Know your contacts

You can access all of your company, personal, and favorite contacts in 8x8 Work for Desktop by going to your Contacts list. With one or two clicks, you can call, chat with, send a fax to, or meet with a contact, or view their contact details (such as email address and additional phone numbers).

About contact cards

Contacts cards display information about any of your contacts. You can access any of your company, personal, and favorite contacts in 8x8 Work for Desktop from many locations within the application:

  • Search results
  • Call logs, Missed, Voicemails
  • Contacts
  • Chat - message list, avatars
  • Fax
  • Call Recording

By clicking the contact profile picture/avatar, you can quickly see the contact details or initiate communication with any of your contacts through the following channels:

  • Call
  • Chat
  • Meet
  • Send a fax to

The avatar icon displays either contact's profile photo/avatar or a design relevant to each service for Auto Attendant, Call Group and Call Queue, as applicable.

Note: The contact cards are available in all sections of the app, including in Frontdesk .

To access a contact card:

  1. Go to Contacts or any other entry point, and select the contact you wish to communicate with.

  2. Click the contact profile picture/avatar, to quickly initiate communication with your contact: call , chat with , send a fax to or meet with your contact, as well as block/unblock a spam caller/SMS inbound sender. In addition, you can view the contact details, such as status presence, email address and additional phone and fax numbers.

Users with both 8x8 Work and 8x8 Contact Center licenses display as one contact, and the contact card displays the extensions for the relevant accounts.

Let’s say Pat, a sales representative, collaborates often with Robin via 8x8 Work. Robin uses both an 8x8 Work and an 8x8 Contact Center account to complete their work assignments. To ensure Pat contacts Robin on the right extension, Pat can search for Robin in the contacts list, click the avatar to open the contact card, and find Robin’s 8x8 Work extension number.

To block/unblock caller directly from contact cards:

If a spam caller bothers you, and the phone number is not saved in your contacts, you can block it by clicking Block caller from the quick actions list.

You can unblock a blocked number by clicking the Unblock caller in the quick actions list.

Note: You still can block/unblock a spam caller from the Calls > More in the respective contact row. First, you have to search for the blocked number. For more information about how to block a spam caller click here.

To block/unblock spam sender directly from contact cards:

If a spam sender bothers you, and the phone number is not saved in your contacts, you can block the number of an inbound SMS by clicking Block sender in the quick actions.

To unblock the number of an inbound SMS that was blocked: directly from the quick actions list, click Unblock sender in the quick actions.


Note: You still can block/unblock a spam sender from the Messages > More in the contact row. For more information about how to block external SMS from unknown contacts, click here.

To send a fax directly from a contact card:

If you have the Fax feature enabled, the contact cards displays a Fax icon when you hover over the fax number. If you click Fax , a New fax draft displays with the contact’s data pre-filled.

Company contacts

When you first begin using 8x8 Work, you have access only to the contacts on your company phone system. When needed, you can also create personal contacts using external phone numbers, and add company or personal contacts to your list of favorites for quick access.

Your company contacts are populated from your company phone system. You have a large amount of flexibility in communicating with your company contacts; you can send messages, emails, and faxes, call via phone number or 8x8 extension, and invite to meetings via 8x8 Meet. You are visible to your company contacts through their company contact lists, and your presence status is reflected in the company directory as well.

In addition, if your administrator imports contacts from another company to your company directory, these contacts show up with their own external company contact icon to differentiate them from your colleagues and your personal contacts.

You cannot change your own contact details in the company directory, but you can still change your profile image, presence status, and custom status message through your profile screen.

Note: You cannot edit the information associated with company contacts; you can only customize your personal contacts under Contacts > My Contacts.

My contacts

If you frequently call numbers outside of your company directory, you can use those numbers to create easily-accessible personal contacts. Personal contacts are visible only to you, and can be edited as needed. In addition, you can import contacts from Google and Microsoft Outlook.

Favorite contacts

If you communicate with a company or personal contact frequently, you can add them to your list of favorite contacts for quick access. You can go into a contact’s details to mark them as a favorite contact, and then access them from your list of favorites.