Contact Detail Updates

Google Contacts, backed by the Google People API, holds phone numbers, emails, and other details for a person's or organization's contacts. A Beam agent reads a change coming from another connected system, such as a new phone number entered in an HR tool, finds the matching contact by name and existing details, and updates that field in Google Contacts. It only updates a contact it can match with a high degree of certainty. Where two contacts share a similar name, or no clear match exists, the update is set aside and a person confirms which record, if any, should change.

Duplicate Contact Cleanup

Shared contact lists tend to collect duplicate entries over time, such as the same person added twice with slightly different details. A Beam agent reads through a contact group, compares entries against each other using name, email, and phone number, and merges pairs that are an exact or near exact match into one record. It keeps the most recently updated details when merging. Pairs that share only a first name, or where the details conflict rather than complement each other, are left alone and reported to whoever owns the address book to merge by hand.

New Contact Entry from Forms

New contacts often arrive through a form submission, an event sign up, or a lead capture tool outside Google Contacts. A Beam agent reads a new submission, checks the name and email against existing contacts to avoid a duplicate, and adds the person to Google Contacts with the details already provided, including the group or label a workflow has set for that source. It never adds an entry lacking a name and a way to reach the person. Submissions missing key details, or ones that closely resemble an existing contact, are sent to a person to check before anything is added.