What's the difference between IBM Verse Sync with Apple Contacts and the IBM Verse Call Directory Extension?

Sync with Apple Contacts creates an IBM Verse group in Apple Contacts while the Call Directory Extension is a separate data container. A key difference between Sync with Apple Contacts and the Call Directory Extension is that Call Directory Extension phone numbers and names are only visible to iOS and not visible to third party apps.

Sync with Apple Contacts creates an IBM Verse group in Apple Contacts and creates an Apple Contact in that group for each of the user’s IBM Verse People. IBM Verse populates as much data as possible for the person into the corresponding Apple Contact (User added photo, company, department, email addresses, phone numbers, etc.). Once this information is in Apple Contacts, any iOS app (developed by Apple or by third party developers) with access to the user’s Apple Contacts will be able to read and write over the Apple Contacts. This behavior allows iOS apps to automatically associate a piece of data such as a phone number or email address with a Contact. For example, the Messages app can associate a phone number that sent the user an SMS message with an Apple Contact and therefore show their picture next to the message in Messages. Disabling Sync with Apple Contacts will delete the Apple Contacts associated with IBM Verse People, and will therefore sever the connection from other apps to those Apple Contacts.

Sync with Apple Contacts involves directly syncing data with the Contacts application, while the Call Directory Extension is a separate data container. For the Call Directory Extension, iOS specifically requires a list of key-value pairs, where the keys are distinct phone numbers (no duplicates) and the values are the caller names for each phone numbers. For each phone number in a user’s IBM Verse People, the phone number and corresponding name are sent to the IBM Verse Call Directory Extension. A key difference between Sync with Apple Contacts and the Call Directory Extension is that these pairs of phone numbers and names are only visible to iOS; they are not visible to third party apps.