How to link one person's channels

When the same person talks to you on Instagram and on WhatsApp (or Messenger…), you have two contacts — one per channel. Link another channel… makes them one person. Both records stay exactly as they are: each keeps its own messages, permission and reply window. From then on they share tags and custom fields, and a broadcast reaches the person once.

Where it's turned on for your workspace, owners and admins see Link another channel… at the bottom of a contact's drawer, beside Merge with another contact….

Link or merge?

• Link two records on different channels that belong to one person — Maya on Instagram and Maya on WhatsApp. Nothing is retired; you can still reply to her on both.
• Merge two records on the same channel that are duplicates — a contact you typed in by hand and the one Instagram created. One record is retired into the other. Linking refuses two records on one channel and says so: "Use Merge for duplicates on one channel."

Link two records

1. On Contacts, open one of the person's records.
2. Click Link another channel… at the bottom of the drawer.
3. Search by name, @username or ID. Only contacts on a different channel in this workspace are shown. Pick the one that is the same person and click Review.
4. Check what linking will do:
   • both records, each with its own permission — permission and reply windows never cross channels;
   • the tags they'll share;
   • any field that differs: pick the value to keep on both. A value only one of them has is copied to the other;
   • any sequence both are in: one membership continues, the other stops and doesn't restart.
5. Tick They're the same person and click Link channels.

If something changed on either record while you were reviewing, nothing is linked and the dialog shows the new review — check it and link again.

What's shared, and what isn't

• Shared: tags and custom fields. Add a tag, set a field or bump a lead score on either record — by hand, from an automation, a rule, an import or a bulk action — and the other has it too, at once.
• Not shared: permission. An opt-in on Instagram never lets you message them on WhatsApp, and a STOP on WhatsApp opts them out of WhatsApp only. Each channel's reply window is its own too.
• One message per person: a broadcast — a message or Send an automation — reaches the person once, on the record best placed to receive it: the broadcast's channel, then an open reply window, then permission, then the most recent conversation. The review says "N people (M contacts)" when it counted a person's channels as one.
• One membership per person: a person isn't subscribed to the same sequence twice, from any of their channels.

See and unlink a person

The drawer shows Same person on other channels: each linked channel with its own permission and reply window, when they were linked or unlinked, and the latest messages across all of them. In the Contacts list, a linked contact says Linked · also on WhatsApp under its name — each channel is still its own row.

Unlink next to a channel separates it again. Each record keeps the tags and fields it has at that moment; they just stop being shared from then on.

Possibly the same person appears in the drawer when a phone number or email address this contact gave you is exactly another contact's number or address. It never links anyone — Review link… opens the same dialog, and you decide.

Export and delete cover the whole person

Exporting a linked contact's data includes every linked channel. Deleting one — from the drawer, from a bulk delete, or when a person asks Meta to delete their data — deletes the whole person: every linked channel goes with it.

If linking is switched off

Turning linking off hides Link and Unlink and stops counting a person once in broadcasts. It doesn't unlink anyone: people you linked stay one person, and their tags and fields keep being shared.