Your contacts belong to many parts of your life: the people you run with on Saturday, the colleagues you turn to for advice, the volunteers who make an event happen, and the friends who connect those worlds. A name and phone number rarely tell you enough about any of them.
Dextr’s relationships let you build a richer picture. You can create your own relationship groups, define the connections that matter to you, and record how other people know each other. As those connections grow, your Social Graph becomes a useful way to explore your communities and remember where everyone fits.
This guide builds a Running Community with 11 contacts, then shows how to apply the same approach to organizations, professional networks, and other social circles. Creating and managing custom relation types and groups requires Dextr Pro. If you are new to the basics, start with How to Connect Relationships in Dextr.
1. Plan your network with groups, types, and tags
Before creating anything, decide what you want to remember about this part of your life. For a running community, you might want to recognize your regular training partners, distinguish coaches from casual club contacts, and remember which runners know one another.
Three tools work together:
- Relationship group: a home for related types. Create Running Community to keep running relationships together in the selector and Social Graph.
- Relationship type: the connection between people. Add Running Partner, Club Contact, and Coach inside that group.
- Tag: membership, interests, or other context that can overlap. Use Riverside Running Club, marathon-training, and Saturday-runs to describe the same people in several ways.
A relationship group organizes relationship types; it does not create an isolated address book. You still have one contact profile for each person, and their connections can reach into other parts of your network.
Each contact has one Relation to You, so choose the relationship that best describes your connection. If Ada is both a running partner and a professional collaborator, you could set Running Partner as her Relation to You and use tags for the studio, projects, or communities you share. This keeps the relationship meaningful while preserving the rest of her story.
2. Create a custom relationship group
- Open Home in Dextr.
- Tap the Settings gear in the upper-left corner.
- Choose Relation Types.
- Tap Add Group, enter Running Community, and submit the name with the keyboard.
- Tap the colored circle beside the group name to choose its color. Use the name’s edit control when you want to rename it.
Choose a broad name that will still make sense as your network grows. Running Community leaves room for training partners from several clubs. For a volunteer network, something like Community Service can hold connections from multiple organizations.
The reorder control at the top of Relation Types lets you adjust the order of groups and their types. Keep the ones you use most often easy to reach.
3. Define the connections inside your group
Tap New Relation Type inside Running Community. Confirm the Group, enter a Name, choose an emoji if useful, and tap Done to save the new type. Start with a small vocabulary: Running Partner for people you train with, Club Contact for people you know through the club, and Coach for someone who coaches you.
You can also start a new type from the Relation Type quick action on Home. Check its Group before saving so it appears in the right community.
Give directional relationships a counterpart
Some connections have the same name from either side. Two running partners can both describe the other person as a Running Partner. Leave Counterpart empty for that kind of connection.
Others have a direction. When creating Coach, enter Athlete in the Counterpart field. Likewise, Mentor can have Mentee as its counterpart. These paired names help Dextr describe the same connection correctly when you view it from the other person’s profile.
The type’s Relationship Depth control adjusts aspects of its presentation in the Social Graph. Keep the default while you establish your naming system, then adjust it to reflect how close or distant that kind of relationship is. Under Display Settings, Pin on Relation Selector makes a frequently used type easier to choose.
4. Add people to your network
Open a contact’s profile and tap the Relation to You control below the Message and Call buttons. It shows their current type, such as Acquaintance or Close Friend. Choose a type from your new Running Community group.
This sets how you know that person. It does not say how they know every other member of your club. You will add those connections separately in the next step.
Set relationships for several contacts at once
When several people have the same relationship to you, bulk selection saves time:
- Open Contacts in the bottom menu, or open an existing tag’s people list.
- Tap the bulk-select checklist icon and select the people who share that relationship.
- Tap the solid-circle Set Relation to You action in the bottom toolbar.
- Choose your custom type, such as Running Partner.
The chosen type replaces each selected person’s current Relation to You. Review your selection first: a coach and a casual club contact should not receive Running Partner just because they share the same club tag. See the bulk editing guide for the full selection workflow.
5. Connect people who know each other
A network becomes more useful when it includes connections beyond your own. Perhaps Theo coaches Ada, Ada runs with Clara, and Clara also works with someone you know professionally. Record the connections you know so you can recognize these shared circles later.
- Open the first person’s profile.
- Tap the Relationships tab, shown by the connected dots between the reminder bell and the tag icon.
- Use Enter Name or Search Contacts to find another contact, then select them. The + beside Relationships also opens the add flow.
- Read whose relationship you are setting, and choose the appropriate type.
- Open the other person’s profile to see the connection from their side.
In this example, Ada has 10 recorded relationships. Her running partners share one type, while Theo’s Coach relationship uses the Athlete counterpart when viewed from Theo’s profile.
Dextr records one relationship type between a pair of contacts. Choose the most useful description for that connection, and keep additional shared context in tags and journal entries. A common club tag by itself does not mean that every member knows every other member.
6. Use tags for overlapping communities
People rarely fit into only one circle. Ada can belong to Riverside Running Club, train for a marathon, join Saturday runs, and play pickleball. Keep those memberships and interests as tags on her single profile.
Tap Tags near the top of a profile to assign tags, or use the tag tab to review them. For several people, select them in a contact list and use the Add Tags action. Our tagging guide covers both approaches.
This pattern scales well: use a group for the broad community, types for personal connections, and tags for particular organizations, chapters, teams, interests, or projects. It avoids creating a new relationship type for every event or changing someone’s Relation to You each time you discover another shared interest.
7. Explore your networks in the Social Graph
Open Social Graph from the connected-nodes button at the top-right of Home. Your custom group appears alongside the other relationship groups, using the color you chose.
Use the graph controls to answer a specific question:
- Search: locate a person in a busy network.
- Filters: tap the sliders button to choose which relation groups or individual types are displayed. Focus on Running Community when preparing for a club gathering, then include other groups to see more of your network.
- Grouped and expanded views: switch between the broader relationship groups and the individual relation types within them.
- Fit and zoom: use the fit-to-view button to bring the graph into view; pinch to zoom and drag to explore.
- Point of view: double-tap a person to center the graph on their recorded connections. Use the back button to return to the previous view.
Look at the same community from someone else’s perspective
Centering on Ada shows the relationships recorded around her. In the expanded view, Running Partner and Coach appear separately within Running Community. This makes it easier to understand the difference between sharing a broad circle and having a specific connection.
The graph reflects the relationships you have recorded. Keep adding connections as you learn them, and use what you see to recall shared context or consider a thoughtful introduction.
8. Apply the same approach to other networks
Professional growth and mentoring
Create a Professional Development group with Mentor, Mentee as a counterpart, Collaborator, and Industry Peer. Add tags for expertise, conferences, or professional associations. Journal what you discussed with a mentor and set a reminder for the next check-in.
Clubs and member organizations
Use a Clubs & Communities group with Fellow Member and Committee Partner. Tag the organization and chapter separately, so one person can belong to several. Record known connections between members to help you remember who has worked together before.
Clients, referrals, and business relationships
Use a Business Network group for types such as Client, Referral Partner, and Advisor. Keep company names on profiles and use tags for areas of interest or sales stages. As a prospect moves from a first conversation to an active opportunity, update their stage tags without creating a different relationship type for every step in the process.
Creative projects and collaborations
Create a Creative Community group with Coauthor, Creative Partner, and Collaborator. Tag projects or disciplines, then connect collaborators who work together. Journal entries can preserve the idea you discussed, the introduction you promised, or the next step you agreed on.
Volunteer teams and community projects
Use Community Service with Fellow Volunteer and Project Partner. Add organization and project tags, then use an Event to record who attended a particular gathering. The relationship describes the ongoing connection; the event preserves that shared occasion.
Connections between communities
Some of the most useful connections cross circles. A colleague may know someone from your club, or a volunteer partner may have introduced you to a mentor. Record that relationship between their profiles even if their Relation to You belongs to different groups. Tags, Introduced By, and journal notes preserve the context that makes the connection meaningful.
9. Turn your network into an outreach habit
Before a gathering, review the relevant people, their connections, and your last Journal Entries. You can arrive remembering who introduced you, what someone is working on, and the conversation you wanted to continue.
Afterward, add the people you met, record introductions, and write down the details you would otherwise forget. Set a Stay in Touch reminder for someone you want to reconnect with. When reaching out to several people from a group, the Text Blast guide explains how to start from a tag, relationship list, or event.
Keep the system easy to maintain. Use consistent names, pin the types you reach for most, and review relationships when roles change. Reuse an existing type when it already describes the connection, and let tags carry the details that overlap.
Start with one community and ten people you know. Give the connections names that make sense to you, add the relationships you remember, and open the Social Graph. You will have a clearer picture of that part of your life—and a better starting point for the next conversation.
