Data Structures

Data housed in MemberNova is stored under Entity or Record Types and as Entities. The following document details how entity types, entities and custom fields are configured and managed.

Note that records and entities are interchangeable terms to denote the core database row.

Related API Endpoints

Entity Types

Entity Types are different record types (i.e. tables) specific to the organization for which data is housed, such as members, non-members, companies, chapters, etc.

Definition

We use the Entity Type to let the system understand what this entity definition is being used for. Because all entities are dynamic, this meta field categorizes them wherever the system behavior depends on the nature of the entity and what it's used for.

  • Member entities - can have subscription/membership. Examples: Member, Company, Representative, Employee, Student, Prospect, Lead.

  • Person - are people who represent an individual. Example: Member, Prospect, Lead. Not all Persons are Members, and not all Members are Persons.

  • Organization entities - form part of the organization hierarchy of an account. Examples: Chapter, Region, Branch.

  • Object entities - used to create custom modules in the system. Examples: Grant Application, Evaluation, Survey, Job Posting.

Entity Type Categories

  • Person: Specifically used in: Entity Lookup, Member Lookup, Event Organizer Lookup, Groups, Email recipient groups

  • Member (Usually person with membership): Same as Person

  • Object (Regular object) No specific logic - can be anything

  • Organization (Organizations within the account - chapters, regions etc..)

  • Event Registration (Ability to setup event ticket pricing): Specifically used in: Event Tickets, Event Settings, Event Products

  • Product (Can purchase products - Ability to setup pricing): Specifically used in: Products

  • Subaccount (Introduced to support account entity lookup for isoc subscription filters): Specifically used in: Entity Lookup

  • Subscriber (Can subscribe): Specifically used in: Entity Lookup, Subscriptions

Entities

Data is stored and configured as entities in MemberNova.

Entity refers to the specific record or row containing the data. Entities can be related to one another in various ways. For example, relationships could be established through a reference field whereby a company representative is linked to a company record as the primary contact or a parent or a member (child) is linked to a chapter (parent). Relationships can be defined through:

  • References

  • Parent Relationship

  • Child Relationship

Specific information related to the entity such as event registrations, financial data, certifications are connected to the entity while core data such as the member profile is stored within the entity itself.

Field Types

For each account, a collection of custom fields are configured from the ground up per record type.

Supported types of fields:

  • Text

    • Drop downs and radio button lists (the same functionality, different UI)

    • Simple Editor vs. Rich Text Editor

  • Number

    • Number

    • Rating mode

    • Sequence

  • Decimal

    • Money

  • Image

  • File

  • Email

  • Date Time

    • Calendar

    • We save Date and time. Example: Membership starts/ends on 13 May 2019  at 12.00 am

  • Address

  • Reference

    • Connection between different entities through the reference field

  • Toggle

    • Checkbox - true/false

  • Multi Checkbox

    • TextArray, multi-checkbox

  • Tags

    • TagArray, multi-tags