Active Field
Organisations and People within Charitylog have an "Active" field on their records, as shown.
Contents
What is the Active field?
If an organisation/person has the "Active" field on their record set to "No", then that organisation/person will be hidden from general searches, unless you select to search both active and inactive. They can be made available (active) again.
- They will no longer appear in any search results for any organisation/person type.
- They will no longer be available for linking to any other organisation/person on the system - whether that be through Relationships, Volunteer assignments, Support Worker activity, Handyperson jobs, or anything else.
When an organisation or person is made inactive, it applies to them across the whole system, no matter how many Types they have. If a Client is also a Volunteer, and a user makes them inactive from the Client Details screen, the client will also stop appearing in searches unless you select to search for inactive people/orgs.
If a record has been made inactive this can easily be reversed.
Why the questions arise in the first place
Charitylog does not store details of people "under" projects. Instead, there is a pool of organisations and people. The orgs/people can engage with one or more Projects, which happens when an Action is recorded. At this point the org/person is linked to the Project, but is not moved into the Project as such.
The most common cause of errors with the "Active" field is that users see it and assume that it only refers to their Project. In fact, it is something which affects the whole system, because it is an attribute of the org/person themselves, irrespective of whether they are linked to any Projects - and making someone "not Active" will cause them to disappear from the whole system.
What about reports?
When people are made inactive, their linked data still displays in reports. However, the filters for some reports appear with the option to include/exclude inactive people, and this box is usually defaulted to "exclude" - so making people inactive may remove them from reports that users are running without them realising.
When it is appropriate to make someone inactive
A person should only be made inactive if:
- you know that they are never going to re-engage with your organisation
- OR they are not going to engage for a period of time, and you want to take them out of system functionality.
Scenario 1 might occur when a client moves abroad, so you know they are not going to re-engage. However, even then they should only be made inactive if it is certain they will never engage with any part of the system ever again and you will never need their details. Scenario 1 could also apply to a staff member who leaves the organisation; you no longer want them to appear as available to have work assigned to them, so you would make them inactive. Scenario 2 might apply to a staff member who is going on maternity leave. You could make them inactive for the time that they are away, and then make them active again when they return.
If in any doubt, leave people Active. If you'd like to discuss a particular scenario with us, please feel free to give our customer support department a call.
Rob Kay - manual author (talk) 13:34, 9 December 2014 (GMT)
