What’s New
Linking two contacts used to mean choosing from a fixed list: Spouse, Child, Parent, Sibling, Business Partner, Friend, Relative, Other. Anything outside it became “Other”, which told you two people were connected but not how.
Team admins and owners now manage that list themselves under Settings → Relationship Types.
Creating and using a type
- Add a type — “Referral Agent”, “Property Manager”, “Listing Partner” — and it appears immediately in both relationship pickers, when you add a relationship and when you edit one.
- Custom types are their own opposite: link Ann to Ben as a Referral Agent and Ben is linked back to Ann as a Referral Agent.
- The eight built-in types are still there for every team and cannot be edited or removed.
- Names must be unique within your team and cannot reuse a built-in name.
Retiring a type
Deactivating a type never changes the contacts already using it. Deactivate “Referral Agent” and it disappears from the pickers, so nobody assigns it to a new pair of contacts — but every relationship already recorded as a Referral Agent stays exactly as it is, and can still be edited or removed. Reactivate the type and it returns to the pickers.
Deleting is stricter: a type can only be deleted while nothing references it. If contacts are still linked by it, deactivate instead.
Renaming
Renaming a type updates the relationships that use it, so nothing is left pointing at the old wording.
For integrations
The peopleRelationshipsCreated, peopleRelationshipsUpdated and peopleRelationshipsDeleted webhooks now carry a relationship_type_id alongside the existing relationship_type field, plus a relationship_type_name resolved when the event fires.
The existing relationship_type field is unchanged and will keep working. However, it is a display name and can now be renamed, so integrations that branch on relationship type should move to matching on relationship_type_id, which is stable across renames.
Availability
The feature is enabled per team. Contact support to have it turned on for yours.