# 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.

- **Status:** Available
- **Audience:** both
- **Last verified:** 2026-09-10
- **Canonical:** https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/product/data-you-give-connect/

## 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](/docs/product/the-record-model/) is the map of where things land, and [Privacy inside the product](/docs/product/privacy-in-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

1. Decide which mailbox Connect should read first.
   - Result: One is enough. A second can be added later with its own role, signature and autonomy.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

## Related

- [Privacy inside the product](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/product/privacy-in-the-product/)
- [Knowledge sources](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/knowledge/sources/)
- [Teach Connect about your business](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/getting-started/teach-connect-your-business/)
- [The records Connect keeps](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/product/the-record-model/)
- [Your plan](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/account/plan/)
- [What a person always decides](https://connectbyjbrh.com/docs/product/what-a-person-decides/)

## What this page is based on

- `webapp/privacy/index.html` — the categories of information Connect processes
- `webapp/trust/index.html` — payment by UPI and acceptable use
- AGENTS.md §4 and §8 — where records live and what a plan gates
- `docs-source/facts.py` CAPABILITY_STATUS — sign-in, knowledge, autonomy