# Contacts

A contact is a collection that groups together underlying connected **channel recipient identities**. It's tied to a specific **project** and is therefore considered public to all **apps** sharing the same **project**. Most contact creation and maintenance is handled by the Conversation API's automatic [contact management](https://developers.sinch.com/docs/conversation/contact-management/) processes. However, you can also use API calls to manually manage your contacts.

A **contact** has the following configurable properties:

| Field              | Description                                                                                                                                         |
| ------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Channel identities | List of channel identities specifying how the contact is identified on underlying channels                                                          |
| Channel priority   | Specifies the channel priority order used when sending messages to this contact. This can be overridden by message specific channel priority order. |
| Display name       | Optional display name used in chat windows and other UIs                                                                                            |
| Email              | Optional Email of the contact                                                                                                                       |
| External id        | Optional identifier of the contact in external systems                                                                                              |
| Metadata           | Optional metadata associated with the contact.                                                                                                      |