Connections can be used for a wide variety of things - each organisation will have different ways to use connections, for example:
Employment.
Defining Family Connections.
Noting the internal Fundraising Manager.
Networking.
Trustees.
etc.
Connections can be:
Singular, for example Friend.
Reciprocal, for example Employed by / Employee of.
Things to Consider when adding a Connection
To ensure that your organisations connection's structure works and is easily reportable, the following are things to consider:
Keep it top level.
The details section in the connection can be used for the more granular aspects.
Connections should be unique.
Do not create duplicate connections e.g Father/Son and Father/Daughter as this will result in confused and incorrect connections.
If a duplicate Connection is required, then lowercasing can be use, for example, where Son is duplicated: Father/Son and Mother/son.
Below are some example Connections:
Connection Type | Description | Reciprocal Description | Details section when adding the connection |
Knows | knows |
|
|
Connected | connected to |
|
|
Work | works for | employs |
|
Trust | Trustee at | has as a Trustee |
|
Sponsor | benefactor | beneficiary |
|
Education | educated at | has as a student |
|
Member | member of | has as a member |
|
Family | related to |
|
|
Household | household |
|
|
Sibling | sibling to |
|
|
Parent | parent | child of | daughter or son |
Grandparent | grandparent | grandchild of | granddaughter or grandson |
Spouce | spouce to |
|
|
Friend | friend to |
|
|
Spouce (alt) | husband to | wife of |
|
Owner | owner of |
|
|
Create a new Connection Type
Navigate to Settings, then click Configuration.
Select Connection Types.
Click on the plus icon to the right of the screen.
A new item box will appear, fill in your description, this is your main connection name.
The Active toggle will be automatically set to Yes, but if you do not want it to be seen yet you can set this to No and then toggle it back on at a later date.
If you are creating a reciprocal connection, the secondary element will be added to the Reciprocal Description.
For example, if you had created the main connection description as 'Employs', the reciprocal could be: 'Employee of' or 'Employed by'.
How does this work from a Constituent Profile?
The Knowledge Base article Connections covers how to add connections to a Profile. Below is a quick illustration of the appearance.
A Connection need only be added once for it to be viewable from each of the connected profiles.
Using the above example, of a reciprocal connection Employs and Employed by, adding the connection can be done as follows:
From the organisation profile - the connection would be added set as:
ABC Organisation’s connection to this constituent = Employs
This will then display on the organisational profile as
The view from the individual constituent’s profile will be displayed as:
If you were adding the connection form the individual’s profile instead of from the organisation’s profile - the connection would be added set as:
Individual’s connection to this constituent = Employed by