Maintaining Person Contact via Person Phone
Person phone is referenced extensively throughout the system. All system processes have been updated to determine if phone data and email data is being maintained on person contacts or being maintained on person phone and email. See Choosing to Use Person Contact or Person Phone for more information.
To keep person contacts records in sync with a person phone, you should consider which phone types should be stored as contacts, configure the person contact type corresponding to each phone type, and update the person contact type to reference the corresponding phone type. Many phone types may be associated with a single person contact type, but a single phone type may only be associated with one person contact type.
The base product provides a batch process C1-INPUS (Create Person Contact from Person Phone/Email) that creates a person contact for all person phone records whose phone type is associated with a person contact type. The batch process can also create person contact records for the email address on the person. You would run this process to create person contact records if you already have phone or email data for persons, and you wanted to start leveraging person contact as the repository for phone and email information. See the batch process description for more information.
There is a primary switch on person contact records; one person contact for each unique contact routing must be set as the primary contact. When the batch process creates person contacts from person phone data, the first person contact added for each unique contact routing is set as primary. This can be controlled to some extent by your implementation by associating phone types with person contact types sequentially and running the batch process multiple times. For example, you may prefer that a home phone be the primary over a cell phone if both exist. To ensure this happens, associate the home phone with a person contact type and run the batch process. Then associate the cell phone with a person contact type and run the batch process again. This will force all home phone records to be processed first. It is recommended that regardless of how many times the batch processes run, they are run back to back. This should be thought of as a conversion of data and should be treated as such.
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When a phone record is added, a corresponding person contact is added if one does not already exist.
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When a phone record is updated, corresponding updates are made to the person contact.
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When a phone record is deleted, the system tries to delete the corresponding person contact. All business rules for person contacts are enforced. If the person contact is associated with a contact preference, the person contact cannot be deleted, and in turn the phone record cannot be deleted.
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Person contacts associated with phone types cannot be deleted directly. The delete function is disabled.
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Contact information on person contacts associated with phone types cannot be updated directly. The contact information and extension are disabled.
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Person contacts whose person contact type is associated with a phone type cannot be added from the account contact information zone in the account portal. These need to be added through person phone.
There is no direct association between a person phone record and person contact (i.e. there are no foreign keys on either record pointing to the other). The system uses the association between phone type and person contact type and the specific phone number in order to find the associated person contact.
Your implementation may decide to use person contacts to store phone data and not associate them with phone types. Functionality related to the system use of person phone will not be available such as updating a phone number through an order.
If your implementation associates phone types with person contact types and wishes to remove this association, it is best to remove all phone types from all person contact types.