What is the Assistant section?
In Webapp you'll see the Assistant tab next to the Contacts list/Workspace name. This section is where you'll find your flagged updates and duplicates, and the cleanup feature.
If you have downloaded Contacts+ for iOS, Contacts+ for Android, you'll also find updates and duplicate tabs.
What are updates?
Part of our 'secret sauce,' updates reflect the combination of info from hundreds of public websites, social networks, APIs, trusted partners and users of our service. Only expect us to find updates for your contacts in your Contacts+ address book if there is an email address attached to the contact.
In the Updates tab, you can either apply all of your updates at once, or you can apply updates one at a time. We recommend hovering your cursor over profile photos that are found, click on social links, etc. If you don't want information included, simply uncheck it, then click Apply. If you don't want any information found for a specific contact, click Ignore:
It has a change settings option where you can set whether you want it to operate automatically, or to just suggest things that you should manually review each week.
How can I apply updates in Contacts+ for iOS and Contacts+ for Android?
In Contacts+ for iOS, click on the Assistant tab in the lower-right part of the app. After that, you will see the Updates tab on the left-hand side.
In Contacts+ for Android, click the Assistant tab in the lower-right part of the app and then select the Updates tab.
I'm not seeing any new updates, why is that?
There are a variety of different reasons why we may not be able to find information for your contacts - either your contacts have a low social presence or they have selected to hide public information (i.e. he/she only has private social media accounts), etc.
Keep in mind that with a Basic (free) Contacts+ account, we are only searching your contacts once per month for updates. If we can't find information based on the contact's email addresses, we will search their Twitter handles (if the Twitter handle has been added). There must be an email address and/or a Twitter handle in order for us to conduct a search for updates. If you think there may be an issue with the updates feature in your Contacts+ account, please email our Support team.
What are duplicates?
We will automatically search for duplicate contacts in your Contacts+ account. If we have very high confidence the two contacts are the exact same, we will automatically merge them for you (to undo merged contacts, head over to the Activity/History section of your Web app. Otherwise, we will flag contacts in the Duplicates section of your account, giving you the opportunity to merge (or dismiss) the contacts found:
When contacts are merged, we include information from all versions of the contact (in other words, information is not excluded when contacts are merged). To edit your newly merged contacts, hop over to the Activity section.
It has a change settings option where you can set whether you want it to operate automatically, or to just suggest things that you should manually review each week.
How does contact merging work?
For many cases, duplicate contacts are obvious. If you have two contacts named John Smith, who both have john.smith@gmail.com as their email addresses, we can clearly see that those are duplicates and should be merged.
But you may have two entries for the same John Smith where there are different email addresses for each of them. That’s where the magic of Contacts+ comes in. Rather than just relying on obvious signs, Contacts+ algorithms will go to work to find other clues about each contact in order to avoid merging two entries that are not actually duplicates.
What sort of clues do we look for? Here’s one simple example:
Your contact John Smith (john.smith@gmail.com) lives in Denver, Colorado and works as a Sales Manager at XYZ Corp, according to his Twitter profile.
Your contact John Smith (johnnysmith@gmail.com) is the same person, but the email address is different. However, other clues such as location or job title could be tied to this entry. If Contacts+ sees that information and it matches the other John Smith entry, then chances are very good that the contacts are duplicates. We would then merge the two contacts, combining information from both entries into a Unified Contact.
Contacts+ isn't finding obvious duplicate contacts in my account, why is that?
Keep in mind that our algorithm errs on the side of not marking the contacts as duplicates if they don't generally match (even when names of contacts have the same email address). The algorithm itself is complex and many factors tie into which contacts in your account are auto-merged vs. flagged as duplicates in the Duplicates tab vs. not marked as duplicates whatsoever. That being said, the algorithm is constantly being iterated on.
How can I manually merge contacts?
In Contacts+ for Web, click on the box next to each contact -> click Merge at the top of your Web app.
In Contacts+ for iOS, selecting the contacts you want to merge -> clicking 'Merge'.
What is the cleanup feature?
Cleanup is an integration that works with your Contacts+ account and analyzes a portion of your contacts each week and either fix (or suggest fixes to you) for your contacts. It has a change settings option where you can set whether you want it to operate automatically, or to just suggest things that you should manually review each week. You can also switch between show pending and show all to see everything that it has done or suggested for your contacts for your review or undo changes if necessary.
It currently supports the identification of email addresses that we believe are no longer deliverable, marking empty contacts if they contain little to no information, removal of URLs that are no longer valid, and more.
Cleanup is only available to the users on a Premium Contacts+ plan - however, is not yet available to Teams contacts. There's also a cleanup limit of 1,000 contacts per week.