Our Verdict
Keeping your contacts wrangled can be a challenge , specially when you have to hop-skip between Mail , your calendar , your contact , and social medium apps to keep tabs on everything that might be go on in your personal orbit . BusyContacts , a novel contact coach - seed - customer - relationship - manager from the family line atBusyMac , attempts to simplify and centralize all your contact needs into a single app , avail you keep tabs on everyone without having to leave the BusyContacts app .
BusyContacts works its magic by tie to and collecting information from Apple ’s Mail , Contacts , and Messages apps , and your societal media accounts , gather that data into a single , multi - paned windowpane that lets you select a contact and see your personal interaction with them as well as their social media feeds .
While BusyContacts is great at using OS X ’s survive apps for most of this desegregation , there ’s one lowly and somewhat pestiferous caveat when it comes to calendar information : If you need to pull your coming schedule into the program you ’re go to have to trust to using BusyMac’sBusyCalcalendar app — BusyContacts offers no direct desegregation with Apple ’s Calendar app or any third - party calendar covering . It ’s a peculiar shortcoming , and one that may make it a mess killer for those simply await for a estimable , basic CRM tool . ( BusyCal is $ 50 , and a bundle of BusyCal and BusyContacts is available for $ 80 . )
BusyContacts captures and centralise email and upshot entropy for all your contacts .
The setup
Getting started with BusyContacts is a snap . spread out the app and you ’ll be walk through a multi - step physical process that give BusyContacts access to your to your contacts . If you ’re usingApple ’s 2 - factor authenticationfor your iCloud datum , you may necessitate to create and habituate anapp - specific passwordfor BusyContacts to gain access code to your personal info .
For BusyContacts to pull data from your contact ’s social media feast you may need to have relate accounts set up in the app ’s answer for preference . I say “ may ” because BusyContacts will take out someone‘s Twitter feed without requiring that you have your Twitter account set up , but it can not pull Facebook selective information , even if you have your contact ’s Facebook account information , without your having place an account up . This makes signified , because for most Facebook feeds you ca n’t see information unless you ’re logged in .
tot social media has the outcome of import all contacts from each of your origin into BusyContacts . The top side of this option is that you’re able to see all your middleman and their related social media feed in one place . If you have the same contacts in each rootage the program lets you yoke them within BusyContacts , but to avoid displaying duplicate contacts you also need “ combine ” the linked carte to deepen the agency you see them . This merge does n’t actually combine the contacts into a single criminal record , it just change the way contact information is displayed . This is n’t difficult to do , but can be a mite confusing if you do n’t take the time to go through the documentation .
Until you figure out how to compound link up cards , BusyContacts displays all your contacts from every address book you join to .
The workflow
As before long as you step through the initial setup procedure , BusyContacts ’ utility is evident . choose a liaison and you ’ll see your most late email conversations right on alongside your pick out contact . Double - penetrate a mail subject matter and the Mail app will open that message . If you have BusyCal instal a list of future and recent events will appear above the list of related to email message . Scroll down past the mail inclination and you ’ll see items the contact has posted on societal media .
The beauty of BusyContacts is that it ’s effortless . Beyond the initial apparatus there is nothing you have to do to corral the info . If an e-mail message is sent to a group of people , that message will be connect to each of those contact lens and every email message , Messages conversation , and social medium provender is searchable within BusyContacts
One of BusyContacts ’ practiced feature is its ability to join contact lens with events make in BusyCal . This works two ways . you’re able to make a new event from within BusyContacts , which open up BusyCal , creates a new event , and adds the contact to BusyCal ’s contact field of operations , or you’re able to produce a new event and manually add associated contacts to BusyCal ’s contacts champaign . In both example you will see the event when you pick out that inter-group communication in BusyContacts and it ’s quite simple to add or remove contacts for an exist event .
While I love the path BusyContacts links related data for selected middleman , I did find the way you create events , create notes , or otherwise lead up middleman to be a second uneven . The app offers several room to induct these event , but those options are n’t always where you ask to discover them . For example , BusyContacts let you use an Action carte and a contextual menu to execute contact - related tasks . But you ca n’t use a contextual menu when clicking on a contact to begin a FaceTime call . rather you have to utilize the action menu or mastery - click the contact ’s phone routine to initiate a call . Likewise , you ca n’t habituate the activity fare to add a tag to a impinging . In poor , it seems that the Action card could have been eliminated altogether and the same task could have been performed using a contextual menu . The separation of labor between these fare seems unnecessary .
Bottom line
As a first iteration contact direction app , BusyContacts has much to offer . sluttish countersink up and centralization of every tidbit of your contact information , including email , and social medium feeds , makes it easy to keep an oculus on everything your contacts are up to . But , while BusyCal integration is a huge benefit , it ’s also a limitation if you ’re happy with your current calendar app . In addition , some minor interface quirk , while not muckle killers , make BusyContacts unnecessarily inconsistent .
