Google Contacts

Is there anyway to customize, tweak, or in some other form make Google Contacts less frustrating for business use? I've got most of the rest of the business running through Google Apps now, but Contacts is just very poorly designed for a business contact system.

If all you want is someone's name and home email or home phone, it's fine. For personal use I guess this is fine. But if you actually want their company name, title, work contact information, etc., you have to manually add each field to the record before you can fill it out. Is there no way to tell Contacts that I'm going to want this information every time?

Alternately, does anyone have any suggestions for a web based contact management system that also integrates with iOS and Android, but functions a bit more like the traditional contacts function within Outlook?

Teneman wrote:

Is there anyway to customize, tweak, or in some other form make Google Contacts less frustrating for business use? I've got most of the rest of the business running through Google Apps now, but Contacts is just very poorly designed for a business contact system.

If all you want is someone's name and home email or home phone, it's fine. For personal use I guess this is fine. But if you actually want their company name, title, work contact information, etc., you have to manually add each field to the record before you can fill it out. Is there no way to tell Contacts that I'm going to want this information every time?

Alternately, does anyone have any suggestions for a web based contact management system that also integrates with iOS and Android, but functions a bit more like the traditional contacts function within Outlook?

For the contacts issue, under more you can select the 'Business' template which will help a little bit. I'm not sure offhand if you can make that the default.

I recently set a client of mine up with EssentialPIM. You have to buy the $40 Pro version to get sync capability but it will talk to Google, iOS, Android and a pile of other things. I use Google Apps for my side business as well and merely tolerate contacts but don't like it. I'm considering grabbing this as well.

I don't have a Business Template under "More" absurddoctor, at least I don't see it anywhere.

Parallax, I'd actually need to buy the Network Pro version it looks like, in order to share contacts with MonoCheli and the rest of the team, but it's better than anything else I've seen so far. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks for that link, PXA. I don't have the same frustration with Contacts, but I have others, and I will have to keep that program in mind.

Teneman wrote:

I don't have a Business Template under "More" absurddoctor, at least I don't see it anywhere.

Parallax, I'd actually need to buy the Network Pro version it looks like, in order to share contacts with MonoCheli and the rest of the team, but it's better than anything else I've seen so far. Thanks for the tip.

Make sure you have a contact open, then click more. I just tried, and it does seem to switch it over for all contacts.

Awesome, thanks Chairman! It does in fact seem to switch it for all contacts, including on the input screen for a new contact which was the biggest part of the problem.

That doesn't eliminate all my annoyances with Google Contacts, but it goes a long way to making it more tolerable.