Maintaining the Values
A profile field is only useful while its value is true.
Where to find it
Architect Panel → Configuration:
- Custom User Information Fields — the fields
Architect Panel → Activity:
- Activity Log — changes to profile values
Stale data is worse than none
Because it is trusted. A department field last updated three years ago will be used to route work, build a distribution list or decide access — and it is wrong, silently, in a way an empty field would not be.
An empty field prompts somebody to ask. A wrong one does not.
Decide who maintains each field
- User-maintained — preferences, contact details, anything they know best.
- Administrator-maintained — department, role, internal identifiers, anything with consequences.
Use field security to enforce that rather than relying on convention. A field users can edit that drives access is a field users can grant themselves things with.
Attach updates to events
The only reliable way to keep profile data current. A department field is updated when somebody moves, because updating it is part of the move — not because somebody periodically audits profiles.
If a field has no event that updates it, it will drift.
Never let a profile field drive access
Access comes from groups. A profile field saying "manager" is a description, and if anything is granting permissions from it you have a permission model nobody can review — and one that may be user-editable.
Changes are audited
Profile edits are recorded with before-and-after like any other change, so "who changed my department" is answerable. Worth knowing for fields that matter.
Bulk updates
A reorganisation means many profiles changing at once. Plan for that — doing it record by record is slow and error-prone — and check the result rather than assuming the update did what you intended.
Review what is actually used
Periodically look at whether each field is populated and whether anything reads it. Fields that are empty for most people, or that nothing consumes, should go — they are unmaintained personal data.
Worked example
An organisation makes department and job title administrator-maintained and part of the internal-move checklist, and notification preferences user-maintained. A review found one field populated for eleven people out of four hundred and read by nothing — it was removed.
Recommendations
- Attach updates to events, not to audits.
- Enforce who maintains what with field security.
- Never drive access from a profile field.
- Remove fields nothing reads.