All communications relate to a participant or a case. The place a communication is created from determines whether that communication is related to a participant or a case. Communications created within a case automatically relate to that case. This includes communications created from a case participant's list of communications, a case member's list of communications, or from the communication list for the case itself. Communications created from a participant's list of communications relate to that participant.
One of the main differences between case and participant communications is determining on which lists a communication will appear.
When a participant communication is created, it will only appear on that participant's list of communications, even if the participant the communication relates to is not the correspondent. For example, if an email is sent to a person's employer, the email communication will only appear on the person's list of communications and not on the employer's list of communications.
When a case communication is created, it will appear on the case's list of communications and on the correspondent's two lists of communications: the first, the list of communications for the case participant, and the other, the list of communications for the participant outside the case. This is to facilitate searching for case communications outside the case. For example, a person receives a case communication and calls the organization about it. This person would not normally have any other information about the case. In this scenario, the user can search for the person and look at the person's communication list. The user can then locate the relevant case communication as he or she is the correspondent. If case communications were only displayed within the case, this would not be possible.