Earlier this year at Google I/O 2018, Google unveiled their Slack competitor Google Hangouts Chat. Given that we’re a team of tinkerers, and always looking to experiment with the latest in tech, our team set out to build a bot to bring the insights from our cloud-based address book into this new tool. We’d already built a Slack integration in 2017, so we were excited to see how this platform could differ. As with all of our address book integrations, our overarching goal was to help users streamline their workflow by minimizing back-and-forth between their address book (where they might  go to look up email addresses, phone numbers, or other contact details) and their other productivity tools.

How it Works

The FullContact bot works in a conversational interface through simple chat commands. The bot currently supports 11 different commands that allow you to search, filter, and view information from your address book*. Here is  an example of enriching a social profile:

Get detailed information about Twitter users by searching `enrich` followed by their @username. In this example, searching FullContact’s CEO, Bart Lorang’s, username returned his location, gender, age range, related social profiles, and bio.

How to Interact with the FullContact Bot

The bot can be reached in a 1:1 direct message or within a collaborative room (make sure you use @FullContact when in a room) to get an instant response to your search. Currently available commands include:

• @FullContact search <query>: Search through your contacts.
• @FullContact location <query>: Find contacts by geographical location.
• @FullContact title <job title>: Find contacts by job title.
• @FullContact birthdays: Find contacts that have a birthday within the next two weeks
• @FullContact enrich <value>: Enrich by email, domain, phone or twitter handle.
• @FullContact tags: List tags in a current workspace.
• @FullContact tag <name>: List contacts in a specific tag.
• @FullContact workspaces: Get a list of the available workspaces.
• @FullContact info: Get info about your account.
• @FullContact feedback: Provide feedback or submit a feature request.
• @FullContact signout: Unlinks your FullContact account from your Hangouts Chat account.

Why Google Hangouts Chat?

G Suite subscribers have access to Hangouts Chat just by being subscribed to the business suite. You can consider Hangouts Chat the business version of Google’s Allo – their personal messaging service. Google Hangouts Chat has many of the key features Slack contains, but with the added benefit of a deeper integration with other Google products (i.e. Drive, Hangouts, Calendar). On top of the Google integration, there are (at the time of writing) 45 third-party bots also available.

Getting Started

G Suite subscribers can visit chat.google.com to get started with Hangouts Chat. Integrating the FullContact bot is easy, and only take a few simple steps; you can authorize the bot here and sign up for a unified cloud address book here.

*A FullContact address book account is required to make use of the bot