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Use cases → Admin and governance

Synchronise a company-wide contact directory across tenants

Push updates to every user's Contacts so the address book matches the current directory, even in multi-tenant setups.

Who it is forIT teams responsible for keeping user address books up to date across multiple Google Workspace tenants.
APIsAdmin SDK, Gmail API
Typical scopesadmin.directory.user.readonly, contacts

The problem

People expect their address book to have everyone in the organisation, but Google Contacts does not auto-populate from the directory. Manual import is quickly outdated, and cross-tenant contacts are never there unless you push them.

How it works

  1. Read the user directory from each tenant using the Admin SDK.
  2. Build a canonical contact list for each user, excluding themselves and any suppressed users.
  3. Use the Gmail API's Contacts scope to upsert contacts into every user’s personal Contacts.
  4. Track a per-contact sync key (e.g. in the Notes field) to support idempotency.
  5. Remove contacts that are no longer present in the directory.

What changes

Every user’s Contacts reflect the current directory, including cross-tenant colleagues, without manual intervention.

The trap in this one. The Contacts API enforces heavy per-user write quotas and batches are not atomic — if you hit quota mid-run, you end up with some users half-updated and no automatic rollback. If your process retries blindly, it can thrash the same accounts into extended lockout. Always checkpoint progress and stagger updates to avoid hammering the same set of users.

Questions people ask

Does this overwrite users’ own contacts?

Not if you namespace your sync contacts, e.g. using a unique label or Notes marker. Never assume users don't use their Contacts for personal entries.

How is deletion handled for departed users?

When a user leaves the directory, remove their contact from all synced address books on the next run. Be careful to only touch managed entries.

Want this built?

This is a pattern we run in production. We will set up the delegation and build this on top of it — $500 per hour, most of it working the same day.

Talk to us Or read the setup guide

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