Skip to main content

​
Caller ID that follows you off the desktop

App Connect identifies callers by looking them up in your CRM as the phone rings. That works beautifully — inside App Connect. Everywhere else, it doesn’t. The same client who shows as Mia Sullivan in the App Connect panel is just +61 487 005 353 on your desk phone, on the RingCentral mobile app, and in your call history. The lookup happens in the browser extension, so the answer never leaves it. Lazy Contact Sync closes that gap. Each time a call is logged, it takes the contact App Connect already matched and writes it into your personal RingCentral address book. From then on, that person is named everywhere RingCentral shows a caller.
Lazy Contact Sync is free, and was the first plugin published for App Connect.

​
Why “lazy”

Because it never bulk-imports anything. A conventional sync copies your entire CRM into RingCentral, then fights to keep two databases in step. You get thousands of contacts you’ll never call, stale records nobody notices, and a sync job to babysit. This plugin only ever learns from calls you actually have. A contact appears in your address book the first time you speak to them, and refreshes on the next call if their details changed in the CRM. Your address book ends up as a record of the people you genuinely deal with — maintained as a side effect of work you were doing anyway.

​
How it works

1

You log a call

Either from the App Connect panel, or automatically if your admin has enabled server-side call logging.
2

App Connect passes on the contact it matched

The plugin receives the name and number App Connect already resolved against your CRM. It never queries your CRM itself.
3

The contact is created or updated

If nobody in your address book has that number, a contact is created. If the plugin’s own entry is there and the CRM name has changed, it’s updated.
Synced contacts carry a note so you can tell where they came from:

​
Works with any CRM

Lazy Contact Sync reads the contact from the call log, not from your CRM. It has no CRM credentials and no CRM-specific code, so it works behind any App Connect connector — including ones Captivo Labs didn’t build. It has been verified end to end against Smokeball, ConnectWise, Odoo and Pipedrive, covering both OAuth and API-key connectors, and both RingCentral-hosted and partner-hosted ones.

​
Installing

Installation is done once by an account admin. Each user then connects their own address book.
1

Admin: install the plugin

In App Connect, open the Admin tab, choose Plugins, and install Lazy Contact Sync. This makes it available to everyone on the account.
2

Each user: connect RingCentral

Open Settings, find Lazy Contact Sync, and click Connect. A RingCentral window asks permission to manage your personal contacts. Approve it, close the window, then click Save.
3

Make a call

Log a call as usual. The contact appears in your RingCentral address book within seconds.
Each user connects once per CRM connector. RingCentral identifies users separately for each connector, so if your account switches CRMs — or you use more than one — you’ll be asked to connect again under the new one. Your existing synced contacts are unaffected.

​
What it writes, and what it leaves alone

​
Things worth knowing

Three common causes. Check that Lazy Contact Sync shows as Connected in Settings; that the call was actually matched to a CRM contact (an unmatched call has no contact to sync); and that the number is in full international format. Numbers we can’t confidently read as E.164 are skipped rather than guessed at, since filing a contact under the wrong number would put a name on somebody else’s caller ID.
The plugin stores whatever your CRM matched. Correct it in the CRM and the entry updates on the next call from that number. If you’d rather keep your own version, edit the contact in RingCentral — once you do, the plugin stops updating it.
Deliberate. Colleagues already resolve through your company directory, so the plugin ignores calls matched only to internal extensions.
Delete it from your RingCentral contacts as normal. It will reappear if you speak to that person again. Disconnecting the plugin in Settings stops all future syncing; contacts already in your address book stay there.

​
Privacy

Client names and numbers end up in a personal address book that travels with the user’s RingCentral account. If your firm handles sensitive matters, that’s worth a moment’s thought before rolling it out — particularly the fact that synced contacts remain on a device after someone leaves the CRM, until they’re removed from RingCentral. The plugin stores only what it needs to write contacts on your behalf: a RingCentral authorisation token, and a count of how many contacts it has synced. It holds no CRM credentials and keeps no copy of your contacts.

Questions or problems

Get in touch and we’ll help.