Should information be needed in a general dead-zone like on an airplane or in a tunnel, there will be no way to access the GAL. This is sometimes reliable (albeit tedious), but it completely falls apart when offline.

A common work-around for this GAL sync issue is to perform a simple reverse lookup on individuals via Outlook. Imagine doing that for hundreds or even thousands of employees.Ĭan’t Access Contacts Offline. What happens to existing contacts when they change? Under a manual-push setup, numbers or contact photos won’t update without a central administrator pushing that information to a user’s phone. While this may be feasible for companies that have less than 100 mailboxes, as a company grows, the amount of labor required for this becomes impractical. A central administrator can manually push contacts through Outlook to everyone’s mailbox utilizing Active Sync. Users can be more productive if they have the entire GAL right at their fingertips. In a society where work can be done at and away from the desk, having the GAL accessible on every employee smartphone is crucial. This will likely not change.Ĭurrently, users can view the GAL on their Android phones. Microsoft has left a “Missing Sync.” They have not provided a native method to automatically sync the GAL to Androids. However, this database has a fundamental flaw. The GAL is a useful and integral part of any organization. Syncing the GAL to Android phones wasn’t always so easy. For these reasons, an automated, centralized solution is necessary to ensure continuing business operations. If you are involved with the management or upkeep of a Microsoft Exchange Server, you know that Exchange’s operations revolve almost entirely around the GAL. The Global Address List affects almost every aspect of the Microsoft Exchange Server. Contacts change frequently-and all the changes need to be synced accurately and without undue delay. They also need to ensure that their employees have access to this information at their desk and on the go. Organizations of every size require consistent and accurate contact information. Syncing the Global Address List and the contact information it contains is a universal need.

The Global Address List (GAL) is a shared, electronic address book which contains contact data on every person in an organization. Syncing the Global Address List to Android phones isn’t fast or easy - at least it didn’t used to be.

How to sync office 365 with android