Syncing Google Contacts

Our client operates multiple branches nationwide and manages an extensive customer list through their Enterprise resource planning(ERP) system.

They requested that customer contacts be synced to staff phones, with varying access levels. Thus, we developed a system to manage different subsets of contact information.

This piece outlines how we organised and allocated contact information to staff devices.

We identified that staff members were naturally grouped by shared needs for customer contacts. This led us to organise customers geographically or by primary contact person, shaping our system's structure.

The core unit of the organisation is the contact group. Customers are grouped into these categories, which are then linked to specific staff members.

Staff with access to multiple groups can view all contacts within their assigned groups. Similarly, contacts can belong to multiple groups, accessible to all relevant staff.

For example, customers from a branch in Auckland would be grouped together, and this group would be accessible to all relevant branch staff.

Our client uses Google Workspace for business emails. Logging into their Google company email on staff devices grants access to Google Contacts, the platform for managing contacts.

A challenge arose because Google Contacts doesn't organise contacts in groups as our system does. Instead, contacts are managed individually. Thus, we needed to adapt our grouping system to fit Google's structure during integration and updates.

Google provides various APIs which allow developers to connect to their systems to retrieve and update data. To connect and update data, we deployed Google's People API and service accounts.

Service accounts are specialised accounts for applications. Here, they enable authorised API requests to update and maintain the customer contact lists on behalf of users.