you can sync only contacts of which you are owner (in Pipedrive) to Outlook?

Vincent Claes
Vincent Claes Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
First Comment
edited July 2022 in Sales CRM #1

I was disappointed to find out you can only sync contacts to Outlook of which you are the owner. There is apparently no way for my team members to sync contacts i imported/created in Pipedrive to their Outlook contacts.  Would think the goal of having a CRM system is to be able to share professional contacts among your firm? 

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Comments

  • David Lorbiecke_3
    David Lorbiecke_3 Posts: 188 VERIFIED MEMBER
    100 Comments Pipedrive Team
    edited February 2022 #2

    Hey Vincent!

    That's a completely reasonable issue to have, but there is a logical reason behind this (besides an issue of privacy between contacts).

    The issue we found people facing syncing all contacts, besides just what each User owns, is that because of the 2-way nature of the sync this results in a significant amount of duplicates. Since duplication detection doesn't always work, contacts that a person already has can end up being synced as new ones, creating a large number of duplications. 

    Ideally, one day we can have this completely managed and duplications prevented, but as of yet, keeping syncs between only Owners seems to help reduce duplications.

  • Vincent Claes
    Vincent Claes Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment
    edited April 2020 #3

    Hey Vincent!

    That's a completely reasonable issue to have, but there is a logical reason behind this (besides an issue of privacy between contacts).

    The issue we found people facing syncing all contacts, besides just what each User owns, is that because of the 2-way nature of the sync this results in a significant amount of duplicates. Since duplication detection doesn't always work, contacts that a person already has can end up being synced as new ones, creating a large number of duplications. 

    Ideally, one day we can have this completely managed and duplications prevented, but as of yet, keeping syncs between only Owners seems to help reduce duplications.

    Then maybe it is a suggestion to also offer one way sync from Pipedrive to Outlook (specific folder) ? so at least colleagues can access the CRM data from outlook ? (but not adapt it from outlook)

  • Julia Schoonover
    Julia Schoonover Member Posts: 6 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment
    edited May 2020 #4

    This is an idea that I have not tested out. It wouldn't really be a sync, but possibly a way to share a lot of contacts.

    Would you be able to export the contacts from your Pipedrive account where all the contacts are visible?

    Then, share the spreadsheet with your colleagues to bulk upload into Outlook.

    https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/2014/06/12/import-contacts-excel-outlook/

    Today I'll tell you how to prevent duplicates from appearing in a column of your Excel worksheet. This tip works in Microsoft Excel 2013, 2010, 2007 and lower.
  • Rachel Baker
    Rachel Baker Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    edited September 2021 #5

    Has this issue been addressed yet? Our company is also having the similar issue that we cannot sync someone's contacts from gmail to their Pipedrive as it will duplicate some already existing ones in the "everyone" filter. Even with the merge duplicate feature, it doesn't allow 2 people to be the owner of the contact and so only shows the merged contact in one person's contact list. The follower feature also doesn't allow the person or organisation to show up in someone's personal contacts list. 

  • Marc Kresin
    Marc Kresin Member Posts: 2 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment
    edited January 2022 #6

    We have the same issue, we want to maintain our contacts in pipedrive and share updates. But our users need outlook as well so the contact should shared across outlook and pipedrive

  • Thomas Rischbeck
    Thomas Rischbeck Member Posts: 1 VERIFIED MEMBER
    First Comment

    We also struggle with this limitation which really limits the impact of PipeDrive in our organization.

    Support suggested bluesync as a workaround. We have tried it without results. Apparently, bluesync doesn't (yet) support the synchronization of PipeDrive contacts to a (shared) Exchange folder.

    So at the moment we look at a periodic manual export / import of contacts as a workaround - which is a bit of a nuisance and not really understandable given the cost of PD!

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 63 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic

    A much bigger issue that I have just discovered with this feature. Disappearing contacts from my phone (office365)

    Example:

    A supplier or employee or even a Customer that I might have in my contacts on Office 365 suddenly disappears if I change the owner of the contact in Pipedrive.

    If I change an employee's owner to the Company Director, they disappear from my phone contacts. I was wondering where all of my contacts were going, now I know. This is a major problem.

    Luckily the Director has not started using PD yet so we have not synced his contacts, As the owner of the business he is going to have most of our major clients as well as his own in his Office365 contact list. If they disappear because we change the owner of that client to someone else, there is going to be hell to pay.

  • Andreia Costa
    Andreia Costa Pipedrive Team Posts: 170 PIPEDRIVE TEAM
    Third Anniversary 100 Comments 5 Answers 5 Likes

    Hi @MBrown 👋

    You're very correct, as explained above the fact is that this is expected behavior, though I can 100% understand that it's far from ideal. I can leave some suggestions that might potentially work for you or anyone who comes across this thread:

    • One-way sync is likely the best solution to ensure that this doesn't happen
    • It might be that using the contact sync option is not ideal here and it would be better to maybe export the contacts and import them into Pipedrive
    • Another suggestion I'll leave here is using permissions. To make sure certain users don't change the ownership of people, under the Global Permissions, you can control that via the "Change a person’s owner" permission

    I understand that none of these will change the behavior of 2-way sync, but I hope it can help offer alternatives.

    Thank you

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 63 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic
    edited April 17 #10

    Is there no way you guys can turn on the sync to an owner, but also sync to another user if they are a follower?

  • MBrown
    MBrown Member Posts: 63 VERIFIED MEMBER
    25 Likes 10 Comments First Anniversary Photogenic
    edited April 17 #11

    Or even better…turn on the ability to have multiple owners for People/Organisations and Deals.