Understanding the Contact Structure and Logic

Contacts & Students

There are really only two types of "people" in the system -- a student and a contact. All students come from the students table and all contacts are loaded into the contacts table.

The Household

A household is a collection of connected "people." The household is typically connected to a dwelling, but it is not required to be connected to a dwelling. One example of a household without a dwelling is an emergency contact connected to a student. These two "people" are placed into a household together, but there is no address unless it was provided. The household is what creates the student relationship to a contact.

One student is typically a part of more than one household. A simple contact situation where Mom, Dad, Student 1, and Student 2 all live together will create one household. Adding a couple of emergency contacts will then add 2 additional households. This will yield 3 households for a student in a very simple setup.

In a more complex situation where parents may not live together, each group of "people" that are connected will create a different household. In complex situations, students can have anywhere from 5 to 10 households.

Dwellings

A dwelling is an address. That is all it is...just an address where someone can reside. The idea behind dwellings is to simply ensure that addresses are not duplicated in the system. A dwelling is a complete address. That means that 123 Main St. Apt. 1 is a separate dwelling from 123 Main St. Apt. 2.

The "Student Address"

The student address is inferred via the household that is listed as the primary residence. Most students will "inherit" their correct address from their primary data. Custom reporting meta-data has been created to generate one address per student based on their contact structures. This is why a student address does not exist in Illuminate. It is usually rare that a student would have an address with no contacts.

The "Self Contact"

Generally, the self-contact should not be necessary at all. The self-contact should only serve as a tool to create a student address that is different from any of the student's contacts. For students who do not have contacts or for students who do not reside with any parents or guardians, the student should be provided as their own primary contact with the resides with flag set with contact type of "self."

Wondering what makes a contact primary or secondary in Illuminate? Here is your answer:

Primary:

• A primary contact is from student's primary household AND resides with is flagged as true.
• 
The phone number listed as primary for that contact will be included as primary contact phone.
• 
Primary address is from primary dwelling associated with that household, and current date falls within move in/move out dates.
• 
Mailing address is from dwelling associated with the primary household with mailing address flag set to true.


Secondary:

• 
This includes the primary contacts at all the student's households where resides with is flagged as true.
• 
This includes primary phone number for each contact.
• 
Primary address is from primary dwelling associated with that household, and current date falls within move in/move out dates.
• 
Mailing address is from dwelling associated with the primary household with mailing address flag set to true.

Note: When using contacts in Custom Reports users must choose either the Advanced or Basic contact category. Do not mix.

The reason the Basic contacts were created was to apply logic to the data to make running Contact Custom Reports easier. In addition to the logic outlined below, the 5 address fields used in Advanced (address 1, address 2, city, state, zip) contacts were merged into two.