Google Contacts and Podio

Podio helps create long-lasting relationships with your customers as a CRM it forms a complete up-to-date database of all the leads and contacts of your company. The source of truth.

Your phone’s address book however runs on a different cloud. Google Contacts for instance.

To get these 2 apps to talk to one another, there are a couple of ways to add contacts in Podio. Either you copy paste contacts, you import a csv file, or you type them in manually. Yet all these methods have their disadvantages. There can be typos in the data, the information can be out-of-date and it’s just very time-wasting.

PieSync is the better way as it allows you to create a bidirectional contact sync that works in real time, all the time.

What are the benefits of a 2-way contact sync?

Whenever there is a new or updated contact in Podio, it will transfer the information into your Google Contacts account and vice versa. Because of this sync, you now have a complete up-to-date database in 2 cloud apps.

Contacts created in Podio will be pushed to your Google Contacts, and that's what you phone reads into. In other words: you'll be getting "caller ID" for everyone calling you.

The 2-way sync works in real time which means that PieSync constantly searches for updates in the existing contacts. The updates are automatically changing in your database and the information merges together so that there won’t be any duplicates in your database. You can set up connection rules to your own needs and there you go.

How to set up this sync with Podio and Google Contacts?

In Podio side, you need to make sure your contacts are stored in the default Podio ‘Contact App’. PieSync can only sync contacts in and out of this particular app. If you have data in a custom table stored, you should convert the data first.

The Contact App exists out of several fixed fields, some of which you can’t delete (but you can hide them if you like).

Then, fire up your sync (follow this link to create an account and prepare your sync). You will need to select the Podio workspace you want to work with. If your Podio Workspace doesn’t appear here, your app is not a Podio Contacts app and you should first convert it.

The connection can be adjusted in several ways. The default setting of a sync is always a 2-way sync. This means you allow PieSync to transfer changes you make to contacts in Podio as well as in Google. We recommend you keep this 2-way setting. However make sure you understand the two rules that you start off with by default.

  • All contacts in Google will go into Podio, so that may include personal contacts.
  • All contacts in Podio will go into Google, so you're running the risk of making this sync very heavy depending on your database.

To avoid those unwanted scenarios, use the filters, or you can turn off any of these two rules if they don't fit your workflow. This quick video shows the various options:

What are these filters & actions?

Filters & actions allow you to really dial in the sync settings. For instance, consider the following example where contacts with a Google Contacts label are matched up to a tag in Podio:

Note that there is a toggle at the bottom of this rule so that when a contact has the tag “Coworker” in Podio, the contact will be also be given the label “Coworker” in Google. If the contact didn’t exist yet, it will be created. It’s a true 2-way sync.

These IF-THEN rules are easy to create and the above is just an example. There’s endless possibilities.

More settings!

In addition, PieSync gives you some pre programmed options to manage the sync. For example, making a choice of which application would ‘win’ when a conflicting change is detected. Usually, you let your CRM win, but of course, this is an individual choice.

This toggle is very relevant if you are going to fire up a Google Contacts - Podio sync with lots of contacts already living on both sides. For example, John may exist in Google Contacts as well as in Podio, with a mobile phone number in both systems. In that situation, PieSync needs to know once, which of the two phone numbers to keep moving forward.

Once the sync is running, every contact that you add or edit that matches your filters, will get synced to the other side in no more than 5 minutes.

The progress of your sync can be followed on your dashboard as shown below:

When the initial sync is completed, your dashboard will say ‘Synchronization is active’. Every contact that you add or edit that matches your filters, will get synced to the other side in no more than 5 minutes.

For more detailed instructions on how to set up your Podio and PieSync account, read this article on our Help Center.

If you have any questions, please reach out to and we’ll gladly help out.

Happy syncing!

If you want to learn more, watch a video about Podio and Google Contacts, or any additional information about Google Contacts and Podio.

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