While phone numbers can be recorded for all participant types, person and prospect person phone numbers are maintained as evidence. A person or prospect person can have a number of different types of phone numbers and multiple instances of each type are also allowed. ‘From’ and ‘To’ dates are used to record the period during which a particular phone number is valid. Because phone numbers do not change over time, users must modify existing records as corrections. For example, a client might contact the organization to say he entered the wrong number on his online application. The user can find his phone number record and update it as a correction.
Phone number 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 phone number 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 all attributes except date fields. 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 phone number record.