Company and Department Phonebooks

Introduction

3CX includes both a Company phonebook where you can save contacts for company-wide access, as well as a Department phonebook for sharing contacts in a more limited, departmental scope. These are in addition to each user's personal phonebook. These phonebooks are synced with the phonebooks of IP Phones as well as the 3CX apps.

The Department phonebooks also serve as a Company phonebook in Multi-Company Mode (Multi-Tenant). Here each tenant sees a separate Company phonebook that exists on the same level as the Department phonebooks of single tenant instances.

You can import contacts from a CSV file, M365 shared mailboxes. You can also synchronize contacts with external CRMs, Google accounts, and M365 accounts.

You can also configure the phonebook so that when a contact found in your CRM system is searched for by a user or when a call is received and the caller is matched with a CRM record, it is cached / stored in the company phonebook.

External sync and lookup is not supported in Multi-Company Mode.

Import & Export Phonebook Entries

To import up to 1000 phonebook entries you need a CSV file with:

  • Column headers on the first line
  • Each contact entry on a single line
  • Fields separated by a comma, e.g.:

FirstName,LastName,Company,Mobile,Mobile2,Home,Title,Business,Business2,Email,Other,BusinessFax,Department,Pager

Jules,Verne,Imagine Inc.,979755868,0035722444032,255645622,Manager,255645667,255633564,[email protected],255645666,255645668,Sales,

John,Smith,Example Ltd.,99887766,99887755,22334455,Manager,22334466,22334477,[email protected],22334488,22334499,Sales,

James,Kirk,Enterprise Inc,99991701,99981701,22221701,Captain,22231701,22241701,[email protected],22251701,22261701,Bridge,

To import phonebook entries into 3CX:

  1. Download the sample phonebook CSV file and populate it with your phonebook entries
  2. In your web client, go to "Admin → System → Phonebook"

  1. Using the dropdown on the right, choose whether to import into the Company phonebook, or into a specific Department (or Tenant)
  2. Click the Import button
  3. Browse and select the CSV file to import, and click the "OK" button in the "Done" dialog:

To export 3CX Contact entries to a CSV file:

  1. In your web client, go to "Admin → System → Phonebook"
  2. Using the dropdown on the right, choose whether to export the Company phonebook, or a specific Department (or Tenant)
  3. Select the contacts you wish to export:
  • If no entries are selected, then the export will contain all the entries in the list
  1. Click the Export button
  2. The file will be automatically saved in your downloads folder

Syncing Of Phonebook Entries With M365 Shared Mailbox

If your 3CX is integrated with M365 you can configure it so that 3CX automatically syncs any contacts from your M365 shared mailbox to the 3CX phonebook. To configure this

  1. Setup M365 to 3CX integration
  2. In your web client, go to "Admin → System → Phonebook"
  3. Click on the M365 button
  4. Now enable Sync Share Mailbox Contacts
  5. Click “Add” to select the shared mailboxes you want to sync.
  6. This will sync the following fields: First Name, Last Name, Company, Mobile, Home, Home 2, Business, Business 2, Email Address

Contacts Options

In the options dialog ,you can:

  • Specify the number of digits that will result in a contact match. You can match the entire ID or just a part. In practice the caller ID might differ depending on your telco number so we recommend a value of 7.
  • Specify the phonebook display sort order.
  • Optionally you can have the Department, Queue or DID rule name prepended/appended to the caller ID.

CRM Integration - Contact Caching

You can increase the effectiveness of caller ID matching from your CRM system by matching all incoming or outgoing calls that are resolved to a contact cached in the 3CX phonebook. However, you should keep in mind that cached customer records will be visible to all company users.

This option can be enabled or disabled in the web client from "Admin → Integrations → CRM".

Contact Type Identification

The different types of contacts are labeled in the Phonebook with a contact type badge on the bottom right corner.

See also

Last Updated

This document was last updated 3 August 2026

https://www.3cx.com/docs/manual/phonebook/