Households and establishments

The two record types that group people together, and how they differ from an individual.

Alongside individuals, a workspace keeps two other kinds of record. A Household groups people who live together. An Establishment is an organisation, a clinic, a school or a business you work with.

Households

A household record is deliberately small. It has a name, which is optional, a location, an address and notes. It carries no demographics, no contact details and no consent of its own, because those belong to the people in it.

CommonLynk gives every household its own reference code automatically when you save it, so you do not have to invent one. The list shows Code, Name, Location, Members, Head and Created.

Establishments

An establishment record is much fuller. As well as a type and a name, it holds a registration number, legal status, year established, sector, staff count, the number of individuals served, a director and a main contact, phone numbers, an email address, a website, a location and a status.

An establishment name can be entered in each of your active languages, because an organisation genuinely does have a name in more than one language. A household name is a single plain box, and a person’s name is stored in the script it was written in.

You manage the list of establishment types yourself, in Settings under Establishment Types. You can switch on the standard types CommonLynk provides, add your own, or both.

Adding members

Open a household or an establishment and you will find a members card with a search box. Start typing a name, an ID number or a phone number and matching individuals appear; choose one, give them a role and they are lynked. People already lynked are left out of the results so you cannot add anyone twice.

If the person is not registered yet, "Register New Individual" opens a short form that creates the person and lynks them in a single step, asking only for the few details your workspace requires.

Screenshot: a household page with its members card.

What these records cannot do yet

Attendance is recorded for individuals only. You cannot enrol a household or an establishment into an activity as a single unit today: enrol the people instead. Their household and establishment pages still show the activities their members took part in.