Party Contact Points

The prm_party_contact_points view stores the ways a party can be reached — phone numbers, email addresses, and URLs. Rather than having separate fields for each contact type, the PRM model uses a single flexible structure that supports multiple contact methods per party.

Contact point types

Each contact point has a type that determines how it is interpreted:

Type	Purpose	Example
Phone	A telephone number in E.164 format	+64211234567
Email	An email address	contact@acme.example.com
URL	A web address	https://www.acme.example.com

What a contact point record contains

• party_id — the party this contact method belongs to
• Contact type — phone, email, or URL
• Contact value — the actual phone number, email address, or URL
• Use code — describes the purpose (e.g. work, personal, billing, support)
• Standard columns — active flag, start/end dates, audit fields

Phone number handling

Phone numbers are stored in E.164 international format (e.g. +64211234567). This standardised format removes ambiguity around country codes and local formatting, and makes it possible to compare and deduplicate phone numbers reliably.

Deduplication

The system prevents the same contact value from being stored multiple times for the same party. This ensures data quality and prevents confusion when, for example, the same email address is added twice with different use codes.

Multiple contact points per party

A party can have any number of contact points. A typical organisation might have:

• A main phone number (use code: main)
• A support email address (use code: support)
• A billing email address (use code: billing)
• A website URL (use code: website)

Each of these is a separate contact point row, all linked to the same party.

Lifecycle

Contact points carry start and end dates, allowing time-bounded contact information. A temporary support hotline, for example, can have an end date that matches the campaign period. The active flag provides soft-delete capability without losing the historical record.