1. A method of distributing contact or calendar information in a multi-user environment, the method comprising: (a) maintaining records corresponding to a plurality of users, wherein at least one of the users has at least one contact or calendar authorization; (b) maintaining a plurality of contact or calendar records, each of the records containing a plurality of fields and a plurality of directives, wherein the directives include information pertaining to the user authorizations; (c) for each contact or calendar record, designating at least one component corresponding to the at least one user to which the record is to be distributed, wherein the designation is based on the directives corresponding to the respective record; and (d) automatically distributing one or more of the fields of the record to the at least one component corresponding to that record based on the designation of step (c).