Syncing Shared Contacts
It seems that there is no way for a colleague and I to "share" a contact in both of our address books if we both have two-way sync enabled.
Let's make up a contact, say "Gary" that both I and my colleague interact with and we both want Gary in our Google (gmail) address books. Both my colleague and I have two-way contact sync enabled in Pipedrive.
I already have Gary syncing between my address book and Pipdrive, and I'm listed as the owner for Gary's record in Pipedrive.
If my colleague adds Gary to her Google address book, now there are two copies of Gary in Pipedrive - one owned by her and one owned by me.
This wreaks havoc on our marketing automation system and causes data integrity problems. Plus my colleague can't see my notes or calls with Gary. So we merge the two Garys, like good stewards of data do, and since I talk to Gary more than my colleague, we set me as the owner of the merged record.
But now Gary disappears from my colleague's address book! She can't email him from gMail and can't invite him to meetings from Google Calendar. When he calls her cell phone, his name no longer pops up.
So my colleague adds Gary back into her address book and the whole thing starts over again.
I think there's a key feature missing to contact sync:
On the contact sync tab, there should be an additional option:
🔘Sync Contacts owned by me
🔘Sync ALL contacts in database
🔘Sync contacts that match the following conditions...
Of course, if anyone else has a fix that doesn't require development on Pipedrive's part, please let me know. The battle of the duplicate contacts in Pipedrive and missing contacts in Google must end!!
Comments
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Hi Steve, this is one of the specific use cases that may be solved by using PieSync instead of Pipedrive’s native sync, as PieSync’s rule engine will give you that extra bit of control.
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Thank you for the feedback, @Steve Robinson !
At the moment, indeed, you can sync your own contacts with external contacts (google contacts f..e) and if you decide to go for syncking same external contacts with several Pipedrive users on same account - each of the users will have these contact people created for them.
Which will lead to duplication.
And, what can be done - only one user will have external contacts connected to Pipedrive and that person will be owner of all customers.
The other thing that you would have to do - is to make sure all the contacts are shared on the account.
Then, both users will be able to amend contacts and send emails and no duplicates will appear.
However, I understand that it is not ideal and left feedback to the product manager along with the options you offered.
Kind regards,
Vladimir
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Vladimir Dubakin said:
Thank you for the feedback, @Steve Robinson !
At the moment, indeed, you can sync your own contacts with external contacts (google contacts f..e) and if you decide to go for syncking same external contacts with several Pipedrive users on same account - each of the users will have these contact people created for them.
Which will lead to duplication.
And, what can be done - only one user will have external contacts connected to Pipedrive and that person will be owner of all customers.
The other thing that you would have to do - is to make sure all the contacts are shared on the account.
Then, both users will be able to amend contacts and send emails and no duplicates will appear.
However, I understand that it is not ideal and left feedback to the product manager along with the options you offered.
Kind regards,
Vladimir
Dear@Vladimir Dubakin,
Is there any news on this issue? I do have the same request. It would be awesome to have the option to sync contacts from all owners to my Google Contacts account!
Best, Silvan
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Vladimir Dubakin said:
Thank you for the feedback, @Steve Robinson !
At the moment, indeed, you can sync your own contacts with external contacts (google contacts f..e) and if you decide to go for syncking same external contacts with several Pipedrive users on same account - each of the users will have these contact people created for them.
Which will lead to duplication.
And, what can be done - only one user will have external contacts connected to Pipedrive and that person will be owner of all customers.
The other thing that you would have to do - is to make sure all the contacts are shared on the account.
Then, both users will be able to amend contacts and send emails and no duplicates will appear.
However, I understand that it is not ideal and left feedback to the product manager along with the options you offered.
Kind regards,
Vladimir
Hi @Silvan Siegrist!
We do not have any further updates on this feature at the moment, I am sorry. I have also shared your feedback with the Product team to show the need for this feature update. To keep an eye on all our product updates, you can follow our What's New category in the Community.0 -
Sarah Mouton said:
Hi Steve, this is one of the specific use cases that may be solved by using PieSync instead of Pipedrive’s native sync, as PieSync’s rule engine will give you that extra bit of control.
PieSync was acquired by HubSpot, it is no longer available as a standalone tool. Do you know of any other tools to sync all contacts? Thanks!
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Vladimir Dubakin said:
Thank you for the feedback, @Steve Robinson !
At the moment, indeed, you can sync your own contacts with external contacts (google contacts f..e) and if you decide to go for syncking same external contacts with several Pipedrive users on same account - each of the users will have these contact people created for them.
Which will lead to duplication.
And, what can be done - only one user will have external contacts connected to Pipedrive and that person will be owner of all customers.
The other thing that you would have to do - is to make sure all the contacts are shared on the account.
Then, both users will be able to amend contacts and send emails and no duplicates will appear.
However, I understand that it is not ideal and left feedback to the product manager along with the options you offered.
Kind regards,
Vladimir
I would like to request the same feature!
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Steve, agreed 100% on this issue. There has to be a way for either (1) multiple owners of a contact, or (2) there is a 'primary' owner of the contact and all user can 'follow' that contact. Then in the contact sync it syncs both the contacts you 'own' and also the ones 'flagged' too. Hopefully they can resolve this. Its an endless cycle with our folks and we've only been using it a short period. I want to have a single company and single organizations within Pipedrive and having struggles with this piece. I merged a bunch of contacts and then my team complained they all lost that contact info in their outlook and on their phones and then added them back. Thus creating the endless cycle. Pipedrive, please help!
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This is a key issue we face in using Pipedrive ! A CRM should enable to have a common base of contacts in an organisation !! Don't understand why it is not properly tackled
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Yes. Just encountered this today. Merging duplicates in Pipedrive removes my colleague's version of the contact from their Gmail contact list, but it doesn't add the combined/ merged contact to their list. Then they re-add the contact when they send a new email and this creates a duplicate. The cycle continues.
That a Pipedrive contact merge will delete but not add to the 3rd party contact list (Gmail in our case) is frustrating.
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Ultimately, we have signed up for another service to centralise our Contacts database. We now also use this:
... and I am the only person in the company that has a 2-way sync with my Google Workspace contacts and Pipedrive. Everyone else has removed their contacts sync. Seems to be working so far, but I still need to evaluate it.
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I am the Sales Manager of our Company, above me is the Director. We both have common contacts, as well as I have high level contacts of large clients who are owned by an account manager. Turning on sync, duplicated heaps of contacts in my phone (which I got around by creating lists), however it deleted a heap of contacts that were owned by other users in PD. I am too scared to turn on contact syncing for our MD as it would potential delete/duplicate a lot of his contacts in his phone/outlook.
Surely there has to be a way to share contacts between users.
Mike
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