# Person

A **person** is one human in a workspace's relationships — a single record however many addresses, numbers and channels they reach you on. Every conversation resolves to a person through an [identity](/docs/glossary/identity/), and it is the person that carries history, memory and lifecycle stage.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **In the app:** #/relationships
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/person/

## One human, many ways of reaching you

The record exists so that the same human writing from a work address, replying from a personal one and then telephoning is one history rather than three. The addresses and numbers are identities attached to the person; the person is what memory hangs from, what a [relationship](/docs/glossary/relationship/) is with, and what [Customer 360](/docs/glossary/customer-360/) assembles.

Resolution happens on the way in. A message arrives at a mailbox, its sender address is matched to an identity, and the identity names a person; when nothing matches, a person is created rather than the message being left ownerless. That is why an unfamiliar correspondent still gets a record — and why duplicates accumulate and need merging.

## Duplicates, and merging them

Two records for one human is the normal failure here, not an exotic one. It happens whenever someone reaches you a new way before you knew the way was theirs: a mobile number with no name attached, a personal address on a holiday reply, a form filled in with a typo.

1. Find the pair on the relationships screen — duplicates are surfaced rather than left for you to notice.
   - Result: You can compare what each record actually holds before deciding.
2. Merge them.
   - Result: The identities collect on one person and the history stops being split; conversations keep their own channel records.
3. Check the memory afterwards.
   - Result: Memory scoped to a contact belonged to one of the two records, and a merge is the moment to notice a note that was only ever on the quieter half.

[Telling a new prospect from an existing customer](/research/prospect-identity-resolution/) covers the harder version of the same problem, where research turns up someone you are already talking to.

## Four records that are not a person

**An [identity](/docs/glossary/identity/)** — One address on one channel. A person has several; an identity belongs to exactly one person. When you want to say *where the message came from*, you mean an identity.
**A [company](/docs/glossary/company/)** — The organisation. A person may belong to one, may change to another, and the company's history is not the person's.
**A [prospect](/docs/glossary/prospect/)** — Someone research found who is not yet a relationship. The point at which a prospect becomes a person you are dealing with is a real transition, not a rename.
**A user of your workspace** — A colleague who signs in. Sign-in is Google OAuth and belongs to platform identity, outside the workspace's records entirely — your colleague is not a row on the relationships screen by virtue of having an account.

That last one bites in an unexpected way: because sign-in identity sits outside the [workspace](/docs/glossary/workspace/), a colleague who also writes to you from their own address can legitimately exist as a person *and* as a workspace member, and the two records know nothing about each other.

## Questions

### What happens when someone writes from an address I have never seen?

It becomes a new identity. If nothing links it to an existing person, a new person is created — which is correct, and is why duplicate merging exists rather than guesswork at the door.

### Does a person carry their own memory?

Yes, at the contact tier, which is the narrowest and therefore wins over channel and workspace entries. A block on a person is held there too.

### If someone changes employer, do I lose the history?

No. The person is the record; the [company](/docs/glossary/company/) they are attached to is a separate one, and changing it does not detach the conversations you have had with them.

## Related

- [Identity](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/identity/)
- [Relationship](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/relationship/)
- [Company](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/glossary/company/)
- [Relationships in Connect](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/relationships/)
- [Why the machine proposes a merge and a person disposes](https://connectbyjbrh.com/research/one-person-many-channels/)

## What this page is based on

- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §4 — people.py, identity.py, crm.py, journey.py
- `docs-source/facts.py` — CAPABILITY_STATUS duplicate_merge, cross_channel_identity
- docs-source/sources/GENERAL.md §10 — Google OAuth is the only sign-in