While address information can be recorded for all participant types, person and prospect person address information is maintained as evidence. The address captured during registration is recorded as a private address. A number of different types of address can be recorded for a person or prospect person, such as ‘private’ and ‘rented’, and multiple instances of each type are also allowed. ‘From’ and ‘To’ dates are used to record the period during which a person or prospect person resided at a particular address, in other words the period during which the evidence is effective.
The details of an address do not change over time as an address is static. This means that while an individual might leave a particular address, the details of that address do not change. For this reason, when maintaining address information in the system, users must either create new records or correct existing records. Successions, which are changes with effect from a particular date, therefore are not allowed in the case of address evidence.
For example, a client might contact the organization to say he has moved from one private address to another. In this situation, the user would enter a ‘To’ date on the existing address record to indicate the date on which the client moved out of the old address, and would create a new record with a ‘From’ date set to the date on which the client moved into the new address.The same client might later contact the organization to say he is not receiving mail to his new private address. The user would then view the newly recorded address, verify that it is incorrect and edit and correct the details.
Address records brokered from another case are processed automatically. In order to do this, the system checks the incoming record to determine if the address should be treated as a new address, modify an existing address or is a duplicate of an address already held. If the address is deemed to be a duplicate (where all attributes on the record match an existing address record held) no updates are made. In order to determine if a new record is added or an existing record requires modification, the system first checks if there is an existing record that is logically identical. Logically identical means that a number of attributes match the incoming record - in this case this would include all address attributes except dates such as 'From Date' and 'To Date'. 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 address.