The Project
The world of communication has changed. More and more we see cell phones instead of home phones, texting instead of email, and email instead of physical mail; we must streamline our approach to move forward with many desirable enhancements.
There are a ton of projects we have identified that improve how this information is both collected and leveraged; I will avoid listing them out to avoid any confusion about what this is. This first step is to simplify both the collection and display of what we have and incorporate more consistency across our platforms. To do this we need to make some decisions that affect the information you have today.
Changes include:
- limiting phone types to mobile, home and work
- limiting email types to personal, home and work
- home in both cases translates to a shared value among the entire family
- only one value can exist for each type
- forcing a preference decision when more than one phone number exists
- forcing a preference decision when more than one email address exists
Data Migration / Change
Preferences – since we have not consistently asked for a communication preference, we will create these preferences in the following order
- Phone – If “mobile” exists set it as default, if not then use “home”, if not then use “work”
- Email – If “personal” exists set it as default, if not then use “home”, if not then use “work”
Duplicate Data Types – since we have allowed the collection of duplicate types in both email and phone, data will need to be removed. When more than one email or phone number exists for a single type (personal, work, home, cell) we will keep the newer one and delete the older ones.
Legacy Data Types – since we have allowed the collection of additional types of email and phone numbers, data will be removed. We are exploring options to ensure that you have ample opportunity/ability to retain this information, but all data associated with the following data types will eventually be erased:
- Phone – Alternate
- Phone – Children
- Phone – CR Safe
- Phone – Emergency
- Phone – Fax
- Phone – Pager
- Phone – Previous
- Phone – School
- Phone – Vacation
- Email – Alternate
- Email – School
