Participant and party types, and the ODS

In ShareDo, master data records are created for participant types. An example of a master data record would be an organisation's name, contact details, and the address of each branch. When we assign the organisation to a matter, they become a participant in that matter, and you need to select what of the organisation’s information is relevant to the matter. For example, which branch address will you use for the matter? In this example, the organisation is the participant type, and the branch addresses are a party type of that participant type. This article explains participant and party types and how they're stored and accessed in ShareDo.

Understand the operational data store

Whenever you add a person, organisation, team or user to the system, ShareDo stores these in its operational data store (ODS). With people, organisations, and teams separately being described as ODS Entities.

Think of the ODS as being a huge list containing all of the different parties that are or were involved in your cases. However, like any list, breaking it down into smaller sub-lists is useful. ShareDo lets you break it down by:

1.  Participant types – such as people, organisations, teams or users.
   2.  ODS or party types – these are user-defined tags or categories into which you can group your participant types.

What participant types are available?

You can see the participant types available in your solution by navigating to Launchpad > Open Modeller > Participant Types.

As of ShareDo release 7, the following types are available:

What are ODS or party types

ShareDo allows you to categorise your ODS entities further by ODS or party type. Access available party types by expanding a particular participant type node using the + icon.

These types introduce a flexible categorisation scheme for ODS entities that can be used to:

• Introduce fine-grained participant search, e.g. find me all solicitors or all recommended solicitors for a client.
• Target form builder/aspect definitions, e.g. I only want to show the Know Your Opponent form definition for ODS participants of type Solicitor.
• Introduce additional permissions around maintaining participants of a particular type, e.g. only people with the Update Client permission can amend people or organisations tagged as clients.
• Lock down a particular participant role, using role restrictions, so that it can only be fulfilled by a specific ODS tag.

ShareDo often refers to participant type sub-types as party types or ODS types/entities but to the specific sub-types of team and user participant types as team types and user types, respectively. However, there are specific settings applicable to these groups. Therefore, while ODS types is the generic term, we specifically refer to:

• Party types – for organisations and people.
• Team types – for teams.
• User types – for users.

Configuring party types

Party types represent a categorisation of people or organisations, with common examples being clients or suppliers.

Party types can be:

• Restricted by permission. This means you can prevent party types from being created or updated within the application.
• Associate with specific roles. This lets you specify that the client role can only be fulfilled by members of the client party type.

To configure party types, navigate to Launchpad > Open Modeller > Participant Types, and expand the participant type you want to configure the party type for. Then click the burger icon and click Edit for a specific type. You can also delete the party type.

To create a new party type, click the burger icon for the top-level participant type (for example, organisation or person) and click + type under Create new. The Edit Party Type blade opens. This image shows the Create new - Organisation type under the organisation participant.

When configuring a new type, consider the following settings on the Edit Party Type blade:

Setting	Notes
Details
System Name	This is a unique identifier for the party type.
Name	The name that is displayed to end users.
Description	Enter a meaningful description.
Active	Describes whether the party type is in use or not.
Display Settings
Icon	The views that show an icon use this.
Colour	The views that show a colour use this.
Search Settings
Add quick search link	Setting this On adds options to the participant menus on the Manage Participants blade and other places as a shortcut to adding ODS entities of this type.
Enable Search	Setting this to On allows users to use this type as a filter.
ODS Applicability
Person / Organisation Type	Specify whether this party type applies to organisations or people, or both.
Enable User Management
Manage users for this part type	Setting this On allows organisations tagged with this party type to have users assigned to them.
Permissions
Assign Permission	Specify a global permission that your users must have to assign ODS entities of this type to a work item.
Update	Specify a global permission that your users must have to update ODS entities of this type.
Role Restrictions
Restriction type	Specify the roles which must be fulfilled by this ODS type. You can specify whether:  This ODS type can only be used by these roles, and these roles alone; OR  Only entities of this type can populate these roles. In this case, this entity type can also populate other roles.