Share contacts

[MarcoBiale]

Is there a built-in way in wokspace to share contacts among organization members?

[Tom_Sch]

This is something I am asking for a while now. We are talking about a business product and such a basic feature is not on board. If you need contact sharing you might take a look at https://www.patronum.io/ 

They offer so much more, but contact sharing is one reason I am using it. 

[calvinjones]

As an admin, you can add Domain Shared Contacts that are available to your entire organization: https://developers.google.com/admin-sdk/domain-shared-contacts

You can also delegate your contacts to others: https://support.google.com/contacts/answer/2590392?hl=en

We don't yet support contact sharing in the same way you might share a Google Doc today.

[stevelarsen]

And gamadv-xtd3 makes it easier to manage those domain shared contacts via the API if you want to use those

https://github.com/taers232c/GAMADV-XTD3/wiki/Contacts-GAL

[kevin0sullivan]

Our work flow would be massively improved by implementation of Shared Contacts, and particularly by commuting Google Contacts to the Directory.   Having shared contacts/a common directory would greatly augment Smart Chips, which is (IMO) the most powerful tool in Drive.

I will literally go to the ends of the earth for Google to implement this feature.  Who do I need to convince?

[icrew]

Hi @kevin0sullivan :

There are third-party solutions to allow this. For example, https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/shared_contacts_manager_for_google_conta/452164027617 is one example that turned up after a quick search, but I don't have any personal experience with it.

If you want to try to convince Google to build in the functionality natively, you might want to post this to the Feature Ideas section here. Doing so will allow it to be upvoted by others and possibly considered as a future feature enhancement.

If you do not already have access, you need to request it first. See https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/custom/page/page-id/Workspace-Feature-Ideas-FAQ for how to do that.

Once you have access, go to https://www.googlecloudcommunity.com/gc/Feature-Ideas/gh-p/workspace-ideas-group . There, you can upvote and comment on any similar idea, or post a new idea.

If you are submitting a feature idea, be sure to explain the problem that you're trying to solve with the feature idea, not just the idea itself. For example, saying "when my users are trying to do 'A', they often get confused by the fact that the buttons to do 'X' and to do 'Y' look quite similar to each other, which leads to this unintended consequence" is far more likely to get fixed than a feature idea that just says "change the color of the button 'Y'".

Cheers,

Ian

[kevin0sullivan]

Hi Ian,

The only reason I am skeptical of becoming reliant on third party applications is due to the risk of the developer not pursuing operability with future Workspace updates.

I have submitted my request to join the Feature Ideas section.  Thank you so very for explaining best practices here to achieve success.  I deeply appreciate your clarity.  I hope this gets feature gets remedied because I am so passionate about the outcome.

All the best,

Kevin

[stef]

Hi @kevin0sullivan , @MarcoBiale ,

Google has been sollicited to release such a feature since 2008, and the reason why they haven't done yet is also that they have relied on third-party tools to do so.

Your concerns of third-party developers not following up with Google upgrade is legit: When replaced contacts API with People API, most of the small vendors gave up this scene.

However, I think you should give it a try for numerous reasons :

1) If ever a third party developpers stops their business, you will not lose much as the shared contacts are all synchronized with your Google accounts. You will just need to find another vendor or maybe by that time Google would have released it.

2) Some vendors, like https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/shared_contacts_share_google_workspace_c/1033860418004, exist since 2009 and are Google Technilogy Premium partners, which makes it very unlikely that they stop keeping up with Google updates, especially if their whole business relies on that offer.

3) To maximize your chances, also make sure that the company ISO 27001 or SOC2  certified: The investment to obtain these certifications mean that they have a solid business plan and guarantee your data is save whatever happens.

4) Ensure to pick an enterprise-grade solution that offers contacts backup and restore as well as admin logs so that you can ensure the service continuity by yourself even if the provider anounces termination.

Good luck with that!

[kevin0sullivan]

Thank you for the low-down!

[Tom_Sch]

I don't mind using thrird-party tools. I am super happy with Patronum and their amazing service and support. But lets face it Google Workspace lacks a lot of real business oriented features that should have been there from day one!