Every person who interacts with your Instagram account gets a contact profile in Inrō. That profile stores everything you know about them: their Instagram data, collected info like email and phone, any folders they're in, and custom properties you've created to capture data specific to your business.
The Contacts table
Go to Contacts in the left sidebar. You'll see a table of every contact in your account, with their data across columns.
The default columns are: Instagram Username, Instagram Name, Status, Email, Phone, Folders, Follower (whether they follow you), Followed (whether you follow them), Language, number of followers, Bio, and Last interaction.
Any custom properties you create appear as extra columns to the right. If a property is readable by your AI Agent, its column header shows a small AI marker.
The table shows 100 contacts per page. Use the pagination controls at the bottom to move through your full list. You can sort by most columns by clicking the header.
Contact status at a glance
The Status column shows whether Inrō can currently message a contact. Active means Instagram's messaging window is open; the other statuses mean you're limited or blocked until the contact interacts again. You can't change status by hand: it updates on its own.
⚠️ Contact status is different from handling status. Status is about whether Instagram lets Inrō message someone. Handling status is about who is managing the conversation. For the full status list, see Understanding Contact Status; for the inbox icons, see Handling Status: Human, Automation, Agent & More.
Opening and editing a contact
Click any row in the Contacts table to open that contact's full view, with its tabs for Conversation, Automation, Campaigns, Comments, Mentions, and History. The Conversation tab shows your full DM history with them, so you can review the thread without switching to the inbox. To change their data, click Edit contact in the top-right corner.
The Edit contact panel has two tabs:
Properties: view and update all stored data. You'll see the standard fields (Email, Phone, Language) plus any custom properties. Click a field to edit it, then click Save contact.
Notes: a free-text area for anything that doesn't fit a structured field. Notes are internal only; your contacts never see them. Use it for context like "referred by @username" or "called on 2 Feb, interested in the Pro plan."
What the profile shows at a glance
Alongside their data, a contact's profile surfaces a few useful counts and insights: how many scenarios and campaigns have run for them, how many comments and mentions they've left, and their last interaction date. You'll also see engagement insights like DMs received, total amount paid, and confirmed appointments. If Inrō has more than one follower-count reading for the contact, a small weekly growth badge shows how their audience is trending.
Custom properties
Custom properties let you store data Inrō doesn't capture by default. You define them, name them, and choose what type of value they hold. To manage them, click Contact properties in the top-right of the Contacts page.
The ten property types
When you create a property, pick one of these types. The type matters because Inrō validates input against it (a Phone property won't accept a random string of letters):
Text: any open text value, for example "Interested in the Pro plan."
Number: a numeric value, for example a budget amount or a score.
Date: a date value, for example a trial end date.
Email: an email address in the correct format.
Phone: a phone number in the correct format.
URL: a web address.
Boolean: a true/false value, for example "Has purchased: Yes."
List: a free list of values you type in (good for tags).
Single choice: the contact's value is exactly one option from a set you define. You add the list of allowed options when you create the property.
Multiple choice: the value can be several options from a set you define. Like single choice, you define the allowed options up front.
Single choice and multiple choice both require at least one option. Use them when you want consistent, pick-from-a-list values (pipeline stage, interest category) rather than free text that's hard to filter later.
Creating a property
Click Contact properties in the top-right of the Contacts page.
Click + New property at the bottom of the panel.
Enter a property name (for example "Price Range").
Add a description. This explains what the property captures, and the AI Agent uses it as context when the property is AI-accessible. Write it clearly.
Pick a property type from the dropdown. For single or multiple choice, add your options.
Check Accessible by AI agent if you want the agent to read this property when forming replies.
Click Save.
⚠️ You can't change a property's type after it's created, because values are stored per type. If you need a different type, create a new property.
The AI property badges
A property can carry up to two AI badges, and they mean different things:
Readable (AI-accessible): set by the Accessible by AI agent checkbox. The agent can read this property's value to personalise replies. If a contact has "Plan: Pro" saved, the agent knows and can reference it.
Writable (AI-detected): appears when a property is added to User Data Collection in your AI Agent settings. The agent can then capture and save this property from the conversation on its own.
Both badges can be on at once. For how AI detection works and how to set it up, see User Data Collection: Saving Contact Info Automatically.
Using properties in automations and campaigns
Once a property has data, you can use it across Inrō:
In scenarios and campaigns, insert the value into messages with a variable like
{{ contact.price_range }}(use the property's slug).In segmentation, use the Contact property filter to build audiences from any property value. See Segmentation & Filters: Build Smart Audiences.
In AI Agent settings, properties marked accessible give the agent more context.
Duplicate contacts are merged automatically
Inrō keeps exactly one contact per Instagram user in your account. If a second record for the same person ever appears (for example from a race between two interactions), Inrō merges the duplicate into the surviving contact on its own.
The merge re-points everything to the surviving contact: conversations, messages, payments, appointments, scenario and campaign runs, comments, mentions, referrals, and property values. Folder memberships are combined, and the duplicate is deleted. This happens behind the scenes, so you shouldn't see two rows for the same person, and there's no manual "merge" button to manage.
Exporting your contacts
You can export your contacts to a spreadsheet from the Contacts page. Click Export all contacts, or apply filters first and click Export N contacts to export that filtered view.
A few things to know about the export:
Format: the file is an Excel workbook (
.xlsx), not a CSV.What's included: the built-in fields, in this order: Instagram Name, Instagram Username, Contact status, Email, Name (real name), Phone number, Contact created, Folders, Follower (Yes/No), Language, number of followers, Bio, and Last message date.
Custom properties are not included. The spreadsheet uses a fixed set of columns and does not export your custom property values. To get custom property values out of Inrō, use the API or MCP. See Managing Contact Properties via API & MCP.
Size: if your filtered set is 1,000 contacts or fewer, the file downloads right away. If it's more than 1,000, Inrō emails the file to you instead and shows a confirmation message.
Filtering: the export respects your current search, status, filter, and segment, so you can export all contacts or any slice.
🐾 Netsuke's Tips
Write good property descriptions. When a property is AI-accessible, the description is how the agent understands it. "Customer's preferred budget range for real estate" beats a blank description.
Use single choice or multiple choice (or the List type) wherever you want consistent values across contacts. Free text creates variation that breaks filters later.
You can fill properties automatically inside scenarios with the Update contact property action. That's how you build a CRM that fills itself in as contacts move through your flows.
If you need custom property values in a spreadsheet, pull them through the API or MCP rather than the built-in export, which only covers the built-in fields.
What's next?
Now that your contacts have structured data, have your AI Agent collect and save it automatically. See User Data Collection: Saving Contact Info Automatically.