What are Admin and User Roles in Shared Contacts for Gmail™?

Assigning roles in Shared Contacts for Gmail™ is essential for maintaining organized data and ensuring your contacts’ security. While users can manage and collaborate on contacts, admins have broader responsibilities—including overseeing account-wide settings, billing, and directory synchronization with mobiles, or generation of API keys. Since certain sensitive actions can only be performed by admins, assigning this role should be done thoughtfully to protect the integrity of your contact database.

1. User Role

Primary Focus:

Manage and collaborate on their own and shared contacts.

Key Capabilities:

• Contacts Management:
  
  • Add, edit, and delete their own contacts.
    
  • Create and manage their own contact labels.
    
  • Collaborate on shared labels (based on permissions):
    • Add/edit/delete contacts
    • Share labels (contact lists)
    • Manage sharing settings (if authorized)
    • Hide fields (if authorized)
    • Control the synchronization of the shared contacts with their mobile devices
    • View other collaborators
      
• App Access:
  
  • Install and use the Gmail Add-on, Chrome extension, iOS app, and Android app.
    
• Support:
  
  • Access email/chat support. 
  • Access the knowledge base.
    
• Preferences:
  • Send feedback
  • Change language settings.

2. Admin Role

Primary Focus:

Oversee directory management, account-wide settings, and billing in addition to regular user responsibilities.

Includes All User Capabilities, Plus:

• Contact Directory Management:
  
  • Set up automatic sync between the Google Directory (or selected sub-organizations) and the users’ contacts in mobile devices and third-party apps.
    
  • Delegate the management of Directory contacts to non-admin users.
    
• Billing & Subscription:
  
  • Subscription
    • View and manage payment information.
    • Purchase licenses.
    • Set auto-order.
    • Cancel the subscription.
  • Invoices
    • Access invoices.
  • Company Profile
    • Edit profile information.
  • Payment methods
    • Add or change payment methods.

• Settings:
  
  • Pending deletion configurations.

Shared Contacts for Gmail™ includes an alert system that notifies admins when an abnormal number of contacts are deleted. Admins can choose to enable or disable these alerts and configure the conditions that trigger them—either based on a specific number of deletions or a percentage of the total contact count. The default value is to send the alert when a user deletes more than 10% of the contacts in a label.

• Admin logs
• Backup
  
• User & License Management:
  • View the number of purchased, used, and available licenses, as well as all Google Workspace users in their domain.
  • Assign a license to a user.
  • Quickly see all users and admins at a glance.
  • Assign “Administrator” or “User” roles.
  • Review each collaborator’s role, license status, and the shared labels they have access to.

• Custom Fields Manager
  
  • Create, modify, or delete custom field names.  (like “Property Size”, “Customer Type”, “Customer ID”, “Membership Start Date”, etc.). These custom fields will appear in addition to standard fields (name, email, phone) on every contact card.

Learn more about custom fields here.

• API Key
  • The API key is readily accessible to admins, allowing developers to seamlessly integrate and automate shared contacts with third-party applications (or to configure workflows in Zapier).

Learn more about API Key here.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Can there be more than one admin?

Yes, there can be more than one admin. This can ensure business continuity (in case of loss of access or leaving the company) and distribute responsibility (some to manage subscription and some to manage user setup).

How to add another admin?

From the app dashboard, go to the left panel > Settings > Users & Licenses page. Find the user you want to assign as an admin. Then, under the Role column, click on the up-down arrow to change roles. 

• Different Sharing Permission Levels on Shared Contacts for Gmail™
• Troubleshoot Contact Sync Issues With User Statuses
• How to See Invoices in Shared Contacts for Gmail™