How to Sync Salesforce with Google Contacts

At OrgSpring, we\’re always looking for ways to help nonprofits more efficiently use their data — at the office and on the go. This includes the use of contact information within a CRM and on mobile devices. Surprisingly, in this day and age, and considering the technology available, there aren\’t many great resources to bridge the gap that exists between the two places nonprofits exist most often – a CRM and an Email application.

Google Contacts is a hot mess of poor functionality and bad user-experience. It creates an actual contact in your system for every person or account that emails you, whether you like it or not. If you\’re Google accounts is also linked to other apps like Facebook, Linkedin, etc – then you\’re probably pulling in additional information for those contacts. What you\’re left with in Google contacts is a mess of duplicate contacts — some with address info but no phone, others with phone info but no email, etc. Quite simply…using Google Contacts to keep track of your important info is highly inefficient.

Salesforce recently made an update to its iOS and android apps, Salesforce One, that make searching your account slightly easier than before That is to say, it\’s now slightly better than contacting people with two tin cans connected by a string. But the focus on the app is detailed information on opportunities and, of course, the company\’s flagship social feed Chatter. Chatter is great for large orgs that have hundreds and thousands of updates per day and where employees of organizations don\’t see or talk to each other regularly. But for small orgs of 20 people or less, Chatter is a much less useful application, and, therefore, Salesforce One app is not much help for those who want to quickly and efficiently access only contact info on-the-go. Further, the new Salesforce App does not have amazing functionality anyway, which is surprising since the company is a multi-billion dollar organization.

So, what can we do to get access to our Salesforce contact data on our mobile devices — and actually be able to call up that info quickly on-the-go? Thanks to the new Salesforce to Google Contacts integration of Cirrus Insights the process just got alot easier.

I\’ve written about Cirrus Insights many times, specifically how it connects your Salesforce and Google apps accounts with ease. It is, in my opinion, the best bridge of these two great apps. The fact they\’ve won awards within the industry and from Salesforce is good proof of that claim too. For the uninitiated, Cirrus Insights allows you to create and view Salesforce information directly inside your Google Apps email program. It cuts down double data entry, and makes nearly all the info available in Salesforce viewable in Google Apps email. It\’s one of very few applications that I cannot live without, Salesforce and Google apps, being the other two!

Now, the gang at Cirrus has updated the application to perform a one-way sync related specifically to Google contacts. That means, you can Sync your Salesforce contact information directly into unique Google Contacts groups? Why is this important? For the two main reasons listed above – previously, getting information from either Salesforce or google contacts alone was a tough proposition. Now, with the Cirrus sync for contacts, you can create unique contact groups based on Salesforce contact filters and have all your correct contact information available at your fingertips in either application, and, more importantly, on the go.

Both iOS and Android devices have contact apps, but they\’re clunky. Now, with the contact sync, you can quickly access Google contacts through any number of Google contact apps on your phone. It\’s even easier on Android devices since they seamlessly integrate with Google and drop those contacts right in your phone\’s contacts natively.

Still, we thought it would be fun to create a little tutorial video so you can see how the Salesforce to Google Contacts sync works. It walks you through the setup and how it looks live. Of course, you\’ll need a copy of Cirrus Insights to make this all work. If you are a registered nonprofit, you can get 50% off the service by using a special code, which you can apply for here.

Remember, the video is shot in HD, so click the gear icon and make sure you\’re viewing at the highest resolution possible.

If you have any comments or questions on using the app please leave a comment here or on the official OrgSpring YouTube page.