My firm just switched to Google Apps Premiere addition 2 weeks ago and aside from the way Google handles shared contacts, things are going quite well.
Previously, on our Exchange server we had numerous shared contact lists set up in the shared folders. We had a separate list for vendors, sales agents, etc.. Is there not a way to set up lists or groups such as this on the domain level in Google Apps? I have found a ton of forums with users asking the same question but no good answers unless you purchase some third party app in the marketplace.
I have toyed around with the "google-shared-contacts-client" here: http://code.google.com/p/google-shared-contacts-client/ and this almost does it but it falls short when trying to group contacts on the domain level or when trying to search for a contact by company name. Are either of these things possible?
I am now looking to create a Google Doc spreadsheet to share with the domain just to have a separated defined list of contacts that is search-able by various fields...
Anyone who could shed some light on domain level contact sharing relating to the points above, I would be most grateful...
Google does not provide a GUI to add domain shared contacts. They can be added through the API as you've discovered.
There is a great free tool at is available from SherpaTools that will allow you to create domain shared contacts when you enable their Application in your domain. I think they let you create multiple directories. I have used it in one of our test domains a few weeks back. We build a python app to import contacts into our 60 domains, not recommended. :p
We accomplish this where I'm at via the Groups option in the Google Apps control panel. Yes, this is build off the old Google Groups system, but you can set groups up to work very much just like distribution lists. The downside is needing to involve your Google domain manager every time you need to create a new list, but once created you can give ownership of the list to someone more appropriate.