A name is any name recorded for a person or prospect person. A number of different types of names can be recorded, such as ‘registered’, ‘preferred’, ‘alias’ and ‘stage name’. Name information is captured on registration, so once the registration process is complete a ‘registered’ name evidence record is created automatically. Only a first name is mandatory for registration of a prospect person and if later registered as a person, a last name must be captured as part of the person registration process. A person or prospect person can have multiple alias or stage names. However, a person can only ever have one ‘registered’ or ‘preferred’ name. A participant's ‘registered’ or ‘preferred’ name might change over time however, so users have the option to update these records as corrections or successions. For example, a client might contact the organization to say that he has mis-spelt his name on an online application for benefits. The user can find his name record and edit it as a correction. The same client may later contact the organization to say that he has changed his name and in this situation, the user can find the existing name record and edit it with effect from a particular date by entering an ‘effective date of change’.
Names records brokered from another case are processed automatically. In order to do this, the system checks the incoming record to determine if the name should be treated as a new record, modify an existing record or is a duplicate of a record already held. If the name record is deemed to be a duplicate (where all attributes on the record match an existing record held) no updates are made.
In order to determine if a new record is added or an existing record requires modification, the system checks if there is an existing record that is logically identical, by comparing the 'first name', 'last name' and 'type' attributes. If the attributes match, the system then updates the existing record held with the details on the incoming record (where the incoming record has the latest received date). If none of the attributes match, the system will add this as a new name record.