# Connect

> Connect is where Cooper keeps the people and companies you work with, and every channel you use to talk to them — email, mail, chat, meetings and phone — tied back to your projects.

Source: https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect

Keywords: crm, contacts, communication, people, companies, connect module

**Connect** holds everyone your company works with, and every way you talk to them. Your teammates, clients, vendors and subcontractors live here as **humans** and **organizations**. Your conversations with them, whether email, chat, meetings, phone calls or texts, are linked back to those records and to the projects they are about. Cooper's AI reads those conversations and turns the requests in them into **action items**, so nothing that someone asked for is lost.

Open **Connect** in the left sidebar to see its pages. Which pages you see depends on your role. See each page's **Permissions** section.

## People and companies

  - [Humans](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/humans.md) — The people directory: teammates, client and vendor contacts, and leads, with each person's full history.
  - [Organizations](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/organizations.md) — The external companies you work with: clients, vendors, subcontractors, suppliers and partners.
  - [Teams](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/teams.md) — Named groups of people and organizations, used to assign work, share files and invite people in bulk.
  - [Action items](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/action-items.md) — What somebody still owes, picked up automatically from your conversations or added by hand.
  - [Map](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/map.md) — Where your clocked-in team members are right now, and the path they took during a work session.

## Communication

  - [Inbox](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/inbox.md) — Your own Gmail or Outlook mailbox inside Cooper, linked to projects, tasks and people.
  - [Mail](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/mail.md) — The company register of letters, packages and notices, each with an owner and a due date.
  - [Chat](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/chat.md) — One-to-one and group messaging with your team, with files, calls and Cooper's AI agents.
  - [Meetings](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/meetings.md) — Video and audio meetings with your team and outside guests, with automatic write-ups.
  - [Phone](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/phone.md) — Calls, texts and voicemail on your company's Cooper phone numbers, saved to the right project.

## Administration

  - [Connect settings](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/settings.md) — The lookup lists behind Connect, such as organization types, relationship types and industries.

## Inbox or Mail?

These two are easy to mix up:

| | Inbox | Mail |
|---|---|---|
| What it holds | Email from your own connected Gmail or Outlook mailbox | A company-wide register of letters, packages and notices, logged by hand |
| Who sees it | Only you | Everyone with Mail access |
| Use it to | Read, send and reply to email | Make sure every incoming item has an owner and gets dealt with |

See [Inbox](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/inbox.md) and [Mail](https://docs.cooperbuild.ai/connect/mail.md) for details.

## How Connect fits together

- A **human** usually belongs to an **organization**. Open either record to see the other.
- **Emails, chats, calls, texts and meetings** with a human show up on that human's timeline, and can be linked to a project.
- Requests that come up in those conversations become **action items**, assigned to whoever owes them.
- **Teams** group humans and organizations so you can assign work, share files or invite people all at once.

## For AI agents

Agents connected through the Cooper MCP server can work with every part of Connect. Each page's **For AI agents** section lists the tools for that feature. The most common starting points are `search_humans`, `search_external_orgs` and `action_item_browse`. See [Use the docs with AI](../(getting-started)/ai-agents.mdx) to connect an AI app.