israel-phonebook-manager

Sweep existing Google Contacts for Israeli organisation entries and report what is missing, stale, duplicated or corrupted — star numbers that lost their asterisk, 1-800 numbers with no reachable-from-abroad fallback, merged counter and call-centre hours, entries with no verification date, and the same office saved twice under two transliterations. Use to review or clean up an existing Israeli phonebook.

The closed vocabulary of Google Contacts custom fields used for Israeli entries, and the rules for mapping messy real-world details onto them — which hours go in which field, why the keys are fixed, how Notes mirrors the structured fields, and how update_contact's replace-not-append behaviour destroys data if used carelessly. Use when deciding where a piece of information belongs, or when editing an existing Israeli contact by hand.

Find and fetch the details of an Israeli government office, health fund, municipality or utility — which portals carry branch hours and phone numbers, and which of them can actually be fetched by an automated client. Covers the Cloudflare wall on gov.il and what to do instead. Use when locating an Israeli organisation's contact details, or when a fetch of an Israeli site fails.

Classify Israeli phone numbers before saving them — star (*XXXX) numbers, 1-800 toll-free, 1-700/1-599 business toll where the caller pays, premium 19XX, short codes, extensions and E.164 forms — and work out which of them will not connect from outside Israel or from a foreign SIM. Use when adding numbers to a contact, when a number does not connect, or when tidying imported numbers.

Build a starter set of Israeli contacts for someone who has recently arrived — which offices they will actually need in the first year, in what order, and what each entry has to record to be useful to someone who does not yet read Hebrew or know how the agencies are divided up. Use when setting up a phonebook for a new immigrant, or when the user asks which Israeli offices they should have saved.

Save an Israeli office, branch, clinic, call centre or business to Google Contacts from a URL, a pasted page, a screenshot or a phone call, keeping the details a generic contact record loses — counter hours separate from call-centre hours, summer and winter timetables, Shabbat and chag closures, appointment-only counters, star and 1-800 numbers that will not connect from abroad, languages of service, and what to bring. Use whenever the user wants an Israeli organisation added to or updated in their contacts.