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 organize a new contact
When a message arrives from someone new, CommSync creates an orphan Identity automatically. Here is how to turn that into a proper contact.
Find the orphan thread
New senders appear in your inbox right away. The thread row shows the raw phone number or email address until you attach the identity to a contact.
Open the contact panel
Click the sender chip or the person icon in the thread header to open the contact panel on the right.
Choose an action
- Promote to new contact — creates a new contact with this Identity attached, then prompts you for a display name.
- Attach to existing contact — search your existing contacts and link this Identity to the one you choose. Useful when you recognize the address as someone already in your graph under a different channel.
Add a display name
Give the contact a name (up to 200 characters). To keep context about your conversations with them — account numbers, relationship history, follow-ups — use conversation notes on the thread itself.
Apply labels
Optionally assign one or more labels — for example VIP or Support — to keep the contact organized in your inbox filters.
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.
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. You can find all your orphans at once. Filter the inbox to Unlinked, or open the Contacts view and filter it to 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, and prompts for a display 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.