The short answer
What a contact list is
On the Integrations page, a contact list has the fields you want to show, a key field that identifies each contact, an optional icon, and a link pattern into the matching record in your CRM or line-of-business system. The Contacts page lists the contacts themselves. Names, fields and links from here appear on the Callpop popup and beside calls in Reports.
Getting contacts in
- Upload a spreadsheet on the Contacts page.
- Sync from a link. A spreadsheet or feed your system publishes at a fixed address, pulled on a schedule. We set the schedule up with you.
- Email a spreadsheet. Each company has its own import address on the Integrations page, under Email Import. Attach an
.xlsx(or a.csv) to an email to that address and the list is imported.
Email import, in detail
The Email Import panel carries the address, a list of senders allowed to use it, an Active switch, and an option to remove contacts that are not on the imported list. Save writes all three together; a box ticked without pressing Save does nothing. A new address is created switched off, so a setup that receives nothing is usually still off. Leave the allowed-senders list filled in; empty, it accepts mail from anyone.
The spreadsheet has to be attached, not linked. Column headings are matched to the contact fields by name, ignoring case and punctuation, so "Qb Id," "qb_id" and "QBID" all land in the same field, and columns that match nothing are ignored. The fields marked as match fields decide whether a row updates an existing contact or creates a new one; leave every match column out of the file and the run creates a second copy of the whole list. Empty cells are skipped, not written, so a blank column never wipes what is stored. A workbook with several sheets routes each sheet to the list with the same name.
Remove contacts not on the imported list
This option compares against every contact list on the company, not only the one being fed, and deletes everything absent from the file. Leave it off unless the file is the complete truth for the whole company.
A clean import is silent on purpose; you get a reply only when something was rejected, nothing was imported, or contacts were removed. The Recent activity panel under the address shows the last imports, the outcome of each, and the file exactly as it arrived.
Where the names show up
- Callpop. The name, the fields you chose, and the button into the record. See what Callpop does.
- Reports. The caller's name beside the number.
- Poly desk phones. The Directory toggle on the list, with a name column and a phone column picked, pushes the contacts into the phone directory on Poly SoundPoint, VVX and Edge phones, hourly or at once with Sync Now. Preview shows what will be pushed and how many contacts were skipped: a contact with an empty name or phone column is dropped, names are trimmed to letters, digits, spaces and hyphens and cut to fifty characters, and a contact with several numbers becomes one entry per number. Yealink and cordless phones do not show it.
Webex is separate
None of this reaches the Webex app. Webex contacts come from a separate Cisco feature, a directory sync that we switch on for your company; it reads the same phone directory, runs weekly after the first sync, and each person has to open the Contacts tab in Webex once before the synced contacts appear. If your contacts are right on the phones and missing in Webex, that is the expected state until we turn the sync on. Ask us.
Through the API
Contacts can also be listed, created, updated and deleted through the API, which is how a system of yours keeps them current without spreadsheets. See REST API basics.