Question about Zoho integration of Google Apps contacts

Question about Zoho integration of Google Apps contacts

I had some free time today to begin looking at the Zoho CRM for Google Apps add-on that's found in the Google Apps Marketplace.  We were hoping this would actually provide "integration" for Contacts, but it seems to be nothing other than a very basic import function.

After getting the Zoho CRM component installed and configured in Google Apps I can now go into Zoho Setup->Zoho CRM for Google Apps->Import Contacts.  This brings up a not-very-friendly import wizard.  The Google Contacts are not grouped in any way, and they are not even sorted alphabetically, so finding the people I want to import is very difficult.  The "wizard" doesn't map the Google fields for me, and doesn't split first name and last name - the Zoho documentation recommends placing the full name into the Zoho last name field.

Nothing in the Zoho Contact pages allows access to my Google Contacts.  I was hoping that the Zoho New Contact page would let me access my Google Contacts to "bring in" someone new that had been entered into Google already, but no.

After I import names from Google Contacts, will the information remain synced? In other words, if I change a phone number in Zoho will the record in Google be updated?  This looks more like a one-time import that doesn't solve any integration problem.

This new integrated feature looks much less convenient than the normal Lead/Contact import functions.  For example, if I export my Google Contacts the names are split into first name/last name columns and a column called "Group Membership" allows me to import a group of people much easier than the new import wizard.

Am I missing something about how this should work?





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