Contacts: Delegation

  • You can delegate full access to the contacts in your “Contacts” without granting access to your mail or anything else in your accounts.
  • This is a common practice between some executive users and their assistants.
  • It may be used in any situation where a user wishes to share all of their contacts with another user.
  • Note: In other email services, what Google calls Contacts, may be referred to as Address book.

Important Notes

  • You can delegate contacts only to Google Workspace @ NC State users.
  • Users to whom you have delegated contacts will be able to edit your contacts.
  • Contacts delegation is all or nothing; you cannot delegate a subset of your contacts.

Accessing Contacts

  • contacts.google.com
  • From the Apps launcher select the Contacts icon.
  • From Gmail  – without a message opened  – select the Contacts icon from the right side panel.
  • From Gmail  – with a message opened  – select the Contacts icon from the right side panel to see the contact information about people referenced within the message.

How to share your Contacts

Best Practices

To share with a group of people (e.g., unit, department):

  1. Add all the contacts to a generic account (request one via Web Registry).
    This ensures the contacts are stored and managed centrally rather than by a single individual who may leave the university.
  2. Delegate the contacts from that generic account to an appropriate individual or Google workspace Group.
  3. Tell those people about the delegated contacts, so they can delete any duplicates in their own account.

Support Links