Contacts & identities
How your contact graph works — contacts, their channel handles, orphan identities, and how to keep everything organized.
Your contact graph is private to you. It is a collection of contacts — each one a human contact — where each contact owns one or more Identities (phone numbers and email addresses). CommSync uses this graph to group conversations and surface the right name in the thread list.
Contacts and identities
A contact has a display name, optional notes, and a set of Identities. Each Identity is a single channel handle:
- Phone number — stored in E.164 format (for example,
+15551234567) - Email address — normalized to lowercase
One person can have two phone numbers and an email address: that is three Identities under one contact. When you link those identities, all the conversations from any of those identities appear as a single unified thread.
Your contact graph is yours alone. A teammate can have a completely different contact for the same phone number, with different notes, different labels, and a different display name. Neither view is wrong — they are independent.
How to add a contact from a conversation
Every person you see in a conversation is one click from your contacts. The same contact card opens from each of these places:
- The avatar and the participant chips in the thread header.
- The sender name on any message card, email or SMS.
- Each name after to, cc, and bcc on the second line of an email card. The line names three people. Click +N to see the full list.
In the full list, an address that is not a contact yet has a dashed underline.
On an email card, hover the header and two small buttons appear next to the
sender name: Copy address and Add to contacts. On a text, hover the
sender line and a small Add chip appears next to the copy chip. Click
Add, and the contact exists. CommSync names it from the sender's From name, or from the
email's local part when there is no name: priya.sharma@acme.com becomes
"Priya Sharma". A role mailbox such as support@ keeps its address as the name.
Click the person
Click a name, an avatar, or an address. The contact card shows the name, the address, and whether they are in your contacts.
Add to contacts
Click the Add to contacts button. The card shows the name it will use under the button. To pick a different name first, click the pencil, type the name, and press Enter.
Or attach to a contact you already have
Choose Add to an existing contact… when you know this address belongs to someone already in your graph under a different channel. Search, pick the contact, and the address becomes a channel on it.
Apply labels
Optionally assign one or more labels — for example VIP or Support — to keep the contact organized in your inbox filters. To keep context about your conversations with them, use conversation notes on the thread itself.
A second click never makes a duplicate
When the address already belongs to a contact, the add opens that contact instead of a copy. Nothing is written.
On a conversation with an unnamed sender, the thread header also shows an Add to contacts chip. One click saves the sender under the suggested name.
How to create a contact from scratch
You do not need an inbound message to create a contact. From the Contacts view, choose New contact and give it a display name. You can add Identities immediately or leave the contact empty and attach identities later as messages come in.
The Contacts view
Contacts in the Tools group at the bottom of the sidebar lists the contacts you saved. The search box at the top matches names. The chips beside it narrow the list:
- All — every contact you can see.
- Personal — the contacts in your own graph that nobody shares.
- Shared — the contacts shared with the team.
- Suggested — contacts, lines, and details for you to review.
The Suggested chip shows only while there is something to review.
The view lists contacts only. A sender that is not a contact yet (an orphan, below) does not appear here.
Suggested lines
When a sender writes a phone number into their own email signature, CommSync can suggest that the number belongs to the same person. Each suggestion shows the two lines, the email it came from, and the signature itself, with the number marked. You decide one suggestion at a time:
- Add attaches the number to the contact.
- Create shows when the sender is not a contact yet. It makes one contact with both lines.
- Not theirs (or Not them) dismisses the suggestion. CommSync never suggests that pair again.
There is no "accept all", and nothing changes until you accept.
Suggested contacts and details
CommSync also suggests three other changes. Each one is one card, and each card shows where the suggestion came from.
| Card | When CommSync shows it | What Accept does |
|---|---|---|
| Create a contact | You replied at least twice to a person who is not a contact yet. CommSync can read their full name from their signature or from the name on their email. | Makes a contact with that address or number. You can change the name first. |
| Add a detail | A contact wrote their title, company, office address, or website in their own email signature. | Adds the detail to the contact. |
| Introduced | A contact brought a new person into an email, for example "cc'ing Dana (dana@lakeside.example)". | Makes a contact for the new address. |
CommSync does not suggest a contact for these senders:
- a sender of automated mail or a mailing list
- a shared mailbox, such as
office@ - one of the addresses or numbers of your own team
Dismiss is permanent: CommSync never suggests the same thing again. The toast after a dismissal has an Undo button.
The details that you accept show on the contact. Only you see them. A teammate who opens a shared contact does not see your details. To remove a detail, delete it on the contact.
How to edit a contact
Open any contact and you can:
- Rename the display name.
- Add a new Identity (type the phone number in E.164 format or an email address).
- Remove an Identity — it becomes an orphan again and its thread detaches from the contact.
- Assign or remove labels on the contact as a whole.
Where did contact notes go?
CommSync replaced contact-level notes with conversation notes — a sticky note + to-do checklist that lives on the conversation itself, so it also works on group threads. Right-click any conversation (or use the checklist icon in the thread header) to open it.
Orphan identities
An orphan Identity is one that no contact owns. Orphans arise when:
- A new sender reaches you for the first time.
- You manually detach an Identity from a contact.
- You delete a contact (all of its Identities become orphans).
Orphan threads still appear in your inbox. The thread row displays the raw address rather than a name. The Contacts view does not list orphans, and the inbox has no filter for them. To see the orphans you can attach, open a contact and click Add channel…. The picker lists every unlinked address and number, and a search narrows it. In the inbox, the Contacts filter does the reverse: it hides the orphans.
How to resolve an orphan
You have two options:
- Attach to a contact already in your graph — the thread history moves under that contact, unified view included.
- Promote to a new contact — creates a fresh contact with just this Identity. The one-click Add to contacts chip in the thread header and on the contact card does this under the suggested name.
Both actions are deliberate — CommSync never attaches an orphan to a contact on its own. See Merging identities for the full walkthrough. It also covers how to split a merge back apart if you attach the wrong one.
How to view a contact's conversation history
Open a contact from the Contacts rail and switch to the Conversations tab. It lists every thread that contact takes part in, newest activity first. That includes their one-to-one conversation and every group chat they are in, across both SMS and Email channels.
This is the reliable way to find group threads. A group conversation belongs to its whole participant set, rather than to any one person. So a search on a participant's name is not a dependable way to surface it. The Conversations tab answers the question directly: which threads is this person in?
Each row tells you how the contact attaches:
- 1:1 — their own conversation with you.
- Group — a room they are in, with the participant count alongside.
- via
priya@northwind.example— which of the contact's channels ties them to that thread.
CommSync shows this only when the contact has more than one channel. That way, you can tell their work address apart from their mobile at a glance.
This is the full history, not the inbox. Threads you have archived or filed to Spam, Promotions, or Automated all stay in the list, badged with where they live. CommSync leaves out only threads you have moved to Trash. Click any row to open it in the inbox.
The contact can have both a SMS number and an Email address. If you have merged those Identities, their one-to-one thread weaves SMS and email messages together in a single timeline.
The list only ever shows threads you can already open. Conversations on a line an admin has not granted you access to stay hidden, even when the contact is a participant. When you view a contact, that never widens channel access.
You can jump straight here from a thread: click a participant's avatar or name chip in the conversation header and choose All conversations.