You can use the Personal Directory to personalize your Ooma Office experience. There are a few advantages to creating and using personal contacts:

• The End User Portal and Ooma desptop app will display the names of your personal contacts instead of their phone numbers in your call logs, business texts, fax logs, and voicemail
• You can search for your personal contacts by name anywhere in the End User Portal or Ooma Desktop application
• You can initiate calls, texts, and emails to your personal contacts with just a click
• You can use bulk actions to upload and maintain your contacts

When you combine the Personal Directory with integrating your contact list from Microsoft or Google, it offers you the best way to personalize your Ooma Office setup.

Adding a personal contact is easy and can be done with just a few clicks from any screen where you see a phone number. You can add up to 1,000 personal contacts to your Ooma account, so there’s no need to worry about running out of space.

You can add a single personal contact from almost everywhere that you see a phone number in the Ooma Desktop application, or you can import many contacts in bulk. To import or update your contacts in bulk, you will need to take the following steps:

• Navigate to the Directory tab in the Ooma Desktop application.
• Use the ACTIONS menu and select Download CSV Template from the dropdown menu.
• Use Numbers or Excel to open the CSV template you downloaded. You can fill in the spreadsheet and save your changes. IMPORTANT: Be sure to save your file as a CSV file using Export (Numbers) or Save As (Excel).
• Return to the Ooma Desktop application and choose Import Personal Contacts CSV from the BULK ACTIONS menu.
• Choose whether you would like to add to your existing contact list or overwrite it with the contents of your CSV file. Then, click CHOOSE A FILE to select your CSV file or drag the file from your desktop to the upload window.
• Ooma will validate your CSV and flag any errors. At that point, you can choose to cancel the import and fix any errors within the CSV file before trying again. Note that Ooma will not check for duplicate contacts.
• Save to finish importing your personal contacts.

You can even use your contact list from your email provider to speed up the import process. To get started, download the CSV template from Ooma by following the instructions above. Then, download your contacts from your email provider. Once your contacts are downloaded, identify and copy the columns you would like to upload to Ooma and paste them into the corresponding columns of the Ooma CSV template without changing the column names in the Ooma CSV template.

A few things to keep in mind while you’re working with Numbers or Excel:

• The column headings must be in the top row, so don’t replace them with anything else.
• You must save your files in in the CSV format. If you are using Numbers application on Mac, use “Export” operation; if you are using Excel, use “Save As” operation.
• You may want to try importing a CSV with just a few contacts to see whether you like the results. If you are happy, you can expand your file to import all your contacts.

Note that Ooma may not support all of the columns that appear in the file you download from your email provider. In this case, copy the columns into the ones that match most closely in the Ooma template.

Once you’ve added someone as a personal contact, this information will be prioritized in many of your Ooma displays, including the End User Portal, Ooma Desktop application, and select IP phones. Names stored in your Personal Directory will be shown even if the same phone number has been added to your company’s Shared Speed Dial or the Company Directory. You can update a personal contact’s information at any time to keep everything up to date.

You can download a CSV file of all your contacts at any time by clicking the ACTIONS menu in the Directory tab and selecting Download Personal Contacts.