Affiliation

What It Is

An affiliation is a dated connection between one person and one organization, qualified by the kind of relationship. It says that a person works for, studies at, represents or otherwise relates to that body. The same person can have several connections at once, including different kinds of tie to the same organization, and can return later without erasing the earlier stay.

The affiliation belongs to the contact's record. It carries its organization, type, dates, title, notes, primary designation and role periods. Staff can inspect it from either the person's record or the organization's people list, but changes are saved with the person's information. This keeps the relationship and its responsibilities together.

In Rhythm 1.0, the primary organization, contact roles and organization history were separate parts of the contact shape. Affiliations bring them into one dated model. The question becomes which relationship was effective when, rather than which organization currently occupies a single field and which names were copied into history.

What It Is Not

An affiliation is not an organization record, a membership entitlement, or a contact-information link. It establishes the relationship through which a detail may be linked, but the address or phone row chooses the actual source. Marking a tie primary does not redirect every contact detail.

A contact role is a facet of affiliation rather than a separate Key Concept: its operational meaning is a responsibility held on a particular dated tie, with organization types governing allowed roles and coverage. The configurable role catalogue supports those uses; it is not a catalogue of security permissions or independent assignments detached from an organization.

How It Is Used

Coordinators record a new employer, preserve a previous employer as past, or add a concurrent board or school relationship. When adding a different primary connection, the editor asks whether the person left the previous organization. Staff should answer that relationship question rather than assume a change in preference means departure.

Choosing an existing tie as primary has a different purpose and does not ask the departure question. Changing the organization itself means ending one affiliation and adding another. This retains the meaning of the old dates and the information links that referred to that relationship.

Its Facets

Type and default links. Affiliation types describe why the person is connected. Their default mappings can supply empty contact address or phone purposes from organizational details. Changing those mappings does not rewrite existing people, and an explicit choice to apply none is meaningful.

Primary designation and title. One tie can identify the person's primary organization. It must already have started and remain open-ended. The contact's job title and primary tie's title are coordinated; historical affiliations retain their ending titles. Ending the primary does not select a replacement automatically.

Effective dates and capacity. Upcoming, current and past are determined in the workspace calendar, with the end day included. Periods of the same type to the same organization cannot overlap. The limit of 100 applies to current and upcoming affiliations, allowing ended history to remain without that cap.

Role periods. A role names a responsibility, and its period describes when it was held within the affiliation. The same role can recur in separate periods. Organization types constrain new or changed roles, while retained unchanged roles remain visible. Referenced roles cannot be deleted while holders or compliance rules still depend on them.

Automatic and notification roles. Configured automatic roles can be assigned on a new primary relationship or when an upcoming tie starts; first-contact roles have their own eligibility question. They do not restore a deliberately removed role. Organization notification choices use the same catalogue to select recipients, without making those roles security grants.

Departure and reconciliation. A departure closes a relationship; it is different from merely making another tie primary. Reconciliation handles date boundaries, pending default links and role coverage after calendar days pass. Its scheduled deployment switch defaults to disabled, so time-sensitive processing should not be assumed active everywhere.

How It Relates

The contact owns the affiliation; the organization supplies its other endpoint. Contact detail links use effective affiliations and can stop resolving when a tie ends without discarding the link's identity. Organization compliance uses dated role holders. Record history makes changes to ties and role periods inspectable within the person's revisions.

What It Could Become

Product needs to resolve differences between automatic-role assignment during saves and start-day reconciliation, especially for secondary affiliations. It could also decide whether ended links deserve a verification treatment comparable to removed sources. Imports may gain an explicit automatic-role option; that future workflow should preserve supplied relationship history rather than silently interpret every imported tie as a fresh join.