Referral

A Referral is a piece of work that takes place over a period of time, made up of one or more Contacts. Referrals are automatically created when a User records a Contact that is the start of a new Referral - every time a User records a Contact, they choose whether the Contact is to be linked to an existing Referral, or the start of a new Referral. If they choose the latter, the Referral is created along with the first Contact in it. Referrals act like a "container" for Contacts - every Contact is linked to one Referral (and only one; they can't be linked to more than one).

Actions are linked to Referrals in the same way Contacts are.

Whereas Contacts and Actions have a duration measured in minutes, Referrals have an opening date and a closing date, so the minimum "duration" of a Referral is one day. The opening date of a Referral is taken from the date of the first Contact; the closing date can either be set automatically by the system when there are no more outstanding Actions, or you can opt for the closures to be done manually by Users.

Each Referral is linked to one Project. The configuration of how Referrals should behave is mainly done on the Project Details screen - you can choose whether it should be mandatory for the user to enter a Referrer on every Referral within a Project, and so on.

Each Referral is linked to an Organisation/Person as the "receiver" of the Referral, and a "Referrer" (the organisation or person who "initiated" the Referral). These are not the only links on each Referral, but the are probably the most fundamental.

There are various other attributes that Referrals have, including but not limited to:

• Referral Reason
• Referral Source ("where did the subject of the Referral hear about us")
• Project Subcategory