---
title: "Contact Access And Allowlists"
description: "Control who can message a Gobii, who a Gobii can contact, and how contact requests are approved."
sidebar_label: "Contact Access"
---

Contact access controls who can communicate with a Gobii and who a Gobii can reach. This is one of the main safety controls for email, SMS, app channels, and external communication.

## Direction matters

Contact permissions can cover different directions:

- **Inbound**: the contact can send messages or instructions to the Gobii.
- **Outbound**: the Gobii can send messages to the contact.
- **Configuration/collaboration**: the person may help manage or collaborate with the Gobii where supported.

Grant only the direction the workflow needs.

## Allowlists

Allowlists are explicit contact rules. Use them when a Gobii should only interact with known people or endpoints.

Good allowlist practices:

- Add business contacts by role and purpose, not just because they might be useful.
- Remove stale contacts.
- Keep external outreach approval-gated for new Gobiis.
- Review allowlists before enabling recurring email or SMS workflows.

## Contact requests

A Gobii may ask for permission to contact someone. Review:

- The requested person or endpoint.
- The purpose of the contact.
- The direction of communication.
- Whether this is one-time or ongoing.
- Whether the contact should be a collaborator or only a communication endpoint.

If the request is too broad, reject it and provide a narrower instruction.

## Channels

See [Channels And Contacts](/using-gobii/channels-and-contacts) for the user-facing channel model and [Email And SMS](/using-gobii/email-and-sms) for setup guidance.
