Labels for contacts

280 views
Skip to first unread message

Sarah Mould

unread,
Nov 27, 2019, 10:32:26 AM11/27/19
to GAM for G Suite
I have installed GAM in the hope that this is possible: I want to be able to add/remove labels for my users' contacts lists.

I can't find anything about it in the help or forum...

Evgeny Shcherbakov

unread,
Nov 27, 2019, 10:43:57 AM11/27/19
to GAM for G Suite
Hello Sarah,

Which version of GAM are you using?
I recommend you try out GAMADV-XTD3 available on https://github.com/taers232c/GAMADV-XTD3
It is a much more advanced version of GAM created by Ross Scroggs.
We use it in our school and I have recently written a bunch of scripts that push contacts into user accounts with various attributes.
The documentation for what you are looking for is available here:

Ross Scroggs

unread,
Nov 27, 2019, 10:44:55 AM11/27/19
to google-ap...@googlegroups.com
On Nov 27, 2019, at 7:32 AM, Sarah Mould <sarah...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have installed GAM in the hope that this is possible: I want to be able to add/remove labels for my users' contacts lists.

I can't find anything about it in the help or forum...

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GAM for G Suite" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-apps-man...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-apps-manager/44768f9b-439c-461a-95c4-5fac68fc6ec5%40googlegroups.com.

Sarah Mould

unread,
Nov 27, 2019, 11:51:49 AM11/27/19
to GAM for G Suite
Hi, thanks for replying.

I have installed GAM-ADV, but am struggling with the syntax. Could you very kindly give me an example to create a contact with a label?

And while I have your attention, is this the only/best way to do what I want? I need my users to be able to type (for example) "volunteers" into the To or Bcc field of an email and have it filled with the current list of volunteers. As volunteers change often, this needs to be held as one list for the organisation, or to be updated automatically for each user. All users are on G Suite, volunteers are not. Similarly, we may wish to email other groups, such as our clients.


On Wednesday, 27 November 2019 15:44:55 UTC, Ross Scroggs wrote:

Ian Crew

unread,
Nov 27, 2019, 12:05:21 PM11/27/19
to GAM for G Suite
On Nov 27, 2019, at 8:51 AM, Sarah Mould <sarah...@gmail.com> wrote:

And while I have your attention, is this the only/best way to do what I want? I need my users to be able to type (for example) "volunteers" into the To or Bcc field of an email and have it filled with the current list of volunteers. As volunteers change often, this needs to be held as one list for the organisation, or to be updated automatically for each user. All users are on G Suite, volunteers are not. Similarly, we may wish to email other groups, such as our clients.


To me, it sounds like it would make a lot more sense to create a Google Group (https://groups.google.com, https://support.google.com/a/users/answer/9282667?hl=en) for the volunteers and clients lists. You can control who’s allowed to send to each group—see that second link for more details.

Hope that helps,

Ian


Ross Scroggs

unread,
Nov 27, 2019, 12:11:01 PM11/27/19
to google-ap...@googlegroups.com
Sarah,

This is how to create a contact in a contacg group:
gam user us...@domain.com create contact email work sarah...@gmail.com primary contactgroup "Name of Contact Group"

I think that Ian is on the right track for what your want.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GAM for G Suite" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-apps-man...@googlegroups.com.

Evgeny Shcherbakov

unread,
Nov 27, 2019, 12:26:03 PM11/27/19
to GAM for G Suite
Sarah,

In our organization we use both cases the one proposed by Ian (where you have special contact groups which are only visible to some of our staff, and only those staff can send an email to that group), as well as the use case proposed by Ross (where we have created custom contact groups in the Google Contacts of our users and push contacts that they need to be able to see there)

The first case is used to send mass mailings. The second case is used when the user needs to be able to search for a specific contact. I must however warn you that Gmail only searches for thins you write in the Name and Surname fields of the contact. There is no way of searching by some label.
Also, from our experience Gmail does not index all of the contacts that you have in your Google Contacts. How this works on the back end, I have no clue, all I can tell you is that when I have created custom contact groups in our users' Google Contacts and pushed hundreds of contacts into them I noticed that I can find all the contacts when searching directly in the Google Contacts web app or the Google Contacts app on Android, however I am not able to find all of them when searching directly in Gmail.

Sarah Mould

unread,
Nov 27, 2019, 1:21:24 PM11/27/19
to GAM for G Suite
I did look at groups, but it seemed that the recipients had to sign up?? And that emails are plain text?? Or did I misunderstand...

Ian Crew

unread,
Nov 27, 2019, 1:46:59 PM11/27/19
to GAM for G Suite
Hi Sarah:

You can add people to groups manually (though there are limits to how many you can do at once via the UI—GAM can allow you to do as many as you wish). See https://support.google.com/groups/answer/2465464?hl=en (the “Add people to your group directly” bit).

Anything you can send in email can be sent to a group: styled/formatted emails, attachments, etc. You can even turn on archiving for a Group so people can see what’s been sent to that group (with the possibility of restricting the viewing to just the managers of the group, just the members of the group, just people in your domain, or opening it up to anyone in the world) 

Hope that helps,

Ian

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GAM for G Suite" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-apps-man...@googlegroups.com.

Sarah Mould

unread,
Nov 27, 2019, 2:30:33 PM11/27/19
to GAM for G Suite
I guess I was misadvised. Thanks so much - if that works it will solve all my problems (well, not world peace...)


Hope that helps,

Ian

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-apps-manager+unsub...@googlegroups.com.

Sarah Mould

unread,
Dec 3, 2019, 8:30:12 AM12/3/19
to GAM for G Suite
So I've been testing the Groups for Business feature, and it works fine for what we need.

BUT

You can only add email addresses to the group. This may be a bit of a problem for users, as some of the email addresses are radically different from the person's name. I realise that everyone should sign their name to their messages, but they probably won't.

If I add all the addresses with supporting information as Domain Shared Contacts, will the additional info (Name, mainly) be visible within the emails? And when adding email addresses to a group, will users be able to select by searching for the name, rather than the email address?

I'm also a bit concerned about removing people. I'm guessing their email address will have to be removed from each group they are in, as well as any G Suite users' Contacts, and from the Directory? (Will need to be sure they are fully removed, to comply with GDPR.)


Thoughts?

Ian Crew

unread,
Dec 3, 2019, 12:46:24 PM12/3/19
to google-ap...@googlegroups.com
Hi Sarah:

When someone sends a message to the Google Group, the From address line will still show their name as it does on any email. The fact that the group itself only has their email doesn’t impact things. 

In terms of removing users from others contacts and groups, I’m not a GDPR expert (I’m in the US, so impacted somewhat less), but this is the first I’ve heard of that requirement. Still, 
https://github.com/taers232c/GAMADV-XTD3/wiki/Users-Group-Membership#delete-users-from-groups shows how to delete a user from all groups that they’re a member of, and 

Cheers,

Ian


Hope that helps,

Ian

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-apps-man...@googlegroups.com.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GAM for G Suite" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-apps-man...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-apps-manager/536f4398-22fd-42f7-8b94-3cd50a10d42c%40googlegroups.com.
--
___
Ian Crew

IST-Architecture, Platforms and Integration (API)
Earl Warren Hall, Second Floor
University of California, Berkeley

Sarah Mould

unread,
Dec 4, 2019, 6:47:19 AM12/4/19
to GAM for G Suite
Thanks, Ian. I was hoping not to do too much scripting, as I don't know who would take over if I fall under a bus. But if needs must, then I'll set that up (and also have a whinge to Google in the feature requests, including user access to domain shared contacts).


On Tuesday, 3 December 2019 17:46:24 UTC, Ian Crew wrote:
Hi Sarah:

+KimNilsson

unread,
Dec 27, 2019, 11:56:05 AM12/27/19
to GAM for G Suite
Yes, a non-API solution would be nice.

Also, love hearing people talking about GDPR compliance. :-)
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages