> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.operata.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Contacts and interactions

> A Contact, an Interaction, and a Conversation are platform-specific names for one customer-side record Operata observes from start to end. Operata locks one term per platform.

A Contact, an Interaction, and a Conversation are platform-specific names for one customer-side record Operata observes from start to end. Operata locks one term per platform so the API surface stays predictable.

## How it works

A **Contact** is the Amazon Connect name. It starts when a customer reaches your contact center — through inbound voice, callback, chat, or task — and ends when the platform closes the record. Amazon Connect identifies it with a `ContactId` and emits a Contact Trace Record (CTR) once the contact terminates. In Operata, a Contact carries the CTR, the headset analytics, the contact-flow modules, and the per-leg event timing for that single record.

An **Interaction** is the NICE CXOne name for the same construct. A **Conversation** is the Genesys Cloud name. Each platform models the entity differently — different identifiers, different lifecycle events, different segment vocabulary — but Operata normalizes all three into one shape so dashboards, queries, and webhooks behave the same regardless of source.

A Contact is not always the complete customer story. When a single customer flows through more than one platform — an IVR handoff into a CCaaS (Contact Center as a Service), a transfer between vendors — each platform emits its own Contact, Interaction, or Conversation, and Operata correlates them under a single [Customer Journey Trace](/docs/concepts-customer-journey-trace). The Contact is the per-platform record; the journey is the cross-platform path.

```mermaid theme={null}
flowchart LR
    A[Amazon Connect Contact] -->|same customer| T[Customer Journey Trace]
    B[NICE CXOne Interaction] -->|same customer| T
    C[Genesys Cloud Conversation] -->|same customer| T
```

## Why Operata keeps each platform's name

Each CCaaS vendor settled on its own noun before any cross-platform observability tool existed. Forcing a single name onto all three platforms drops information — "Conversation" implies messaging in Genesys Cloud but voice in some other tools — so Operata keeps each platform's native name in the API surface that touches that platform, and reserves the journey as the abstraction that spans them.

Prose has to choose. Cross-platform pages lead with "contact" and name the per-platform synonyms once. Per-platform reference pages use the native term. The terminology lock makes the choice deterministic so the same noun never refers to different things on different pages.

## Related

* [Customer Journey Trace](/docs/concepts-customer-journey-trace) — how Operata correlates per-platform Contacts into one cross-platform path.
* [Signals and observations](/docs/concepts-signals-and-observations) — the measurements Operata attaches to a Contact.
* [Insights](/docs/concepts-insights) — the per-contact detections Operata derives from the underlying observations.
* [List contact summaries](/docs/api-contact-summary) — paginates contacts in a time window with headline metrics for each.
* [Get complete contact record](/docs/api-contact-record) — returns every Operata field for one contact, including CTR, headset analytics, and per-leg event timing.
* [Contact stats](/docs/api-contact-stats) — aggregates over contacts and journeys for trend analysis.
* [Webhooks events](/docs/api-webhooks-events) — fires contact-lifecycle events as new records and updates land.