People on a commitment

A commitment — anything on your calendar — can name the people who will be there with you. The app calls them the people it is "joined by". This is free.

The row is on the commitment card, under "where? (optional)" and its "⌖ pin it on the map" chip, and above "colour". It is labelled "joined by", and it is there whether or not anybody is on it. It is the same card for a new commitment and for a change.

#Add someone

1. Open the commitment card — see Add a commitment.
2. Under "joined by", tap "☌ someone from your contacts". "☌" is the mark the app uses for people joining. If somebody is there already, the chip reads "☌ one more".
3. Pick one person in the phone's own contact picker.
4. Repeat for each person. One person comes back per trip.
5. Place or keep the commitment.

Each person sits on the row as a lit chip with their name in lower case and a cross, as "ana ×".

• Picking somebody already on the row adds nobody.
• Nothing is added if the contact cannot be read or has no name.
• If the phone offers no contact picker, the line says "nothing on this phone offers its contacts" and the row does not change.

#Take someone off

Tap their chip on the row. Then keep the commitment.

The row opens with whoever is already on the commitment, and keeping writes it back exactly as it stands.

In the docket — the side-by-side layout on a fold, a tablet or a wide phone (Gold) — the commitment's page beside the card shows the people as they are on the row, before anything is saved. That page is a copy, so taking somebody off and then pressing "undo" leaves the commitment as it was.

#The app has no contacts permission

The phone's own picker hands back only the one contact you chose, with leave to read that entry at that moment. The app reads three things from it: an id, a lookup key and the display name. Nothing else. The lookup key is what lets a later tap open the same person, even after the contacts app has reordered its list.

#Plain names

A name the assistant added, or one that arrived on a commitment from somebody else's phone, is a plain name. It sits on the row like any other and comes off the same way. It has no link to a contact on this phone, so nothing opens from it.

#Where the people show

• On the card — the row of chips.
• On the commitment's page — under the place: "☌ joined by " and the names in lower case, separated by " · ". A name picked from your contacts is brighter, and a tap opens that person in the contacts app (or says "nothing on this phone opens contacts"). A plain name is dimmer and does nothing.
• In the day's brief — the list of a chosen day's commitments along the bottom of the calendar's main screen. Under a held row: "with ana", "with ana & leo", "with ana, leo & sam", and past three, "with ana, leo & 2 more".
• On its reminder, after the place.
• From the assistant, which adds " · joined by ana, leo" when it reads the commitment back.

#Names stay inside Zenith

This is easy to assume wrongly, so here it is plainly.

• The people are never written into a phone calendar or a Google calendar as guests. A Google guest list can email invitations, and these people did not ask to be invited by your calendar.
• They are never written into the note Zenith leaves on an entry going out to another calendar.
• For a commitment that lives in a phone calendar, where there is nowhere to hold them, they are kept beside its almanac — the named, coloured layer of commitments it sits on — in Zenith's own records.

#What travels, and what does not

• A file you send somebody — a card, or an almanac file — carries every name as a plain name, with no link. A link names a contact on your phone and would mean nothing, or the wrong person, on theirs.
• A file from somebody else's phone brings plain names too. Any link coming the other way is dropped.
• What comes back to you keeps the links. A backup writes each commitment as it stands, links and all, and so does your own copy in Drive. The pyre keeps them too — the pyre is where a thrown-away thing waits thirty days.

So restoring a backup, or taking your almanac back from your own Drive, gives you tappable names again. A file you handed somebody else never does.

#The one time names leave the phone

The assistant's consent question lists "the names of the people joining a commitment — its 'joined by'". The names go to an AI company only if you ask the sky — the built-in assistant — and say yes to that question. When that line was added, the question changed, so you are asked again for every company. See Safety, consent & your rights.

#See also.

Add a commitment · Share a commitment · Privacy, permissions & what leaves the phone · Safety, consent & your rights