Empowering your team with seamless access to a collaborative contact database allows smoother workflow and faster information exchange. While seamless collaboration is crucial, not all information from your contact database may be suitable for sharing, such as home phone numbers or postal addresses.
Enter Shared Contacts for Gmail—an effective solution to address this concern. With this tool, you gain the ability to selectively hide specific data of your contacts. Now, you have the control to share only the information that aligns with your preferences, ensuring a more secure and tailored collaborative experience.
Key Benefits of Hidden Fields
- Choose which fields should be visible or hidden
In addition to business contact information, the contact list owner may have saved the personal email addresses and phone numbers of their professional contacts. With the hidden fields feature, the owner can choose to reveal only the business numbers while keeping the personal details private, avoiding the need for duplicate entries (one for business and one for personal) when sharing the contact information.
- Select who can view and edit the fields
The visibility of the contact fields can only be set by the owner. However, it is possible to give another user the owner permission level should it be deemed necessary. The owner/s of the contact list can then share the contact list with other users with the customized viewable fields.
- Instantly revoke access to sensitive data with just one click
In case the owner newly realized a contact data field should not have been shared, he can easily change the visibility status of the contact fields. The adjustment is reflected in real-time.
- Permissions manageable at the user or group level
The contact list owner can readily regulate the displayed fields among the shared users whether it be for a single user or a group. For the latter, the owner must create a label to make the adjustment faster and easier.
Advantages of hiding specific fields in a contact database
Privacy protection
It is crucial to maintain trust and compliance with privacy regulations regarding personal data. Concealing sensitive information such as home addresses, phone numbers, or personal email addresses helps protect the privacy of individuals in your contact database.
Security Enhancement
Limiting access to certain information enhances the overall security of your contact database. When you restrict access to specific details, the risk of unauthorized use or potential data breaches is reduced.
Customized Sharing
Tailoring the contact fields shared paves the way for a more customized and efficient collaboration. Team members can focus on relevant details. Thus, streamlining communication and workflow without privacy concerns or distractions from irrelevant data.
Professionalism
Presenting a professional image is essential in business communications. When you share only pertinent information, you maintain a level of civility. A polished contact database reflects that it has been well taken care of, not simply collated and shelved.
Lessened Clutter
The hidden fields allow you to keep clear the extraneous or irrelevant details from your shared contact list. Thus, team members find it easier to find and focus on the information that matters most to their tasks. This contributes to a more organized and efficient working environment.
Compliance with Regulations
Trustworthy business adheres to regulatory bodies such as Europe’s GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act, among others. These institutions ensure strict compliance regarding personal data privacy.
The capability of selectively hiding some contact details further strengthens your company’s commitment to data protection laws. Hence, potential legal issues are avoided.
Risk Mitigation
Providing the ability to hide sensitive data lowers the risk of information misuse or social engineering attacks. This proactive approach to risk management contributes to a more secure and resilient organizational structure.
Case studies of using hidden fields feature
In education:
You are a teacher who created and shared the contact database of your class with the same class for better collaboration. With the Shared Contacts for Gmail hidden fields feature, you can easily conceal sensitive information such as home addresses or personal email addresses.
You may have use of that information but not necessarily the members of the class themselves. This is a necessary step for privacy protection.
Read more: Shared Contacts Manager for Google for Education
In real estate:
The CRM may contain a lot of information regarding the prospects including birthdays, company positions, and other personal details. These data may not be significant to other team members who are just tasked to send notification emails or transaction support.
When you use Shared Contacts for Gmail to share the client database with these team members, you not only save the pricey CRM seat cost. You have also enjoyed the hidden fields feature wherein you can do customized sharing of sensitive data.
Read more: 10 Apps $10 and Below for Real Estate Agents
In non-profit organizations:
As you conduct your donor research or set out those signup forms, there’s a probability that you’d also be collecting sensitive data from your benefactors. In compliance with GDPR and other government regulations regarding data privacy, information must be handled with utmost confidentiality.
Take advantage of the hidden fields feature by Shared Contacts for Gmail for security enhancement while processing your donor’s contact information.
