Appirio Contact Sync for Salesforce and Google Apps
A while back I wrote about syncing my Calendar across Salesforce and Google Apps. Since then, Appirio released additional some additional functionality, Contact Sync for Salesforce & Google Apps as well. I’m also using the previously mentioned NuevaSync to extend this to my Windows Mobile phone. While I really like this functionality in concept, it’s been a little tricky getting it to work right in practice.
My first attempt at syncing created a very large number of private Contacts in Salesforce, most of which had no business being there. Similarly, some contacts in Salesforce that I really don’t need in Gmail or my phone got synced as well.
I fixed the private Contacts issue by using Appirio’s built-in Google Contact filter functionality to exclude email addresses at non-business related domains like hotmail, gmail, yahoo, etc. For the most part this worked, keeping friends and other non-work related contacts out of Salesforce. There is functionality to sync with just a Group in the Google Contact list, but I haven’t tried that yet. The real solution would be the ability to control which contacts are in my Google Contact list, but that’s not available yet.
I then setup a new picklist called ‘Sync’ on Contacts with values of Yes and No. I set the Salesforce Contact filter to only sync Contacts with a value of Yes. This worked really well and I’m no longer seeing former clients or non-primary contacts at clients in Google or my phone.
Overall, it’s been a much rougher ride than the Calendar Sync. I still have some duplicates and private contacts to resolve, but it’s not an overwhelming amount. Appirio has been very helpful in the process and has provided quick responses to all of my questions and in the long run I think it will all be worthwhile to have my Contacts synced across all three services automatically on a daily basis.
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