Correspondents seek dates and parties, or do they?

February 25, 2008 11:18 PM

I need nicer prompts for certain data fields relating to correspondence sent and received

I have a database with fields for: direction of correspondence (inbound, outbound), type of correspondence (fax, letter, email), document date, date sent/received by us, internal party, intermediary and external party.

It's not quite like email messages, where there is a "sender" and "recipient" field. Due to search requirements, we always want our internal correspondent in the same field, and the same for the external correspondent. We often send the correspondence via one of our many offices or officials round the world, so we use an intermediary field.

Due to the languages spoken by our users, terms such as correspondent, party, etc. are somewhat ambiguous.

Similarly, the distinction between document date and the date we sent/received the document is a little lost on some of the key users.

Better suggestions please, hivemind!

posted by blue_wardrobe to computers & internet (7 comments total)

So you want names for seven fields?

1. direction of correspondence (inbound, outbound),
2. type of correspondence (fax, letter, email),
3. document date,
4. date sent/received by us,
5. date s/r by internal party,
6. date s/r by intermediary (our other offices involved along the way)
7. date s/r by external party

What is the document date? Is it the date the document was prepared/finalized/approved for distribution?
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:48 PM on February 25, 2008

[X] Was this document sent by your company? *[tickbox]

Type of Document [______v] (fax, letter, email) *[this should be a drop-down]

Date the Document was created [__/__/__]

Date the document was sent [__/__/__]

To [___________________]

From [___________________]

Document sent via [_______________________] (other recipients)

*Internal & external party can be calculated based on the initial tickbox and the from & to fields.
posted by seanyboy at 12:59 AM on February 26, 2008

@Lobstermitten: Your question is the right question. I'm looking for unambigous field names for items 4 through 7 as described below. Bear in mind, the field names will automatically appear on the screens, in reports, and as field names in our query parameter drop-downs.

The seven fields would be:
1. Direction of correspondence (inbound, outbound). This is easy.
2. Type of correspondence (fax, letter, email). This is easy, and yes, it's a dropdown.
3. Document date is the date printed on the fax, letter, email. This is easy.
4. Date sent/received by us:
- Here comes first problem: in a large global enterprise, the concept of "us" is confusing. Is "us" the local office, or "HQ", or what? So the use of "us" or the company name is not acceptable to the users.
- Similarly, the concept of "Date sent/received by us" is exactly what is needed, but is a very cumbersome field name / prompt. The prompt chosen will appear on the screen, and in the query tool, and report headers, etc. so it must be concise yet unambiguous.
5. Name, organization, address, etc. of "external party" or "external correspondent". Again, in a large global enterprise, "external" is ambiguous. To HQ, external might mean the branch offices, but to the branch offices, it might mean HQ. In reality, it needs to mean a customer, government agency, etc.
6. Name, organization, address, etc. of "intermediate party". Often blank, but often the details of some individual in a local office. To the local office, however, we want this to be clearly understood to be "them".
7. Name, organization, address, etc. of "the person who wrote this document or will take responsibility for dealing with this document".

@seanyboy: we can't calculate the internal and external party, because it is a business requirement that "our" party is always in the same field. Similarly, the field names you propose are too long, since they must appear in drop-downs and as column-headers in reports as well.

Hence my problem.
posted by blue_wardrobe at 2:02 AM on February 26, 2008

Is "us" the local office, or "HQ", or what? So the use of "us" or the company name is not acceptable to the users.

This, and the external version of the same question both need to be answered by the person(s) setting the search and/or business requirements. This isn't about descriptive fields, it's about having useful data afterwards. What do the people who need the data to be useful recommend?
posted by rhizome at 11:07 AM on February 26, 2008

@rhizome: good point, and this is the crux of the matter. The three business groups who have been thrown together to use this system use different combinations of the data:

Group 1: uses items 5 and 7.
Group 2: uses items 6 and 7.
Group 3: uses item 6 and "knows" item 5 based on who item 6 is.

They don't use the same vocabulary.
posted by blue_wardrobe at 8:09 PM on February 26, 2008

I think this would be a little easier if it were less abstract.

Imagine the name of your umbrella (biggest) organization is Omnicorp. Branches are named eg Omnicorp Branch #226, or are they named all different various things?

The most obvious solution for how to designate internal parties is to call them "within Omnicorp organization" or some variation. External would be "non-Omnicorp". Intermediate would be "intermediates within Omnicorp".

You say your fields are short. Okay, how many characters?
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:15 PM on February 26, 2008

@LobsterMitten:
1. the umbrella organization has a name which can abbreviate quite nicely to two letters. The business has forbidden its use in the field prompts.
2. Branches are named, for example: Omnicorp SA, Antwerp, Belgium. Usually the name is some version of Omnicorp. Sometimes, it's a totally different name, such as "Jones and Ribble Ltd, Barnstaple, United Kingdom". Sometimes both types occur within one country. However, most people in the organization would still think of them as "the local affiliate in country X".
3. The fields aren't short, but the prompts need to be limited to about 20 characters.
posted by blue_wardrobe at 3:07 AM on February 27, 2008