Contact Types

Although there can be any number of Contact types defined in the system, there are 4 primary contact types in Houdini ESQ that will be used by DFEH:

a.    Complainant: an individual that has filed a complaint with DFEH.  This is also considered the primary client of the Matter/Case/Complaint. 

b.    Respondent: either an individual or a company.  Within the system and as part of the Contact record there is a “isCompany” checkbox indicating if the respondent to the complaint is a company.  Unchecked means it is an individual.

c.    Representative: typically a law firm or legal counsel for the respondent but it can be any other contact in the system.

d.    Witness: a individual present at (an occurrence) as a formal witness, spectator, bystander, etc.

When a new contact is added to the system, it must be assigned to one of the above types.  By default, all inquiries that come in from the web are assigned to the Complainant contact type.  

The above list of contact types are not concrete.  DFEH can add, remove or change the contact types at will. Also note that these contact types are primarily used for custom fields.

Please note:  Due to the nature of the Houdini ESQ database design and the fact that it is a normalized database, Demographic information related to a complainant such as race, gender and national origin are added as part of the physical contact record, they are not part of the Matter/Case/Complaint record.