In March 2015, Google took the covers off their updated Material Design Contacts app for the web. Unfortunately, for those on Google Apps accounts this updated version wasn’t available. No so anymore, as of today Admins can go into the Apps Admin Console and enable the new contacts preview.
Why change? Well if the updated, and beautiful, Material Design look isn’t enough Google also packed several enhancements under the hood, including; easy duplicate detection and merging, improved Domain Directory – ie the list of all contact on you apps domain – automatic updating of contacts and increased contact image resolution.
It’s not all roses however, Google has yet to activate all of the features of the old Contacts system, currently missing are:
- User Custom Fields
- Contact delegation
- Editing group email preferences
- Import/Export
If you need any of those features you will be prompted to return to the old version to complete those tasks.
If you’re an Apps Admin, or you want to ‘suggest’ migrating to yours simply jump into the console and head to Apps > Google Apps > Contacts> Advanced settings and you’ll find it waiting for you there.
If you do migrate you’ll be greeted with a quick walk through of some of the new features.
According to the release announcement the update will be available to all Apps customers over the next few days.
Thanks for the tip. Switched the flag on, however, yet to see the new contacts view appear.
Edit: It just appeared. Yay!