Sharing Contact Methods

Lots of great feedback here on Contact Methods and managing communication preferences.  On to a slightly more weedy problem.  ("Weedy" is what we use to refer to an issue that doesn't involve grand visioning and is more, well, in the weeds.)  The issue at hand is sharing contact methods, particularly in the consortium world.

In the current application every constituent must have a primary postal address that is shared.  On the other hand in the current application you needn't have any shared phone numbers or shared email addresses.  But at least each constituent has a postal address that everyone can see.

In Next Generation we realize that requiring every constituent to have a postal address is not viable and so we've taken that requirement out.  In its place we currently have a rule that if a constituent has one or more postal addresses, then one of those addresses must be primary and shared.  This decision was worked through with the ESC that worked on addresses.

And now we come to email addresses and phone numbers.  (I know that there are plenty of other possible communication methods, but let's use these for examples.)  So let's say we have constituent "John Smith" with no postal address, but with one email address that we got when John bought something on the  Ballet website. 

Should we require that this first (and only) email address be shared as well?  If not, we've got a "John Smith" constituent in the system with a ballet email address only and someone from the Symphony will potentially have no way of contacting John, nor any way of knowing anything more about John than his name. What happens when John comes up in a search at the Symphony?  The Symphony would have no way of knowing what John Smith they were looking at.

What do you think?  We could make email addresses and phone numbers work like postal addresses--if a constituent has any, then one must be primary.  Or I suppose we could have a rule that one contact method among many (i.e. address, phone, email) must be required and primary and shared.  If we go that route, what's enough shared information to make John Smith identifiable by all users?  His Twitter account?  Or are we really talking about the standard postal, email and phone types?

Any thoughts, especially for consortium members would be welcome!

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Lots of great feedback here on Contact Methods and managing communication preferences.  On to a slightly more weedy problem.  ("Weedy" is what we use to refer to an issue that doesn't involve grand visioning and is more, well, in the weeds.)  The issue at hand is sharing contact methods, particularly in the consortium world.

In the current application every constituent must have a primary postal address that is shared.  On the other hand in the current application you needn't have any shared phone numbers or shared email addresses.  But at least each constituent has a postal address that everyone can see.

In Next Generation we realize that requiring every constituent to have a postal address is not viable and so we've taken that requirement out.  In its place we currently have a rule that if a constituent has one or more postal addresses, then one of those addresses must be primary and shared.  This decision was worked through with the ESC that worked on addresses.

And now we come to email addresses and phone numbers.  (I know that there are plenty of other possible communication methods, but let's use these for examples.)  So let's say we have constituent "John Smith" with no postal address, but with one email address that we got when John bought something on the  Ballet website. 

Should we require that this first (and only) email address be shared as well?  If not, we've got a "John Smith" constituent in the system with a ballet email address only and someone from the Symphony will potentially have no way of contacting John, nor any way of knowing anything more about John than his name. What happens when John comes up in a search at the Symphony?  The Symphony would have no way of knowing what John Smith they were looking at.

What do you think?  We could make email addresses and phone numbers work like postal addresses--if a constituent has any, then one must be primary.  Or I suppose we could have a rule that one contact method among many (i.e. address, phone, email) must be required and primary and shared.  If we go that route, what's enough shared information to make John Smith identifiable by all users?  His Twitter account?  Or are we really talking about the standard postal, email and phone types?

Any thoughts, especially for consortium members would be welcome!

You were sent this message automatically by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Next Generation forum email notifications. You may reply to this message or visit the site to reply to the post above. If replying via email, please consider deleting the previous message text before sending to help with readability on the site. Thank you!