14 DAY TRIAL // Google has now rolled out the revamped Contacts interface in Gmail for all Google Apps users. The new interface had been live for several months for regular users. There are also several additions more suited for professional environments, which is what Apps was built for.
"It’s important to be able to quickly reach people in your network, speeding up the tasks you perform daily, like making a phone call or sending an email – whether you’re at your desk or on the go," Sean Purcell, Product Manager, Google Contacts, wrote.
"To help with this, we’re rolling out an updated version of Contacts that makes it easier to use, organize and edit your work contacts in Gmail," he announced.
"In addition to all of the improvements we made to Contacts for individual users, we’ve been hard at work on bringing additional, business-specific features to help you and your colleagues get in touch with contacts more easily," he explained.
One of the Apps-specific changes is defaulting to "Work" rather than "Home" when adding new contacts.
It's now easier to manage contacts from the domain directory. You can add contacts from the directory with a single click. What's more, contact information is pulled from the directory to complement the one you've provided.
The new contacts interface makes it easier to manage groups as well. You can add new email addresses to groups with ease and you can select which email address from several associated with a contact to use for each group.
Another very useful feature, already available to standard Gmail users, is the possibility to revert changes to your contact list and details. This way, if you made a mistake, there's a simple way of recovering the data.
Many of these features have been available in Gmail already, so they're battletested. The new interface has to be specifically enabled by the Apps administrator of your domain.