Understanding Contacts in Google@Brookes

What is my Brookes ID?

Staff: this is your p00 number (with lower case 'p') as it appears on your white staff card.

Student: this is your eight digit number as it appears on your green Library card.


When you invite people to meetings in Google Calendar, invite them to chat in Google Talk or share Google Documents or Google Sites, you will probably be offered several variations on their user name: you should choose the number version. Why? Read on .....

Understanding Contacts is very important to use Google@Brookes successfully. Contacts acts as the directory list when you send someone an email message, giving you suggestions for email addresses depending on what you type. But Google@Brookes is much more than an email system and this means that there is more to Contacts than a list of email addresses. 

The first thing to understand it that everyone has more than one identity in Contacts. There are three main types of identity in Contacts, which look like this: 

  1. Fiona Bloggs - this is called the Display Name;

  2. p0070001@brookes.ac.uk or 09123456@brookes.ac.uk - this is called the User ID or UID or sometimes the "Login ID" or "P number" (for staff);

  3. fbloggs@brookes.ac.uk - this is called an email alias.


Some people have more than one email alias. For example Fiona might also send and receive email as "Deputy-Administrator@brookes.ac.uk". You can also have personal email addresses in Contacts.

The only one of these identities which consistently identifies Fiona is the second, the UID. To illustrate this imagine that one day Fiona might decide to marry and change her name. Coincidently she also gets promoted, with the result that her Contacts details change thus:

  1. Fiona Bloggs-Smith

  2. p0070001@brookes.ac.uk

  3. fbloggs-smith@brookes.ac.uk

  4. Chief-Adminstrator@brookes.ac.uk


How Contacts Work in Email
Google Mail is designed to allow you to use multiple email accounts and multiple email addresses. You have a default or normal email address, in Fiona's case probably "fbloggs-smith@brookes.ac.uk", but you can send from the other addresses if you wish.

How Contacts Work in Everything Else
When you invite people to meetings in Google Calendar, invite them to chat in Google Talk or share Google Documents or Google Sites, it is best to select the UID - "p0070001@brookes.ac.uk" in Fiona's case. This doesn't mean you have to know everyone's UID! You should type in the Display Name when you want to choose someone and all the options from Contacts will usually be offered: choose the UID (p-number).

Known Problems
At present there are inconsistencies in the way different Google Apps translates between identity types. Google knows this and is steadily resolving these problems with the intention of providing and standard approach across all of the Apps. If you use only Google Mail and Calendar, you shouldn't go far wrong if you follow the advice given above. If you use the other Apps you will benefit from understanding the following points. 

  • Google Talk or Chat as it is also known, will only work if you select the UID (p-number) of another Google@Brookes person you wish to chat with. It will allow you to select an email alias, but it will not work for chat.

  • Google Calendar, Docs and Sites are all capable of sending an email on your behalf when you invite someone to a meeting, share a document or site. All use your UID as the sending address, but with slight differences:-


Calendar prefixes the UID with the Display Name (e.g. Fiona Bloggs <p0070001@brookes.ac.uk>) so it is reasonably obvious who sent the invite.

Docs and Sites send the message using only the UID in the form "p0070001@brookes.ac.uk". If you allow this, make sure you identify yourself in the message body or the recipients may not know who the message is from. If you do not want this form of email to be sent, you can choose not to send an automatic notification and send a normal email message yourself, specifying the link (URL) to the document or site. 


  • Google Sites sites should be shared by UID as for the other Apps, but unlike the other Apps, which list the people you have shared with as a Display Name, Sites lists only the UID. This can be confusing. You can find out the name of someone from their UID by searching Contacts for the P number.

  • You can only chat or share documents and sites with other Brookes staff who are also Google@Brookes users. All Brookes staff email addresses are listed in contacts so that you can send email to them. But only those who have signed up to use the Google@Brookes service will have a UID (P-number) and this is necessary for sharing.

  • Students are not yet included in the Google@Brookes directory. They will appear when the migration of student email to Google is completed during summer 2010. Meanwhile there are other means of looking up student email addresses, such as PIP and the LDAP Search page. Please seek advice from you technical support.


My Contacts, All Contacts and the Google@Brookes Directory

Google Contacts is designed to deal with multiple lists, called contact groups. One of these is called "My Contacts" and you can use this as a personal list of contacts, possibly synchronised with your mobile phone directory if you have a suitable model. You can create and edit the entries as you wish. Another list is called "All Contacts" and normally keeps a record of everyone you've sent an email message to as an aid to addressing subsequent email. The third list is the official Google@Brookes directory. You can easily create your own groups of contacts and use these as email mailing lists and also use them to share documents and sites. 




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