Custom Objects allow you to extend Intercom's standard People and Conversation object data to store data that represents your business in a more flexible way. References allow you to define how those objects are related to each other so that relevant data can be displayed to the right people.

This is a more common type of reference. For example, multiple orders might belong to the same person, but an order can belong to one person only. So you could create a Custom Object called “Order” and create both a People reference and an Order reference object to relate them to each other.

Another type of reference is "one-to-one" reference. For example, you have lots of people in your system, and you require them to provide passport details to book a flight.

Assuming a person can only have one passport at a time and a passport can belong to one person only, you would create a Custom Object for “Passport” with attributes for “passport_number” and “expiry_date” and then create a reference which links it to the person with the 'Allow referencing to multiple people' toggle off.

And on People Object side, you create a reference to the Passport object with the toggle off as well.

References can still be edited once you've saved them except their names. Please note that if you edit the toggle, all existing associations for this may be deleted. This means bots and Data connectors that use this attribute might fail.