Phone Numbers Cleanup

[Raccroc]

We live in a day and age that fewer and fewer people have home phone numbers and fewer still are using their work numbers outside business use; both favoring just giving out their cell numbers instead.

What I would like to see if the phone number sections changed to something along the lines of:

• Primary # --> [LOOKUP: Home|Cell|Work|

•  If Cell - Yes/No Radio or Yes Checkbox - Allow SMS
  

•  If Work - Show Ext. Text Box
  

Secondary & Tertiary would work the same way. If the Person is a Couple and "Cell" is selected, also show a "First Name" field so that you can differentiate between who's cell you are contacting within the couple.

Things like "Find Person" results would need to also be update to show Primary, Secondary, Tertiary columns instead of Home, Work, Cell and some sort of indicator in each field added to let you know what kind of phone you are contacting (e.g. C:, H:, W: or some sort of Cell, Home, and Work icons).

One more thing this would fix... On Online Forms, right now there is no way (that I can find) to make a phone number mandatory without risking the fact that they may not have that TYPE of phone. If you went this route, a Primary Number could be made mandatory, forcing the applicant to give you at least one number.

[bobintetley]

Thanks for the feedback. This seems unnecessarily complicated for little benefit as far as I can see. You're right that most people use cell phones these days, and there is an option to just turn off the home and work phone number fields if you don't need them.

What is the issue with online forms? You can label fields anything you want. You could label your cellphone field primary and make it mandatory so the person has to give you a number unless I'm missing something?

[Raccroc]

Not sure why asking for a number and then having them tell you what kind of phone it is seems complicated.

I did go back and looked at the Search Results Options and now see that I can add custom Additional Fields to that. Missed that one before, and that will help. Disabling the Work & Home numbers will also help, although it would be much cleaner if we could also rename "Cell" (e.g to "Main") or remove it entirely also (I don't mind doing the whole thing via custom additional fields).

The bit about SMS opt in is a bit of a throwback to when people were charged for SMS, granted, but I do run into some people, particularly seniors, who don't like or use SMS; some form of Opt-In for SMS is just a habitual courtesy.

A lot of folks who still have work phones have extensions, a lot of business numbers have extensions. As a real world example, we work with a lot of local area veterinarians and almost all of them have a Main # with a direct line extension we can use to get to the actual vet quickly and directly. You can capture this info in created fields; however, it won't show up in next to, or even near, the phone number fields in the Person's page (unless you go entirely custom Additional Fields).

Forms: You can label things how you want in the forms; however, you cannot change/alt the way it'd show up within the Persons profile. If you set a Primary# as mandatory, you have no way of knowing if that is really a cell, work, or home #; it will always get recorded to the same field regardless. So, for example, if we ask for "Primary" and always record it as "Cell" and they give us what is really a Home #, it is going to be labeled "Cell" in their profile. Not only is that inaccurate, it can also lead to the mistaken belief that that number can be texted.

[Raccroc]

Related Question: Is there any way to get auto-formatting logic on a Additional Field?

Disabling Work and Home and replacing with custom Additional Fields would work (be better if Cell could be wacked too); however, there isn't any option for auto-formatting numbers into the system's phone number standard (###) ###-#### like the current Work, Home, and Cell fields do. The system is capable of doing the auto-formatting, but I don't see any way to get a script to apply to the Additional Fields.

[bobintetley]

What makes it complicated is that it would mean changing the way those fields work and possibly the data structure for tens of thousands of existing ASM users. Ultimately, there's still a home and cell field, I'm not sure that asking for their "primary" number and then whether it is a home or cell number offers much benefit over asking for someone's home and cell numbers directly?

Extensions can be added in the work phone number field, eg: 123-123-1234 x 123, (although it will stop them autoformatting unless you tab out first and then add the extension).

Having a new additional field type of "phone number" that will do the formatting is a good idea, I'll add that to our dev list.

[bobintetley]

also, if you were to replace the built in phone number fields with additional fields, you would lose the ability to deduplicate people based on their cellphone number - it's one of the methods we use to detect that someone is the "same person" when they fill out an online form.

[Raccroc]

Thanks for the replies and I very much appreciate the issues involved with changing existing ASM users. I wanted to put this out there more as a wish list (an ASM4 roadmap item perhaps?) and to see about finding viable workaround suggestions.

My two biggest issues with the way it is by default:

• I cannot require that a Phone # be mandatory without specifying a specific type (e.g. requiring Cell be mandatory even though a know some folks don't have cells makes my head feel fluffy). A generic mandatory "primary phone" filed with a selectable type solves that issue.
• You intermingle people and businesses into the same Person page (choosing Individual or Organizations). Businesses typically don't have work, home, or cell numbers and if you call a Work # or Cell #, you are typically calling a person at their place of business, not the business entity itself. Businesses have Main Numbers (and sometimes other things like unpublished B2B numbers, direct dept numbers, priority hotlines, and such... but as general rule...).

In case anyone happens to be wondering, here is what we've decided on:

• Use existing "Cell" field and ask for it on our forms (not mandatory).
• Add "Alternative #" as a secondary phone field (also not mandatory)
• Add "Alt Type" Lookup with choices of Main, Cell, Home, Work, and Other
• Add "Alt Notes" Text with instructions to add Work Ext, Spouse's Cell, etc.
• In forms, we just hide Alt Type and Alt Notes unless Alt # is filled out.
• Customized the Find Person Results page to show columns Cell / Alt Type / Alt #, which makes it very easy to see and sort things like business's main numbers.

Issues:

• No auto formatting on Alt #
• No mandatory number on forms (going to have to rely on a warning message box to indicate a valid number must be provided)
• Email Address is between Cell # and Alt # on Person page.

Deduplication is less of an issue for us, as we are a in-home foster based rescue and don't get near the number of applications that shelters do. I can see certainly see how that could become an issue for them.

Those are all very minor issues, although I would love it if you do create a "phone number" field that will do the formatting and appreciate that you send it to your dev.