There is no address book to build. Trupeo derives it from your mail: anybody who writes to the shared mailbox, or who the mailbox writes to, shows up there.
On a computer, “Contacts” is at the top of the column on the left, just under “Notifications”. On a phone, it comes first under “More”, just under the mailbox.
Two tiers, and the rule that separates them
Contacts sort into two lists, and the difference is not a matter of declared importance:
- Contacts: the people you have written to.
- Other contacts: the people who wrote to you and never got a reply.
That is the whole rule. Replying to somebody moves them into “Contacts” automatically. This sorting does the job nobody wants to do by hand: someone you have dealt with for two years separates themselves from whoever sent a newsletter.
The “All” tab shows both lists together. Three sort orders: Recent, Frequent, A-Z. The “Search contacts” field filters the list.
The first fill
When a mailbox is connected, Trupeo goes through the older emails and shows a banner that counts the emails analyzed so far, for example “Import in progress: 1,250 past emails read.” Contacts appear as it goes, so there is nothing to wait for.
The card
A card holds what Trupeo worked out and what you add: name, organization, job title, one or more phone numbers, a note, and the list of their conversations (subject, preview, date). When there are many, “See all conversations” finds them in the mailbox.
The card reads like a business card. Each part (phones, email addresses, postal addresses…) has its own “Edit” button, which opens that part alone: “Save” keeps your changes, “Cancel” drops them. What the card does not hold yet (first and last name, birthday, postal address, website) is added with the “Add” button, at the top of the card, next to “New email”.
The note is shared. Call back after 5pm, no more follow-ups, always goes through his accountant: a member sees it when they open the card, and also at the top of every conversation with that person. Same idea as a team note, at the scale of a person rather than an email.
One person can have several addresses. “Add an email address” gathers them onto one card, and “Make primary” picks the one that shows. A contact always keeps at least one address.
“New email”, at the top of the card, opens a new email already addressed to that person, at their primary address. “Write”, beside each address, opens a new email addressed to that one.
In a conversation
In an open email, the name of the person who wrote it and each address under that name open a preview of their card: their job title and organization when you have filled them in, their address, how many conversations you have had with them, the card’s note, and “View contact” for the whole card. Every recipient is written under the name, and each one opens the same way. A contact’s address has a dotted underline: a click opens the preview, a drag of the mouse selects it to copy it.
With a mouse, the preview comes up when the pointer rests on the name for a moment, and goes when you move away; a click keeps it open, Escape closes it. With the keyboard, it comes up when the name has the focus, and Enter moves into it. On a phone, tapping a name opens the same preview at the bottom of the screen.
Somebody you had removed from the book shows there with an “Add to Contacts” button.
Adding somebody by hand
“New contact” is for when you want the card before the exchange: a lead met at a trade show, a supplier whose card you were handed. Email required, name optional. If the address is already in the book, that card moves into “Contacts”.
Tidying
Three actions on a card. The first is a button, the other two sit in the “More actions” menu (the three dots):
- “Add to Contacts” promotes somebody out of “Other contacts” without waiting for you to write to them.
- “Remove contact” takes them out of the shared book, once you confirm. They stay 30 days in “Removed contacts”, where “Restore” puts them back, and you can also add them back from any of their conversations, with “Add to Contacts”.
- “Merge…” joins two cards that are the same person, which happens whenever somebody changes address. Start it from the card to keep, then search for the other one. Before anything is written, Trupeo shows what the merged card keeps, and where the two cards disagree you pick the value to keep. This one is permanent, unlike removing.
Trupeo also suggests the cards that look like the same person, in “Duplicates to merge”. The suggestions, the merge, the 30 days of removed contacts, and importing or exporting the book as a file are in Tidy the address book.
Writing to a contact group
A contact group gathers people you write to together: an association’s committee, the parents of a team, the members of one club. Every member of the mailbox shares it, like the rest of the address book. If you come from Google Contacts, what Google calls a “label” is a group here; in Outlook, it is a category put on contacts.
Creating one. In “Contacts”, the “Groups” section of the list has a “New group” button. Name it (“Group name”), then “Create group”. Two groups cannot have the same name.
Putting contacts in it. Inside the group, “Add contacts” opens the search. From the list, tick several contacts, then “Add to a group”. A contact card also shows its groups, with the same action. People added to a group join your contacts, even if you never wrote to them. “Remove from group” takes someone out of the group without deleting them from the book, and “Delete group” deletes the group: its contacts stay in your address book.
Writing to it. In “New email” or in a reply, type the group’s name in To, Cc or Bcc and pick it from the suggestions. It shows as one recipient, with its name and its number of contacts. Its menu offers “Show addresses” to see each address, and “Move to To”, “Move to Cc” and “Move to Bcc” to move it. “Remove group” takes it off the email.
Why Bcc by default. A group placed in To or Cc would show everyone’s address to everyone else, which nobody wants to hand to twenty or thirty strangers. Trupeo puts it in Bcc and says so: “Group added in Bcc: nobody sees the others’ addresses”. The choice stays yours, with “Move to To” or “Move to Cc”.
The limits. One email takes at most 500 recipients with Gmail and Microsoft, 100 with other mail services, counting To, Cc and Bcc together. As you get close, a counter appears (“450 of 500 recipients”); past the limit, Trupeo refuses to send. For a bigger group, write in several emails.
In the conversation, the history keeps a trace of the send: “sent to the group Bureau (12)”, with the number of contacts the group had at that moment.
Keeping contacts up to date with Google Contacts or Outlook
If the mailbox is a Gmail or Google Workspace one, Trupeo keeps its address book the same as the one in Google Contacts, both ways, from the connection on. For an Outlook or Microsoft 365 mailbox, it is the one in Outlook. When the mailbox connects, Google or Microsoft asks for the permission this needs: read and change the account’s contacts. The owner finds the setting in the mailbox settings, on the “Contacts” page: “Keep contacts up to date with Google Contacts” (or “with Outlook”). Members only see the “Up to date with Google Contacts” (or “with Outlook”) line under the address book title.
A mailbox connected earlier. If the mailbox was connected before Trupeo asked for the contacts when connecting, its owner sees an invitation at the top of the address book: “Keep these contacts up to date with Google Contacts.” (or “with Outlook.”), with “Allow” and “Not now”. “Allow” leads to Google’s or Microsoft’s page to give the permission, then back to the address book. Until the owner answers, the next reconnect of the mailbox, by its owner or by a member, also asks for the contacts. “Not now” puts the invitation away for good, and a reconnect then does not ask for the contacts either; the switch in the settings stays there. Members do not see the invitation.
- What goes across: the contacts you added or kept on purpose, not everyone the mailbox ever wrote to. A contact added or changed on one side arrives on the other.
- Groups: a Trupeo contact group becomes a label in Google Contacts, or a category on the contacts in Outlook, and the other way round.
- Removing a contact: removing it in Trupeo also deletes it in Google Contacts or in Outlook, and the other way round. Google Contacts keeps a deleted contact in its trash for 30 days, Outlook in Deleted Items: you can get it back from there. Deleting a group deletes the group on both sides, not the contacts it brought together.
- Stopping: the same switch, with a confirmation. Trupeo then stops all reading and writing of the contacts. Contacts stay on both sides; they just stop being kept the same. Stopping is remembered: reconnecting the mailbox does not turn it back on.
If the owner leaves the contacts box unticked on Google’s page when connecting the mailbox, Trupeo takes it as a no: the setting stays off, and reconnecting the mailbox does not ask again. If the owner turned it on here and Google or Microsoft then did not give access to contacts, the section says so and offers to try again. If the mailbox needs to be reconnected, the updates pick up again as soon as it is. If the mailbox can no longer do it, the section says why and only offers “Stop”.
Three more things to know, all about Outlook:
- Shared or delegated addresses are not covered. An address that another Microsoft 365 account opens for you has no “Contacts” section: Trupeo cannot keep its contacts up to date, even though Microsoft showed the contacts permission when it was connected.
- Outlook has less room than Trupeo. It keeps three email addresses without their type, one mobile number, two work and two home numbers, one home, one work and one other postal address, one website, and a birthday only with its year. A number of another type takes a free work or home place, and Outlook files it under that type. Fields and other details go to Outlook too, which keeps them for Trupeo without showing them. Whatever does not fit stays in Trupeo, without being erased, and the card says so: “Outlook keeps only part of this contact” at the top, then a line under each value concerned, for example “Kept in Outlook as a work number” or “Not kept in Outlook: no room left”. Trupeo only reads the main contacts folder.
- A category can also be a mail category. If emails carry a group’s category, deleting or renaming that group in Trupeo takes it off the contacts but leaves it on those emails and in Outlook’s category list.
Fields and other details
An association wants to know who has paid for the year, who sits on the board, what each person’s license number is. Rather than writing it in the note, which nobody can filter on, the card has two places for it.
Fields, for the whole mailbox. The owner defines them once, and every contact has them. They are in the mailbox settings, on the “Contacts” page, in the “Contact fields” section, and “New field” creates one: a name, then a type, which cannot change afterwards. The types are “Text”, “Number”, “Date”, “Single choice”, “Multiple choice”, “Link” and “Yes / no”. A mailbox holds up to 50 fields, and the section says how many are left before you get there.
Each field has its buttons: “Move up” and “Move down” change its place on the card, “Rename” changes its name, “Edit choices” adds or removes choices (the window says how many contacts hold a choice before removing it), and “Delete” takes it away. Deleting a field loses nothing: each value becomes a detail of its contact, under the field’s name, and the confirmation says how many.
On the card, the fields are in the “Fields” section, and every member fills them in, not only the owner. An empty field is a quiet line that opens with a click; past six empty fields, the others wait behind “4 more fields” (for example).
Other details, for one contact. In the card’s “Other details” section, any member adds a name and a value, with nothing to set up. A name that is already a field’s is refused, and the card leads to the field.
Make it a field. When several contacts hold the same detail, the owner can turn it into a field. Under the list of fields, “Details used on contacts” shows the names used most; “Make it a field” opens a window that suggests a type, says how many values fit it, then moves them into the field. A value that does not fit the type is not lost: it stays a detail of the contact, marked “Does not fit the field type” on its card, and the report links to each of those cards.
Filtering the list. If the mailbox has a choice field or a “Yes / no” field, the contacts list has “Filter by field”: one answer, such as Treasurer for the role, or “Not filled in”. The filter stays in the page’s address, and “Clear filter” removes it. When nobody matches, the list says “No contact matches this filter”.
What is shared, and what is not
The address book belongs to the mailbox, not to you. Every member sees the same contacts, the same notes, the same numbers. If you have two mailboxes connected, each has its own book: the contacts of the contact address do not mix with those of the hiring address.
Next step
To write to a contact from their card, see Reply, forward, write.