Google Mail Contacts Interoperability

From Sw

ScheduleWorld provides you with the ability to sync your contact data with Google.

[edit] Setup and Usage

1. Log in to ScheduleWorld.
2. Click the preferences icon.
3. Select the "GMail" configuration page.
4. Enter your GMail username and password.
5. Click 'Save'.
6. Click 'Sync GMail Contacts' button.

[edit] Lossless Merge Synchronization

When you sync your contacts with Google no contacts will be deleted in the sync process. In a nutshell the sync process works something like this:

1. Any contacts that exist only in Google are copied to ScheduleWorld.
2. Any contacts that exist only in ScheduleWorld are copied to Google.
3. Any contacts that have the same display name in Google and ScheduleWorld have their properties copied (but not duplicated) to each other.

At the end of the sync Google and ScheduleWorld should have the same number of contacts. Note that Google stores only a limited number of properties and can't fully reflect your ScheduleWorld contact data.

[edit] Lossless Exceptions

It doesn't make sense to be lossless for properties that can only have a single value. In this case the value from Google is preferred.

[edit] Utilizing ScheduleWorld's Merge Duplicate Contacts Feature

One great feature of ScheduleWorld is the ability to merge duplicate contacts. It's a bit tricky to make use of this with a lossless merge sync because none of the merged duplicates will be deleted on Google during your next sync. One possible way to do remove dupes in your Google contacts list is:

1. Sync Google and ScheduleWorld contacts.
2. Use ScheduleWorld's 'Merge Contact Duplicates' feature.
3. Remove all of your Google contacts.
4. Sync ScheduleWorld contacts with Google.

[edit] Known Issues

1. Photos only transfer from Google to ScheduleWorld.
2. It can take a long time to sync if you have a lot of contacts that have a photo. Google requires an HTTP request for each photo and seems to rate limit these connections to one per second (or two seconds).