Adam,

Presently, our system treats contacts as contacts and candidates as candidates. We have plans to link them together at some point but for now you'll need to create a separate candidate record for that person.

A lot of debate and by that I mean days and days of discussions took place at the beginning of CATS design. I wanted a clean user interface and a clean database model. The only way it was possible was to keep the candidate and contact as separate entities. They are two completely, and I mean completely different roles in real life and as actors in the system.

I must confess also that keeping them separate made the initial implementation of CATS user-interface and the underlying architecture simple, so I made the choice to go this route. Now I do agree that its not an ideal situation, and I wish in retrospect that we could have come up with something more elegant. We just didn't know how!

I think the concern regarding a person going back and forth between a candidate and contact is a valid one and deserves to be reviewed again. I don't know if there's an easy solution to the problem. We implemented the Candidate<->Contact record linking capability a couple of years ago based on similar requests from customers.

We should look in to the issue again to see if this could be further improved..Please keep in mind that this is an incredibly complex issue, behind the scenes so don't expect anything even close to perfection, if we come up with any improvements.

Asim

Our solution for the problem has been proposed but is waiting to be implemented. It includes:

1) Candidate and contact are still saved separately; however, a candidate can be made into a contact and vice versa with the click of a button or en masse, thus creating a "linked record".

2) When viewing a candidate, it appears as it does now. Candidates are for the hiring role, so the list of jobs and activities regarding hiring are shown; however, because the candidate is a "linked record" tabs appear across the top of the page titled:

i) Candidate (greyed out as you're already viewing it)
ii) Contact
iii) Merged

3) If you click the "Contact" tab, you view the contact record with the tabs just like above, except contact is greyed out.

4) If you click the "Merged" tab, you view a special merged record. This record shows all the data from both candidate AND contact merged into one. Custom fields for both are shown. The two first name (and other shared) fields are combined into one. Activities are combined into a single section. Attachments are also combined. Job orders are combined, but each job order lists the role of whether the person is a contact or applicant for the job. If applicant, the status appears like on the candidates page.

5) When editing any of the three tabs, changing fields that the other has in common is automatically synced. So if a person moves, you can update the address in the candidate, contact or merge record and it will be saved to all three places.

6) The merge record is sticky, so if you prefer viewing the "Merge" tab when looking at linked records, it will remember this and show you only this version going forward, until you change it.

In my opinion, this is the best of both worlds. It saves both records to comply with our internal procedures and separates the business logic; but it gives those who prefer a single "person" record the flexibility to completely remove any visibility of the separation and instead view a single, consolidated record.

This is now available.

1) Click on the "Settings" tab.
2) Click on "Administration" (blue bar).
3) Click on "General Configuration".
4) Enable the "Merge" feature (about 4 down).

Now, when viewing a candidate or contact record, you'll have the option to merge that record into it's pair. It will try to find a duplicate first -- if it cannot, it will add a new record. Once there's a merge, you can view and edit a "Merged" record which includes all the fields, extra fields, attachments, activities, jobs, etc. from both records merged into one page.