4
Google Migration - Doesn't import all contact info
Problem reported by kevind - 6/8/2015 at 8:55 AM
Resolved
Hello,
 
Doing a mailbox migration from Google and noticed that it only imports the Display Name, not the details like title, first name, last name, etc.
 
This causes a problem when using ActiveSync because smartphones use the first name & last name for dialing, texting, etc.
 
Importing the picture would be nice also, but not a necessity like firstname & lastname...
 
Thanks,
Kevin

48 Replies

Reply to Thread
1
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
Thanks for letting us know, we added them. The picture will need to wait but title, first name, last name, and full name, are set now.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
OK, great! I realize the pic is more work, but you might as well grab 'middle' and 'suffix' while you're there. Thanks!
1
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
Got Image working with the Google Contacts now as well.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
Awesome! Looking forward to the next build.
1
kevind Replied
Darn, looks like your fix didn't make the release. We'd be glad to beta test the next build to confirm it's working.
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
It should have. We built it at 3:40pm yesterday and I had my changes in at 12:30pm.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
Yea, I just tested it on our mail server and it's working. When you click on About SmarterMail in the top right what version number are you given?
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
Just tried it again and First Name, Last Name, etc. are still blank. The Display Name does have all the data (title fname mname lname suffix).

SmarterMail Enterprise Edition
Version 14.0.5633

I don't know your numbering system, but 5633 is the same number as last week's beta.
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
The version I tested on is later than that. Are you running the SM 14 Release?
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
Yes, AFAIK. SM14 release is 14.0.5633 according to your site. You must be running 14.1 alpha. Bring it on...
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
The website was showing the wrong version number, our actual release is running 14.0.5637, if your SmarterMail at the top right does not show this than you should try re-installing with the latest.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
OK, now running 14.0.5637. Glad I was able to help find a bug on your web site. :-)
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
Yea we fixed what it said on the site, had us worried that we might have sent the wrong version for release, but alas it was just a typo. Glad we were able to notice that, thank you.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
2
kevind Replied
OK, new import working better and love the pic!  But still have a few issues:
  • SM's Title (Mr./Mrs), Middle Name, and Suffix do not get populated (but these fields show up in Display Name)
  • SM's Job Title gets populated with gmail's full name.
  • SM's Department gets populated with gmail's job title.
Company does get populated correctly.
 
Thanks,
Kevin
 
1
kevind Replied
There are some other items (like the 2nd email address & birthday) that don't get filled in, but I'm happy if we get the basics working.
0
kevind Replied
Matt, since the beta is finished, should I repost the above issue in the 'SmarterMail' category for tracking purposes?
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
I moved the tag over to SmarterMail.
Thanks for the gift, glad we are able to help. :)
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
4
kevind Replied
Using SM14, we've imported a few hundred accounts from Google and have gotten pretty familiar with the SM mailbox migration feature.  Here's a summary of the things that could be improved (many are minor or cosmetic) in the wizard to take it from average to outstanding:

Migration Wizard screens

On the first screen in the Account Type drop-down:
change 'Gmail' to 'Gmail or Google Apps' as it works fine for Google Apps for Work accounts.
 
On the screen that says "The calendar and tasks retrieval requires Google permissions"
dim the Test Connection button until the person does the Authorize Google procedure.
 
On the screen that says "...the following settings will be imported from your account: Gmail"
instead of saying 'Gmail' it would be better to use the Connected Services Display Name which can be more descriptive to confirm you are importing data from the correct account.

Data Transfer

These items don't get imported, but could and should:
  • Title
  • Middle Name
  • Suffix
  • 2nd Email Address
  • Birthday
These items get imported incorrectly:
  • Job Title gets populated by the contact's name
  • Department gets populated by the contact's job title

Categories

It would be nice to transfer Google's groups (how contacts are organized) to SM categories which have similar functionality.  It kind of does this already, assigning the category "Contacts" to Google's "My Contacts" but leaves off the rest.
 
At a minimum, it would be nice to assign ALL of the imported contacts to a single master category (maybe use the Connected Services Display Name).  This way you can keep all your imported items separate from existing contacts -- good in case you need to delete & re-import, if you're importing from multiple sources, etc.

Automation

Finally, it would be totally awesome if the mailbox migration with contacts & calendar could be run from web services, but I realize that may be technically not feasible because of the Google API.  But it's always nice to dream... :)
 
Thanks!
Kevin
2
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
Very well written, thanks for the information.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
Thanks :) Any chance we could mark this thread as Under Consideration or Being Fixed?
2
kevind Replied
FWIW, I noticed one more...
 
State & Zip are concatenated on City instead of stored in their respective fields.
1
kevind Replied
Just noticed the Migration Wizard says "The calendar and tasks retrieval requires Google permissions." You could add 'contacts' to this sentence now.

Also, I'd be willing to test a pre-release build and run through a few migrations.
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
I wouldn't count on a pre-release build since our minor is right around the corner.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
0
kevind Replied
OK, no problem. Just offering to test if any work was done on this issue.
1
kevind Replied
Matt, about 5% of our gmail migrations fail due to large mailboxes. Here's something with the new build that is causing us headaches:
- If it failed in build 5637, no folders or messages would be imported (good). We just clean up the gmail account and re-import.
- If it fails in 5647, some folders/messages are imported. This is bad as it's next to impossible to sort thru thousands of messages and selectively re-import.

Can we revert back to the 5637 behavior? Let me know if I should create a new thread for this. We already opened a ticket. Thanks!
1
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
Our next minor build should resolve that issue. Had changed it to force delivery of the IMAP messages regardless of whether it had succesfully grabbed all the messages or not. We reverted those changes.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
Great! Thank you.
0
kevind Replied
Looking at today's release notes and there's nothing regarding this topic. Just wondering if any of these fixes made it. Thanks.
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
No there were some other fixes that had to be done before the Google Contacts. Only thing that was done in regards to Google Importing was the revert talked about below and the migration requiring permissions text.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
OK, understand.

We appreciate the revert below as dealing with partial mailboxes was a nightmare (couldn't delete and re-import because it's a live mailbox).

As for the above fixes, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. We'd be happy with simple stuff like fields that go where they're supposed to.
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
Ok, just did the Data Transfer section.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
Awesome. We'd be glad to test out the next build as we have 100+ gmail migrations scheduled for next week. Happy Fourth!
1
kevind Replied
Matt, 3 small fixes and I think we're there:

'Title' shows up in Display Name, but not in its own field in SM.
'Email Address 2' comes in as Google.GData.Extensions.EMail ...
'State' & 'Zip' are concatenated on City instead of stored in their respective fields.

Thanks.
1
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
I fixed the first two, the third seems to already be separating them into their respective fields. Are you sure they are separated inside of Google?
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
You're right! City/State/Zip were all in a single entry at Google. I split into separate fields and they imported fine. Nice.

But sorry to spoil your early weekend, here's a bug I found while testing this: Go to Contacts, use the menu to Select All, then uncheck a few contacts. Choose Delete from the menu and they ALL get deleted, even though the count in the confirmation dialog box is correct.
0
kevind Replied
Matt, do you want me to create a new thread for this unrelated bug or have you already squashed it?
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
I have it on our bugs list already. Its a deeply rooted issue, you will see the same bug with tasks as well.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
OK, sounds good. You know my solution for all this... Reconfigure Contacts, Calendars, & Tasks to work like the Email tab. They all have groupings similar to folders and the select all, delete, filter, etc. could work the same way on contacts/calendars/task as it does with messages. Added benefit = zero learning curve for user.
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
We got a fix in place. Redoing the interface stuff like that won't happen in a minor. I believe interface redesign is on the roadmap for SmarterMail at a point in the future.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
1
kevind Replied
Matt,
 
Just installed build 5675 and it looks like there's still a small issue when importing from Google -- the Title gets populated with the full display name.  So instead of just "Mr." it shows "Mr. John Doe" in both the Display Name and the Title.
 
This is kind of annoying when syncing to an iPhone, because it shows up as double in the contact list. All the entries look like this:
 
Mr. John Doe John Doe
 
Thanks,
Kevin
0
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
Unfortunately this appears to be an issue with Google. I have disabled the title importing. They return the full name in the title we don't control that.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
0
kevind Replied
OK, no title is better than repeating names. Thanks.
0
kevind Replied
Matt, we've done 500+ user migrations using build 5675, so we have a lot of users with repeating names. Don't really want to re-import using migration wizard due to the time & manual effort. Looked at Web Services, but there's no Edit Contact, just Add/Delete. If you could point me to where this info is stored, maybe we could to write a program to go through all contacts and remove Title. Thank you! --Kevin
1
Matt Petty Replied
Employee Post
I opened up a ticket with you.
Matt Petty Senior Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
0
kevind Replied
Sorry, I've got one final request for this import.  Would it be possible to map Google's 'Notes' field to the SmarterMail's 'Additional Info' field?
 
We've got some users asking what happened to their notes. I've never used it, but I see there's a nice big 'Add a note' field in Gmail, right next to all the contact info.
 
Thank you,
Kevin
2
Employee Replied
Employee Post
Kevin, I have included "Notes" as part of the Gmail contact migration.  It will populate the "Additional Info" field as you've suggested.  It will be included in the next minor release.
1
kevind Replied
Awesome! You will make some users happy.
1
kevind Replied
Robert, confirmed that 14.2 now imports Gmail Contact Notes. Thank you!

Reply to Thread