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central addressbook software for syncing everything with everything
superboyac:
OK, here's more info.
If you access Microsoft's service through a web browser, the contacts are perfect. This is both with the free Windows Live account and with Office365/exchange. You can add LinkedIn and Facebook connectors, and those contacts will come in and most will get automatically merged. The duplicates remaining can be manually merged to get the perfect addressbook. This is all done online with a full web browser.
Now the trick is getting it on mobile. I'm talking the final end product of all that merging and photo managing, duplicate cleaning, etc. This is what seems to be impossible.
I turned automatic syncing back on in the Android. Now, all the contacts come in from the Office365 exchange link. The problem: no profile photos (all coming from linkedin and facebook, you don't have the ability to add your own photos), and the merged contacts don't work. All the contacts you merged appear separately on the Android. So most contacts have 2-3 entries for me. Not good. I can get an app to merge it, but I already spent all that effort online...I'm looking for a solution where I only have to do this one time in one central place and it gets deployed to all my devices.
It appears Microsoft has provided a kickass contact management solution for integration with facebook and linkedin, but it only works in the browser or wp8 phones. It won't work in regular desktop outlook, it won't work with android or ios. SOME things work, but not entirely.
Can someone write an software for this? Is there a service I can pay for to handle this? I'll even go so far as to host my own server if I can make it work. I've read people doing such things with owncloud and stuff. I want a central contact manager that can send the info to phones and outlook and whatever.
superboyac:
Here's a detailed article about these experiences with Plaxo, a popular syncing service. The guy eventually gives up on syncing. :(
Hi @dojohnny,
Thanks for stopping by and reading the article. When it comes to contact sync, I've all but given up on any syncing services. The best and most reliable syncing I've found is the native Google Contacts sync between my Gmail contacts and my phone.
My Android phone does a fair amount of contact syncing from my GMail contacts and my Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts. There's 3rd party apps you can get that will pull in photos and other detail that you can run on your phone, which will in turn sync to your web-based contacts.
However, from what you're describing seems to be asking an awful lot from a standard contacts manager. Xobni's Smarter Contacts comes to mind as possibly what you're looking for. It's an Android/iOS app and it's an add-on for Gmail as well.
It does a lot of what Xobni for Outlook does, which is ping the web for any pertinent info on your contacts, and pulls them in from various sources.
But, for true relationship management such as you're describing, that's more of like what a CRM (customer relationship management) tool would do. Salesforce.com might have a mobile app, as well as a service called Big Contacts (bigcontacts.com).
Rapportive also does some light CRM, so perhaps you can check that out in the Chrome extension store to see if maybe that might be what you're looking for.
These are but a few to go on, but there are many out there. I can't say that I recommend any one over the other, as I've tried many, and in the end, just went to a stripped down, unsexy Google Contacts that syncs to my Android and vice versa.
Hope this helps in some way. Perhaps someone reading might know of some services that may do the trick as well?
Thanks again for reading!
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superboyac:
So I have to try memotoo now.
Stoic Joker:
So... you're looking for an ongoing interactive relationship between all of the players that will continuously sync contacts regardless of which system they are created in? Zoiks! ...That will be a bit tricky. I've worked with manually integrating/importing the contacts/calendars/mail from other systems into Exchange so that it will be used exclusively going forward. But the live action stuff I've never tried (or even thought to). I'm generally brought in to collapse discontiguous system into one fully integrated single (Exchange...) package.
It is interesting that OWA 2013 will merge it properly...yet still not convey said compilation to a local copy of Outlook ... Is the local copy 2013 also?
superboyac:
So... you're looking for an ongoing interactive relationship between all of the players that will continuously sync contacts regardless of which system they are created in? Zoiks! ...That will be a bit tricky. I've worked with manually integrating/importing the contacts/calendars/mail from other systems into Exchange so that it will be used exclusively going forward. But the live action stuff I've never tried (or even thought to). I'm generally brought in to collapse discontiguous system into one fully integrated single (Exchange...) package.
It is interesting that OWA 2013 will merge it properly...yet still not convey said compilation to a local copy of Outlook ... Is the local copy 2013 also?
-Stoic Joker (November 21, 2013, 03:32 PM)
--- End quote ---
I'm pretty sure this is part of the business battles. A few years ago, the syncs were free and worked much better. Over the years, it's gotten worse and worse as the ecosystem walls got higher and higher.
Yes, the OWA thing is weird. I haven't tried it yet on Outlook 2013, but from everything i've read it will be no different. Apparently, the nice merging and syncing features are ONLY available online. Microsoft probably made a limited arrangement with facebook and linkedin to accomplish that. Google Apps for BUSINESS (paid service) also has more sync features, but I haven't tried those yet.
Years ago, I used to do it like you. I imported everything manually into a standalone addressbook (I probably have several threads about it here) and then would periodically update it and export it to my phones and Outlook. But now it's too much for me. And the profile photos are the most pain in the ass. It's just a superficial thing, but it really helps to have a contact photo when receiving calls on the phone.
But yeah, now I'm on a mission. I want one centrally managed contact system that I use with Outlook, phones, tablets, laptops, etc. With pictures and ALL contact info. I'll get a freaking full on CRM if I have to, but even those I'm not convinced are working.
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