Deciding whether to create a subtype

Plan carefully before manipulating your contact hierarchy. A new subtype inherits the attributes and matching behavior of its supertype. Create a new subtype only if you need to treat one set of contacts differently from another. As much as possible, limit the number of subtypes you need to represent your contacts.

If you have ClaimCenter installed, consider using vendor services rather than creating new vendor contact subtypes.

Another alternative is to create your own tags and apply them to contacts.

The main reason to limit creation of new subtypes is that the more you specialize the subtype hierarchy, the more restrictive and the less flexible your model becomes. For example, there are subtypes for AutoRepairShop and AutoTowingAgcy. If you work with an auto repair shop that also does towing, you cannot create a single contact that does both. However, you can add a service for Towing to an auto repair shop contact.

If a contact has different roles or skill sets, you can use one subtype and add contact tags or a specialty array to represent those skills and specialties.

Additionally, each time you create a new subtype, you must modify PCF files to support both creating the subtype and searching for it. You might also need to make supporting modifications to the screens that reference contacts.

After making any data model modification, you must refresh the application and possibly the web services as well.