#Contacts

#What it is

Contacts is the list of every person your channels have talked to, across WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Messenger, WeChat, SMS, email and your website widget. It is your customer address book inside Threadline.

It is an Admin area, reached from Contacts in the navigation. Agents see the person they are talking to in the Inbox contact panel.

#The problem it solves

Conversations alone do not tell you who your customers are. Without a contact list:

• you cannot find a customer by name or number;
• you cannot send a message to "all customers in Dhaka" or "everyone who bought last month";
• you have no record of who agreed to receive marketing messages, which the chat apps and the law require;
• the same person can exist several times under slightly different details.

Contacts gives every person one record, lets you sort them into groups, tags and rules, records their consent, and keeps your list clean.

#How it works

• People add themselves. The first time someone writes to you, Threadline creates their contact. You do not have to do anything.
• You can add people too. One at a time, or many at once from a file. Leads you find with the Lead finder and customers copied from an online store also become contacts.
• A contact belongs to one channel. A person who writes on both WhatsApp and Telegram is two contacts, because each channel can only message its own people.
• Phone or email is the key. On WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, Messenger and SMS a person is matched by their number or account. On an email channel they are matched by their email address.

Four tools help you organise contacts:

Tool	What it is	Example
Groups	Lists you fill by hand and send messages to.	"Spring sale", "Dhaka customers"
Tags	Labels that describe a person.	"VIP", "Needs follow-up"
Fields	Extra details you want to store.	City, order count, birthday
Segments	Rules that pick people automatically.	"Opted in AND country is US"

#1. The contact list

The cards at the top show your totals: contacts, groups, opted in, and not opted in.

To find people:

• Search by name, phone number or email.
• Filter by channel, group, segment, tag or opt-in status.

Click a person's name to open their profile. Tick the box on a row to select it, or the box in the header to select everyone on the page. Then you can act on all of them at once. See Bulk actions.

#2. The contact profile

What it is. One page with everything Threadline knows about a person.

The problem it solves. Before, you had to hunt across conversations, deals and campaigns to understand one customer. The profile puts it together.

What you see.

Section	What it shows
Details	Phone, email, country, language, where they came from (source), when they were added, when they were last seen.
Consent	Whether they agreed to marketing messages on WhatsApp, on SMS and on email, and since when.
Lists	Their groups, the segments they match right now, and their tags.
Custom fields	The extra details you defined.
Conversations	Their conversations, newest first, each linking to the Inbox.
Deals	Their sales opportunities.
Campaign history	Every campaign they were in and what happened: sent, delivered, read or failed, with the reason.
Team notes	Notes your team wrote about them in conversations.

Click Edit to change their details in place. Source says how the person arrived, for example inbound (they wrote first), import, lead finder or a store.

#Adding a contact

Click Add contact. Choose the channel, then enter the phone number with its country code (or the email address on an email channel). Spaces and dashes are fine. You can also set a name, an email, groups, tags and your own fields.

• A number that is already in that channel is refused, so you do not get duplicates.
• Telegram, Instagram, Messenger, WeChat and widget contacts cannot be added by hand. They exist only once that person has written to you.

The number and channel cannot be changed later. They are how the person's messages are matched to them.

#3. Consent (opt-in) and opting out

What it is. A record of "this person agreed to receive marketing messages from us", kept separately for each kind of channel.

Why it matters. WhatsApp, SMS carriers, email laws and the chat apps all require consent for promotional messages. Sending to people who did not agree gets numbers blocked, accounts restricted and, in some countries, fines.

How it works.

Consent	Used for
Marketing consent on the person's own channel	Broadcasts on WhatsApp, Telegram and the other chat channels. This is the tick you set when adding or importing.
SMS consent	SMS campaigns and the Send an SMS automation step.
Email consent	Email campaigns and the Send an email automation step.
Opted out	Overrides every consent above. A person who opted out is never included.

• Only contacts with consent can be sent a broadcast. Unticking consent withdraws it. They can still write to you and you can still answer them.
• They can opt out themselves. If a customer writes exactly STOP (also unsubscribe, cancel, end, quit), they are marked as opted out on that channel. They can write START to agree again. On an SMS or email channel this only affects that SMS or email contact, so their WhatsApp consent is untouched.
• Every email carries an unsubscribe link, which does the same.
• Ticking consent again by hand lifts a STOP. Importing or adding a contact never lifts one.
• People found by the Lead finder or copied from a store are added with consent off: finding or buying from you is not agreeing to marketing.

#4. Groups, tags and fields

Click Groups, tags & fields to set these up.

#Groups

A group is a list of people you want to message together. A contact can be in several groups. Deleting a group never deletes the people in it.

#Tags

A tag is a label. Use tags to filter the list and to choose who a broadcast goes to. Tags can also start an automation, for example "when the tag VIP is added, assign to Sara".

Groups or tags? Use a group for "who do I send this to". Use a tag for "what do I know about this person".

#Fields

A field is an extra detail on every contact. Choose its type when you create it:

• Text, for example a city.
• Number, for example an order count.
• Date, for example a birthday.
• Choice, where you list the allowed answers, for example Bronze, Silver, Gold.

Good to know about fields:

• The type cannot be changed after the field is created. This keeps a number field from ever holding text.
• Renaming a field keeps the values already saved.
• Deleting a field deletes its values on every contact.
• You can use a field in saved replies, templates and automations, for example {{contact.city}}.

Names are unique in your workspace. You cannot have two groups, or two tags, with the same name.

#5. Segments

What a segment is. A saved rule that finds people for you. A group is a list you fill. A segment fills itself, and is worked out again every time you use it.

The problem it solves. "Everyone in the US who agreed to marketing and has the tag VIP" changes every day as people join, change details or opt out. Keeping a group up to date by hand is impossible.

How to make one.

1. Open Segments & groups in the navigation, then New segment.
2. Give it a name.
3. Choose all or any of the rules must match.
4. Add rules. Each rule is a field, a comparison and a value.
5. Watch the line at the bottom: "N contacts match right now" updates as you type.
6. Save segment.

What you can test. Name, phone, email, country, language, source, channel type, opted in to marketing, opted out (STOP), tag, group, date added, last seen, and any custom field you made.

Comparisons. is, is not, contains, does not contain, is after / greater than, is before / less than, is on or after / at least, is on or before / at most, is empty, is not empty. Which ones appear depends on the field.

Where segments are used.

• Contacts list filter to see who is in it.
• Broadcast audience. Choose a segment as the audience of a campaign. Only people who have consent are sent to, even if the rule matches others. See Broadcast.
• Automation conditions. The Continue only if… step can check "is in segment".

The same page lists your Groups (the lists you fill by hand) so you can see both together.

#6. Bulk actions

Select some contacts and click Actions to:

• add them to a group, or remove them from one;
• add a tag, or remove one;
• Export selected, a file of only those people;
• Delete them.

Group and tag changes happen at once. Deleting asks you to confirm first.

#7. Importing contacts

What it is. Adding many contacts at once from a file.

The problem it solves. You probably already have customers in a spreadsheet or another system. Typing them in one by one is not realistic.

How it works. Click Import. The file can be CSV or JSON, up to 20 MB and 5,000 rows.

1. Upload. Threadline reads the file and shows a preview of the first rows. It suggests which column is the phone number (or email), the name and the email.
2. Check the columns.
   • Choose the channel these people belong to.
   • Correct any column Threadline guessed wrongly.
   • Match your own fields to columns, if you have any.
   • Optionally, add everyone to a group.
   • Tick the confirmation that these people agreed to receive marketing messages, or leave it unticked to import them without consent.
3. Click Import contacts.

Someone already in that channel is updated, not duplicated.

The message after the import tells you how many were added and why some were left out:

• the row has no phone number, or the number is not valid, or the same number appears twice in the file;
• a field value does not fit its type, such as letters in a number field. The rest of that contact is still imported;
• you are over your plan's contacts limit. New people are added until the limit is reached. People already in the channel are still updated.

If you are already at your plan's limit, the import is refused until you upgrade or delete some contacts.

#8. Exporting contacts

Export downloads a CSV file of the contacts that match your current search and filters. It includes all matching contacts, not only the page you are on.

The file has the name, phone, email, country, language, source, channel, opted in, opted out, groups, tags and each of your fields. It is safe to open in a spreadsheet: values that could be mistaken for a formula are saved as plain text.

Use it for a backup, for a report, or to move your list to another tool. For a copy of everything in your workspace, use Export my data.

#9. Remove duplicates

What it is. A tool that finds the same person saved more than once and joins the records into one.

The problem it solves. Duplicates happen when a customer is imported and also writes in, or is saved with a different format. They split one person's history across several records, and can cause the same person to get a message twice.

How it works.

1. Click Remove duplicates.
2. Threadline looks for people on the same channel who share a phone number or an email address. Email matching ignores capital letters.
3. It also follows chains. If A and B share a number, and B and C share an email, all three are treated as one person.
4. You see each set before anything changes. Untick any set you want to leave alone.
5. Confirm.

For each set, the contact with the most conversations is kept. If that is a tie, the one added first is kept. Its conversations, tags, groups and any missing details are filled in from the others, and the extra contacts are removed. Where both had a value for the same field, the kept contact's value wins.

Contacts on different channels are never joined.

#10. Plan limit

Your plan may limit how many contacts you can have (Contacts in the plan's limits).

People who write to you first are always added, even over the limit, so a conversation is never lost. The limit applies to adding and importing by hand.

#Common questions

Why is the same customer listed twice? Either they wrote on two different channels, which is expected, or they are a real duplicate on one channel. Use Remove duplicates for the second case.

Can I add an Instagram or Telegram contact by hand? No. Those apps only let you message someone after they have written to you.

I imported a list but nobody got my broadcast. Check that the contacts have consent. Only people who agreed receive broadcasts.

Does deleting a group delete its people? No. Only the group itself is removed.

A customer says they keep getting messages after writing STOP. Check their profile: it should say opted out. If it does not, the STOP was written on a different channel than the one you are sending on.

What is the difference between a group and a segment? You fill a group by hand. A segment fills itself from a rule.