The data you give Connect
Connect needs an identity to sign you in, and nothing else to start. Everything after that is additive: a mailbox, a phone line, a business profile, Knowledge, rules, and the corrections you make. Each category below says why it is needed and what happens if you leave it out — and in every case leaving it out narrows what Connect does rather than breaking it.
The categories#
| Category | Why Connect needs it | If you withhold it |
|---|---|---|
| Google identity | To authenticate you and bind the sign-in to a person inside a workspace. | You cannot sign in. Google is the only route, so this is the one item with no alternative. |
| A mailbox connection | To read what arrives and to reply from the address your customers already write to. | No mail is read and none is sent. Every other channel and every record still works. |
| A phone line | To answer calls on your number and to place the ones you permit. | The phone channel stays off. Nothing else is affected. |
| A WhatsApp business identity | To receive messages on that number and reply on the same thread. | The channel stays off, and the screen for it belongs to workspaces that have one. |
| A business profile | So a reply sounds like your business: what you sell, to whom, your hours, your signature. | Replies are generic and more of them are held, because Connect has less basis for deciding anything is routine. |
| Knowledge sources | The material every answer must be grounded in — documents, pages, text you paste in. | Connect refuses more questions rather than improvising an answer. The refusal is the designed behaviour, not a fault. |
| Facts | Short grounded statements for the things asked most often, where a whole document is too blunt. | Answers fall back to the sources, which is slower and sometimes less exact. |
| Rules and autonomy settings | The boundary itself: what may be sent without asking, on which channel, at which hours, up to what spend. | The cautious defaults apply. Work is prepared and held, so the queue grows faster than you may want. |
| Standing instructions | Durable directions — how to treat a particular account, what never to say, what always to mention. | Connect follows the general rules only, and the same correction has to be made repeatedly. |
| Contacts you already hold | To recognise a sender as somebody you know from the first message rather than the second. | People are still created from real conversations. What you lose is the history that predates Connect, not future recognition. |
| Prospect criteria | Who you want to reach, where, and what makes one worth contacting. | No discovery runs. Prospecting is entirely opt-in; nothing is researched because you did not ask. |
| Files | So a document can be read, answered from, versioned and attached to the record it belongs to. | The Assistant answers from Knowledge and records instead, and cannot open something you have not given it. |
| A payment reference at checkout | To match an incoming payment to your workspace. Payment is by UPI, so no card or mandate is involved. | A pass cannot be activated. Your workspace and its contents are unaffected. |
| Your corrections | Rejections, edits before approval and memory corrections are the feedback that changes what happens next. | Connect keeps making the same mistake. There is no other route by which it learns your preferences. |
What Connect does not ask for#
- A password. There is none to set, because sign-in is Google only.
- Card details. Payment is by UPI with no gateway, so no card number is received and no mandate is stored. Nothing is charged automatically.
- Access to anything you have not connected. A channel with no credentials is not reached, and a mailbox you disconnect is not read again.
- Purchased or scraped lists. Uploading one is against the acceptable-use rules, and the compliance check before outreach exists to catch what slips through anyway.
- Somebody else's guess at an address. Connect does not generate an email address from a pattern, so it never asks you to accept one either.
Where each thing ends up#
Nothing supplied here disappears into a model. A connected mailbox produces conversation records; a Knowledge source is stored, extracted and retrieved from when an answer needs it; a correction becomes a memory at a scope; a file becomes a versioned document with provenance. Each of those is visible on a screen you can open, which is the test this product applies to itself: if you cannot see what Connect holds, you cannot correct it.
The records Connect keeps is the map of where things land, and Privacy inside the product covers what happens to them afterwards.
Withholding is a legitimate configuration#
A workspace that supplies an identity, one mailbox and nothing else is a working configuration, not a half-finished one. It will hold almost everything for approval and refuse most questions it cannot ground, which is correct behaviour for a system that has been told very little. The cost is yours to weigh: more control, more queue.
The reverse is also true and worth saying out loud. The three things that change behaviour fastest are Knowledge, the autonomy settings and your corrections. A business that supplies those three and stops there gets most of the benefit, because they are the inputs the engine actually reads on every decision.
Before you connect anything#
Decide which mailbox Connect should read first.
Result One is enough. A second can be added later with its own role, signature and autonomy.
Set what may happen without asking, per channel, before the first message arrives.
Result The defaults hold everything. Choosing deliberately is quicker than clearing a queue you did not expect.
Add two or three Knowledge sources that answer the questions you are asked most.
Result Grounded answers become possible; ungrounded ones stay refused, which is what you want.
Work the queue for a week and correct what is wrong.
Result Corrections become memory, and the queue shrinks because fewer decisions need you.
Questions#
What is the minimum that makes Connect useful?
A sign-in, one connected mailbox, and a handful of Knowledge sources. Everything else adds reach or reduces how much reaches your queue, but those three are enough for the product to do real work.
Do I have to upload my contact list?
No. People and companies are created from real conversations as they happen. Uploading only brings forward the history you already have; it is not a prerequisite for recognition.
Does giving less mean Connect works badly?
It means Connect does less and says so. A question Knowledge does not support is refused rather than guessed at, and a message a rule does not clearly permit is held. Both are the intended response to being told less, not a degraded mode.