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Recently Google released a tool that allows some mobile phones, including the iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile-based units to synchronize Google contacts and Google calendars.  However, currently there are some limitations to this technology.  Below are some recommendations for Google to implement in their sync technology.

Google will eventually allow Outlook uses to use Google Sync to synchronize their contacts.  It is my opinion Google will also eventually roll out Exchange support for Gmail.  In which case, Contacts and Calendar would need to have a sync path with Outlook.  However, currently there are some deficiencies in Google’s Sync technology.  Currently, Outlook supports many fields in its Address Book card.  Google provides only a subset of these fields in its Contacts window within Gmail.  If Google wants to provide the functionality of an Exchange server for its Groupware offerings, it needs to expand the data a Google Contact card can store.

Outlook contains a lot of fields for users to enter information about contacts.  Since Outlook/Exchange is the de facto standard for corporate email it stands to reason that any service that wishes to integrate with it needs to include support for the entire data available to it.  Even those companies that use IBM Domino/Lotus or Novell Groupwise have clients that allow many of the same fields that Outlook provides.  I would like to note that while corporate users may, or indeed are required by policy, not want to sync a personal Google account with their corporate email client.  However, some corporate users still use Outlook, or Lotus, or Groupwise at home to check their corporate accounts.  Here is a screenshot of the New Contact window in Outlook 2003.

Outlook 2003 New Contact Window

As you can see, Outlook provides the following fields.

• First and Last Name
• Job Title
• Company Name
• Various phone numbers
• Various physical addresses
• Various email addresses
• A space for a website address and IM address, and
• Notes.

Apple’s flagship iPhone has similar field’s in its contact database.  Name, multiple phone numbers, email addresses, websites, physical addresses, and custom fields.  Windows Mobile phones and BlackBerry phones also support this level of contact data storage.

So what does Google offer its users as far as contact details?  Only the basics…

• Name
• Title
• Company
• Various email addresses
• Various phone numbers
• Various physical addresses
• IM addresses
• Notes

Fortunately for most users, this should be enough information in order to get in contact with someone.  However, it is not difficult to add more fields to a web form and database.  Once the information is being stored, its a simple update for other companies and for Google’s sync technology to match fields in their applications.  For instance, adding all the fields available to Outlook should, in theory, match every field in the iPhone and Windows Mobile phones since they use the ActiveSync protocol.  Indeed, any device or application that uses ActiveSync should be able to automatically match fields.

So Google, please timely update your contact database to include fields common to other PIM applications and mobile devices.  Doing so will ensure others begin to use your service to its fullest extent.

While on the topic of using Google Contacts as a user’s primary (personal) contact database,  another needed addition to Gmail’s interface is data scrubbing.  Here is an example:

I recently purchased an iPhone. For years I’ve had telephone numbers stored in my Google Contacts in the form of XXX-YYY-ZZZZ.  I then setup iTunes to sync Google Contacts to my iPhone.  What a nifty feature!  Unfortunately I found this feature out after AT&T transferred my old phone’s contact list to my iPhone.  The iPhone stores numbers in the form (XXX) YYY-ZZZZ.  Once iTunes synced my contacts in its two-way manner, all of my contacts now had two numbers.  Technically both numbers were the same, but Google does not use regular expressions to break the formatting of telephone numbers.

Google, while you’re updating your contact database to include fields common to other PIM apps and mobile devices, add the ability for user data to be normalized.  Phone numbers should be stored as digits, with no formatting.  Email addresses could be simply checked for format correctness (something @ somedomain.validTLD ).  Physical addresses should be validated against google maps or various national postal databases.  Ensure proper formatting of those addresses.  This is nothing that is terribly difficult to implement, especially for someone at Google.

In closing, I request Google update their Sync feature to include more fields and include error/format checking on the fields that would benefit from them.