Connections

A connection is one time you were in touch: a dinner, a call, a long text thread, a card in the mail. It has a type, a short title saying what it was, a time, and the people who were there. Connections are what your cadences measure, and what fills each person's history.

One connection can hold several people. A dinner with four friends is one evening, logged once, and it counts as time together with each of them.

Logging a connection

Open the interview — from the top of any page, or by logging a connection from a person's page — and say what happened: "Coffee with Ana this morning". It fills in the type, the time and the people, and you check them before saving.

Connections can be in the future, too. "Dinner with the Parks next Saturday at 7" logs a planned connection; for someone with a cadence, their page shows it as "Booked" until it happens.

A connection logged through the interview uses your Space's timezone unless you correct it there; one from a calendar keeps the event's own. Either way, its time always reads as it was where it happened. See Timezones.

A calendar you bring into Longtime can also propose connections from its events — a repeating meeting once each occurrence has happened — see Constant Bridges.

Time together

Longtime adds up how long you spend with each person. Every confirmed connection adds its length — the Hours on its page — to the time-together total of everyone who was there. An in-person connection with no end time counts as 15 minutes; a call, message or letter with no end time adds nothing. A planned one counts once you confirm it. The total shows at the bottom of a person's page as Hours Connected. Occasions stay out of the arithmetic.

Types of connection

Type	For
One-on-one	Meeting in person with one other person — coffee, a meal, a walk, a visit
Social gathering	Meeting in person with two or more other people — a party, a group dinner, a wedding
Voice call	A phone call with no video
Video call	A video call
Email	An email exchange
Text	A text or SMS
Direct message	A message on a social or chat app
Mailed correspondence	A letter, card or package

For in-person connections the interview chooses between One-on-one and Social gathering by who was there, and switches as you add or remove people.

The Connections list

Connections in the menu — it appears once you have logged your first one — lists everything newest first, with a line marking where the future ends and the past begins. Occasions appear as frames around the connections that happened during them. Search, quick filters and the occasions toggle are covered in Searching.

Each row shows an icon for the type, the title, where it was, who was there, how long it lasted (the assumed 15 minutes for an in-person connection with no end time), and when.

Did this happen?

Once a planned connection's time has passed, Longtime asks "Did this happen?" — on its row in the Connections list, in each person's history, on the connection's page, on an occasion's page, and in the dashboard's Confirm connections panel.

• Answering yes confirms it. To confirm it and say how it went, use the arrow beside yes; that opens the interview, and saving there confirms it.
• Answering no lets you reschedule it to a new time, or mark it canceled, which removes it straight away.

Until you confirm a planned connection, it does not count as having happened, so it does not reset anyone's cadence. Editing it after its time has passed — from the interview or its details — also confirms it.

A connection's page

At the top: the type, the title, and how many people were there and when. The main button asks what is new and opens the interview about this connection.

The summary shows when it was, its Hours, where it was and who was there. If the connection is part of an occasion, a line above it says so, with a link.

The History section holds notes about this connection: type one in and add it.

The People section lists who was there. Adding people opens the interview, which asks who else was there; the × on a person takes them off this connection without changing anything else about them.

The ⋮ menu holds the rest:

• Edit its details — the title, type, location, date, time, the optional end date and time, and the About text. People are changed from the People section, not here.
• Convert it to an occasion — for something that was really a span of days. See below.
• Delete the connection — this permanently deletes it and takes everyone off it. There is no undo.

Duplicates

When the same evening has been logged twice — once by hand, once from a calendar — the connection's page says it looks like a duplicate of another connection.

• Reviewing the merge (one at a time, when there are several) opens a dialog where you choose which value to keep wherever the two differ. The duplicate's people and notes come across, then it is removed.
• Merging them all, when there are several, merges them all at once, keeping this connection's values.
• Snoozing asks again later; dismissing says they are different, for good.

Converting to an occasion

A weekend away logged as one long connection would count every hour of it as time connected. Converting it to an occasion from the ⋮ menu turns it into an occasion over the same days instead. Its people and notes come along, its About text becomes a note, and it stops counting as hours connected.

When a calendar cancels one

If a connection came from a calendar and the event is later canceled or marked tentative there, the page shows "The calendar took this meeting back", and offers to remove the connection, snooze the question, or keep it. Nothing is removed unless you choose to. See Suggestions.

Details

Two connections count as possible duplicates only when they are on the same day, share people, and their times overlap. Lunch and dinner with the same friend on the same day are two connections.