What happens when I archive a contact or child?

The Archived section of the Address Book and Children modules allows you to temporarily retain key details about people who are no longer actively involved in your organisation. For example, you could keep someone's full or partial contact details where there is a lawful basis to maintain a historical record of their involvement. However, where there is no lawful basis, you may be required to delete their data rather than archive them.

What happens when you archive a contact or child?

When you archive a contact in the Address Book, the following changes are made to their record:

Address Book module

• The contact's status is changed from 'active' to 'archived'; it can be reinstated again if necessary.
• Access to My ChurchSuite is disabled; all contact details are set to hidden in the "Privacy settings" section.
• All fixed tags persist on the archived contact's profile but only active contacts will show when viewing Tags. Fixed tags. Fixed tags, therefore, persist if an archived contact is later reinstated as active.
• Key Dates, Notes, Custom Fields, communication logs, historic flow tracking, linked form responses and change logs are retained.
• The contact is removed from any active Flows they were being processed through.
• The contact will not appear in the results of any reports.
• Relational links to spouse/partner are retained and the archived contact will show "At this Address" in strikethrough when viewing the profiles of other household members.
• Communication Options remain unchanged, although the archived contact will not be included in any recipient list when sending communications nor be visible in My ChurchSuite. Any unsent, previously scheduled emails will continue to be sent - they have already been submitted to the queue pending release at the due date/time.
• Links to any ChurchSuite User account are severed but the user account is retained and remains active until set inactive or deleted.
• Pending status form invites are deleted but previously received form responses are retained.

Children module

• Children remain linked to the archived parent/carer contact.

Attendance module

• Contact will no longer appear in the contact list when adding service attendance data.
• Past attendance history will be retained.

Calendar module

• Contact will be removed from all future events where they have signed up for a free ticket. All historic event sign-ups are retained against the events and remain linked to the archived contact.
• If the event is in the future and the ticket is paid for, the sign-up record and payment will be retained and linked to the archived contact.
• Past event sign-up history for free and paid-for tickets will be retained against the event and the contact.
• Past invites and event check-in attendance history will be retained.
• The contact is removed from all instances of being an event overseer.

Small Groups module

• Contact is removed from all groups (and any small group roles held).
• Historic group attendance data for the contact is retained across all groups, regardless of whether the group is past or active.
• A "Left Group" Key Date is recorded against the contact before it is archived.

Rotas module

• Contact is removed from any future dates where they are due to be serving on a rota.
• Contact is removed from any ministries they are a member of.
• The contact is removed from all instances of being a ministry overseer.
• Past dates where the contact has served on a rota are retained.
• Contact is removed from historic rota roles held.
• A "Left Ministry" Key Date is recorded against the contact before it is archived.

Giving module

• The giver is changed from being linked to a contact to being an unlinked ("non-member") giver.
• Name, address and email details are copied over from the contact who has been archived.

Booking module

• The contact is unlinked from a linked booking customer profile and becomes a "Not in the Address Book" customer profile that continues to be maintained against all past and future bookings.
• The contact is removed from all instances of being a booking "Type" or "Resource" overseer.
• Payment history for booking charges paid by the archived contact remains intact.

My ChurchSuite

• Access to My ChurchSuite is revoked but their password is not deleted. If they are reinstated and set active, they will be able to resume logging in with their original password.
• The archived contact ceases to appear in "Search for others".

How to archive a contact or child

Users can archive contacts and children individually or in batches in several places within the Address Book and Children modules. The examples below demonstrate this within the Address Book but the methods are broadly similar in the Children module.

1. From the Contacts list in the Address Book, select Archive from the contact Actions:

2. From a contact's Profile, click More and select Archive:

3. You can bulk archive multiple selected contacts using the batch Archive actions on the Contacts list. As you tick one or more contacts in the list, the Actions menu is revealed. Select Archive from the batch actions list. Note that the Contacts list is paginated. Batch actions are performed for the page being viewed and may, therefore, need to be performed several times across multiple pages. You can use the Advanced Search to filter the list further, reducing the number of pages and, therefore, the number of times a batch action is run.

When archiving an individual contact, you can also optionally archive linked family members in the same process.

Viewing archived contacts and children

Within the Contacts and Children sections of the respective modules, you can switch between viewing Active and Archived contacts. Helpfully, you can easily view Recently archived contacts by selecting the relevant option from the Preset list:

This will automatically switch to view Archived contacts or children and will select the appropriate column heading - Date Archived:

Alternatively, you can switch to view Archived contacts or children and use the Advanced Search to filter the list to see those archived within a range of dates and also by Key Date (perhaps to filter those who have "Left the church" or "Deceased", where these life events have been recorded as key dates), and choose to show Optional Columns for Date Archived.

The batch Download CSV action can be used to export details of one or more selected archived contacts in the list.

Note: Archived contacts no longer show in reports or search results.

Archived contacts continue to show in the People widget on a contact's profile, shown in strikethrough.

Reinstating archived contacts and children

While viewing the archived Contacts list in the Address Book, you can reactivate an archived contact by selecting Set as active from the contact Actions:

...or click Set as active from an archived contact's Profile page: