Handling unknown participants
As part of your case data capture journey, it is common that you may not have all of the information required at the point of entry. An example is that a participant of a particular type isn’t known.
Often case handlers will create an unknown participant, and very soon, you will most likely have many of those within the system.
The problem of unknown ODS entities is made worse when they are referenced in multiple cases and eventually updated to be the real person or organisation. When this unknown person or organisation is updated, many cases suddenly have actual but incorrect data.
This guide presents you with two options for handling these circumstances.
Option 1 – relax your mandatory data capture
The simplest way to avoid the capture of unknown participants is to relax your data capture rules by changing the participant role to Recommended or Optional. With this change in place, your case handlers are not required to enter this information and should not seek to circumvent it by using unknown ODS entities.
You could then configure data quality rules or phase guards to enforce the mandatory presence and capture of this data later in the process (see the article Data Quality Rules and Guards).
Option 2 – Configure an Unknown party type and lock down the ability to edit or create them.
Your second option is to create an Unknown party type and configure it so it can’t be edited. By locking its editing down, you can prevent an update to an unknown person used on multiple cases, which will also reflect on those cases. To configure party types, perform the following configuration steps:
Step 1: Configure the Unknown party type
Use the information in the article Understanding Participant Types to create an Unknown party type.
Take note of the following settings:
| Setting | Notes |
|---|---|
| Add quick search | We typically set this to Off since the Unknown party type does not merit an additional menu option. |
| Enable Search | We typically set this to Off since users do not need to search for Unknown party types explicitly. |
| ODS Applicability | We typically recommend you create a single Unknown party type that can be used for both people and organisations. |
| Assign Permissions | Since you want your case handlers to be able to assign Unknown party types, leave this blank. |
| Update Permissions | Configure permission such as Admin access to restrict case handlers from updating the Unknown party. |
Step 2: Assign the party type to unknown people or organisations.
- As an administrator (or someone with the update permission you specified above), go to the Operational Data Store menu options in Admin.
- Find and edit the relevant unknown people and organisations.
- Apply the Party type of Unknown.
Step 3: Test it.
By logging in (or impersonating) a user without Admin permissions (or the permission you specified) above, you should be able to add unknown people or organisations to your cases but be prevented from editing them.
