Each phone, address, and electronic address for a firm contact has one of the following location types:
- Business
- Business2
- Home (for person contacts only)
- Alternate Business
- Alternate Home (for person contacts only)
- Other
Phones and addresses stored with user contacts do not use these location types. For details, see How Do Phones and Addresses Work for User Contacts?
These location types appear in the InterAction Windows Client and are used to define the purpose of a phone or address. The InterAction Web Client uses the location types to build locations in the Web Client. See Locations in the Web Client.
These location types are provided by default. You can modify the names to meet your organization’s needs using the InterAction Administrator. You cannot add new location types.
When you enter or edit an address, you can assign it the same type as an existing address, and InterAction will automatically change the type for the existing address.
This section covers the following topics:
- Location Types Provided by InterAction
- How Do Phones and Addresses Work for User Contacts?
- Defining the Weighted Order for the Location Types
- Change the Name of a Location Type
- Why Is It a Bad Idea to Change the Meaning of Location Types?
Location Types Provided by InterAction
InterAction comes with the following default location types:
Location Types Provided by InterAction
| ID | Weighted Order | Default Name |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 100 | Business |
| 8 | 75 | Business2 |
| 3 | 65 | Alternate Business |
| 2 | 50 | Home |
| 4 | 45 | Alternate Home |
| 6 | 40 | Other |
You can modify the location types provided with InterAction, however you should not change the meaning. For more information, see Why is it a Bad Idea to Change the Meaning of Location Types?
Business
For people, this is typically information exclusive for each person. For example, the direct phone and email address for a person should be Business.
For a company, this is typically the main office or world-wide headquarters information.
A contact can have only one global Business phone, one global Business address, and one global Business electronic address - making these unique. A contact can also have folder-specific versions, but, with the exception of working lists, these are not recommended since they do not appear in the Web Client.
Business2
Business2 should only be used for the company phone on a person contact.
A contact can have only one global Business2 phone, one global Business2 address, and one global Business2 electronic address - making these unique. A contact can also have folder-specific versions, but, with the exception of working lists, these are not recommended since they do not appear in the Web Client.
Alternate Business
For people, this type can be used for additional business contact information for the person. For example, if the person works in multiple offices they may have several alternate business phones or addresses, which are considered non-unique.
For companies, this type should be used for additional branch or secondary office information. Because a large company can have many branch offices, you may have several alternate business phones and addresses.
A contact can have an unlimited number of phones, addresses, and electronic addresses of type Alternate Business.
Home
This type only applies to people and should be used for all home information.
A contact can have only one global Home phone, one global Home address, and one global Home electronic address - making these unique. A contact can also have folder-specific versions, but, with the exception of working lists, these are not recommended since they do not appear in the Web Client.
Alternate Home
This type only applies to people and can be used for additional home information. For example, a person may have multiple phone lines or multiple homes, which are considered non-unique.
A contact can have an unlimited number of phones, addresses, and electronic addresses of type Alternate Home.
Other
This type is provided for backward compatibility with previous versions of InterAction. A contact can have an unlimited number of global phones, addresses, and electronic addresses of type Other, which are considered non-unique. However, you should not create phones or addresses of type Other.
How Do Phones and Addresses Work for User Contacts?
A user contact can also store phones and addresses. These do not use the firm location types. Instead, a user contact has a fixed set of fields for these items.
User contact phone fields:
- Direct
- Company
- Business Fax
- Mobile
- Pager
- Home
- Home Fax
- Other
- Assistant's Phone
User contact email address fields:
- Business Email
- Web Site
- Home Email
- Other Email
User contact address fields:
- Business
- Home
- Other
Making changes to the firm location types has no effect on phones and addresses for user contacts.
Defining the Weighted Order for the Location Types
The weighted order defines the order when sorting the phones or addresses. In most cases, sorting phones and electronic addresses by location type alphabetically would not make sense.
Therefore, you can define a “custom” order by defining a number between one and 100 for each location type. Higher numbers are considered more important. This allows you to define a more logical order - for instance, it makes more sense for phones of type “Business” and “Business2” to appear first in the list.
In InterAction Windows Client, the user can choose the column to sort by in the Summary pane and Phones and Addresses view. However, this is not used for displaying phones and addresses in the InterAction Web Client.
Weighted order for location types is also used to determine which items appear in the columns when displaying a list of contacts in a grid.
Follow these steps to change the weighted order for location types:
- Log on to InterAction Administrator.
- From the main window entity list, double-click Location Type.
- Select the Location Type to edit from the list and choose Edit.
- Choose the Edit button to open the Edit Location dialog box.
- Edit the Weighted Order fields as needed. You can assign the type any whole number between 1 and 100.
- Higher numbers will sort first in the list in the Web Client.
- Windows Client users can sort the items in either ascending or descending order.
- Choose the OK button. Choose the Close button to close the Manage Location Type dialog box.
Change the Name of a Location Type
- Log on to InterAction Administrator.
- From the main window entity list, double-click Location Type.
- Select the Location Type to edit from the list and choose Edit.
- Choose the Edit button to open the Edit Location dialog box.
- Edit the Name field as needed. Remember, do not change the meaning of the type! See Why is it a Bad Idea to Change the Meaning of Location Types? for details.
- Choose the OK button. Choose the Close button to close the Manage Location Type dialog box.
Why is it a Bad Idea to Change the Meaning of Location Types?
Location types use a fixed set of values in which the Type ID and “purpose” (i.e., meaning or definition) of the type cannot be changed.
When editing the names for types, you can edit the name that the user sees, but changing the meaning of the type associated with a particular Type ID could lead to incorrect processing.
For example, the Association Cleanup processing relies on the following Location types when comparing a person’s address to the associated company address:
- Type ID 1 - Business
- Type ID 3 - Alternate Business
- Type ID 8 - Business 2
To save processing time, InterAction compares each person’s “Business” (Type ID 1), “Alternate Business” (Type ID 3), or “Business 2” (Type ID 8) addresses for the associated company to determine if the address really should belong with the company.
If you change the name for ID 1 (Business) to “Home,” users will assign this type to home addresses. When running Association Cleanup, InterAction will still use addresses with Type ID 1 for the location type - therefore comparing home addresses to company addresses.
The general rule to remember is to edit the name as needed, but never change the purpose of a type. In the example above, an acceptable change to the “Business” type would be something like “Office” because this does not radically change its purpose.
Finally, it is generally not a good idea to significantly change types once InterAction has been rolled out. Once users are accustomed to using particular types when creating and editing data, sudden changes may require retraining and more support.
What Happens if I Want to Create a New Business Phone Number, but Already Have One Set?
When you use Windows Client to enter a new phone, address, or electronic address of a type that already exists for that contact, InterAction will enter the new information and the type you assigned it. InterAction automatically assigns the original information to a different type.
Other features also affect the location types. For example, when you Merge Phones or Addresses, the “higher” location type is kept, even if that item is not the “winner” in the merge.