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Use cases → Admin and governance

Synchronise external contact directories to Google Workspace

Push updates from a master directory into Workspace so all users have up-to-date shared contacts.

Who it is forIT administrators managing contacts across multiple systems or business units.
APIsAdmin SDK
Typical scopesadmin.directory.customer, admin.directory.user, admin.directory.orgunit

The problem

Users waste time searching for up-to-date contact details scattered across different sources. Manual updates to Workspace Directory are slow and error-prone, leading to missed connections and misrouted communications.

How it works

  1. Extract contact data from the master system on a regular schedule.
  2. Transform external fields to match Workspace Directory schema.
  3. Use a delegated service account to upsert contacts via Admin SDK.
  4. Log every write and surface any API errors or mismatches.

What changes

Workspace Directory reflects the current state of the canonical address book, reducing confusion and manual lookups.

The trap in this one. The Admin SDK's Directory API applies eventual consistency to contact updates: changes may take up to 24 hours to propagate to all users, but API responses return success immediately. This means a sync job can appear to succeed while users still see stale data, making verification and troubleshooting much harder.

Watch it explained

“Using Google People and Contacts API to invite people to DocHub organization” — Joshua Wilkosz on YouTube. Third-party video, included because it covers this ground well. We are not affiliated with the channel.

Questions people ask

How should I handle deletes in the source directory?

Track previously synced contacts and explicitly remove them via the API when missing from the source. Relying on overwrites alone leaves orphaned contacts.

Can I sync custom fields beyond name and email?

Only fields supported by the Workspace Directory schema are available; unsupported fields must be mapped or dropped during transformation.

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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