR code feature is very basic and a little out of date. You are probably better off using any of the many code generator apps or sites out there; you may have to work out a full-text encoding to hold all the extra information in vCard format. (If you put the right text in the "text" mode, it will map to vCard specs... but it's a little tricky. Wikipedia actually has a pretty good reference to the field codes etc.)

But no, ID's generator is not adaptable in any way I know of.

Just as a heads-up, though, you usually want to limit the number of characters encoded in a QR code. It will hold a lot — I forget what the limit is — but once you go past a certain limit, the code grid gets very fine and if the code isn't reproduced fairly large, many readers will have trouble with it. So if you're including much besides four phone numbers, you might want to watch the details.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

To expand on James' suggestion, you might want to steer clear of ID's Business Card template anyway as it writes older v2.1 vCards which are reportedly troublesome for some smart phones these days. Yes, you could read up on how to format v3.0 vCard info (including as many phone numbers as you want) and manually pasting it into the "Plain Text" box in ID's QR code generator as opposed to using the Template, but why bother when you can get better results via much a more sophisticated external plugin you can buy for lo-cost (e.g. at Adobe Exchange) or even a free online generator.

[florencew60574261]

James and Brad, thank you so much for your information
Brad, unfortunately the Adobe Exchange plugin will not download for me. I tried all their suggestions, but it won't. I'm leary of online generators as I am doing this for a client for about 10 or 15 of his employees. If someone can suggest a safe, reliable service I'll be happy to look into it (I spent a couple hours yesterday researching).

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

I have learned over the last several months that the simple QR code has been co-opted by an entire industry of *cough* entrepreneurs who have found ways to link generated codes to pay-me or data-scraping systems. We've had a number of new posters who want to create "dynamic QR codes" using ID that do this, that and some other fancy online thing. Confusion has reigned.

I understand why you'd be leery of using any online service or app for this, even for simple data safety reasons.

I am not sure if there is a completely standalone generator app; you might look on the mobile platforms as well as for desktop OSes.

And... maybe my suggestion about hand-coding the info using ID's tool is the right direction, if you're up to learning a little vCard structure. 🙂 I've certainly made a note to look into it, for all of the above reasons.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Yeah, didn't mean that the build-your-own option was a good one for most needs; I just couldn't remember offhand if vCard is flexible enough to handle four phone numbers. I guess it's as flexible as the input form is.

[Jeffrey_Smith]

When generating QR code, use Plain Text type and paste in vcard code:

BEGIN:VCARD

VERSION:2.1
N:Smith;Jeff
FN:Smith
TEL;CELL: 1234567890
TEL;CELL: 2345678901
TEL;CELL: 3456789012
TEL;WORK;VOICE: 4567890123
END:VCARD

[florencew60574261]

Jeffrey, O my goodness, thank you so much. I didn't realize that would be such an easy task. I was able to add 4 phone numbers and all the other information and still have a code that was readable. Thank you so much.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

You might also want to look up the structure for v3.0 vCards instead. There's a slight difference (and more detail*) in how things are formatted. As I mentioned, there are SOME smart phones that balk at v2.1 vCards.

e.g. in V3.0, a cell number is written like so:

TEL;type=CELL;type=VOICE:780 999-9991

if you add type=pref to this line, it would list that number first ("preferred") when imported.

TEL;type=CELL;type=VOICE;type=pref:780 999-9991

*Unfortunately, this added detail adds to the complexity of the QR code.

One thing that is helpful in generating vCard info is to actually set up the info in your computer's AddressBook/Contacts/whatver, then export it as a vCard. Open that in a text editor, and copy and paste the rest. There are some optional lines you can delete e.g. PRODID or REV.

Check the Wikipage for vCard: it has a list of the elements that are required and the ones that are optional.

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

...there are SOME smart phones that balk at v2.1 vCards.

Was there any issue other than accented characters causing faulty reads?

But yes, if anyone is going to go this route, it's worth using the later standard. Just watch the overall character count as much as possible.

[Brad @ Roaring Mouse]

"Was there any issue other than accented characters causing faulty reads?"

I've heard past experiences that certain iPhones couldn't read them, but that may have been resolved in later iOS as my current iPhone reads them just fine now, but I had a client call me having issues with Android phones with the business cards I had put ID-created QR codes on, so "shrug?".

As far as the accented character issue, v2.1 vCards by default are assumed to be CHARSET=US-ASCII encoded so accented characters will not read properly, but one could add the following (Red) to every line with accents (before the colon) to force the reader to read them with the correct encoding. (This is information for the OP)

N;CHARSET=UTF-8:Namérson;Nämey;;;