Company Purpose and User Purpose broadly define different categories of companies and users and determine how they are managed in Kavi Members. Depending on site configuration, your organization may have just two Company Purposes, or it may have as many as four. You can see which purposes are in use on your site by visiting the Company Types and User Types tools in the Super Admin Area. If you are not familiar with the default purposes, see the Purpose Concepts document.

Since every user belongs to a company, there is some relationship between User Purposes and Company Purposes. The User Purposes assigned to users must be compatible with the Company Purpose assigned to their company. For example, users who belong to a Staff Company must be assigned the 'Staff Person' User Purpose. For a complete list, see the Appendix document Company and User Purpose Compatibility.

Kavi Members enforces rules based on purpose, particularly regarding the signup process and the assignment of types. Returning to the example of staff, Staff Companies aren't listed on signup forms, which prevents users from adding themselves as staff through online signup forms. On the other hand, users who belong to Member Companies can signup as Company Representatives through online forms.

As users are added to the database they are automatically assigned a Contact Type (and sometimes a User Type) that may be specific to their purpose. The data fields collected for a user or company also vary depending on the purpose. So the data in a Staff Person account may look quite different from the data in a Company Representative account. When changing a user or company from one purpose to another, types assigned for the old purpose must be stripped and new types assigned, so user access privileges change. The new purpose may require data fields that weren't collected for the old purpose. If membership is enabled, change of purpose could make a user or company ineligible for membership.

There are three tools that Super Admins can use to change purposes.

These tables show what kinds of purpose changes are supported in the Change a Company's Purpose, Change a User's Purpose and Upload Data tools.

These tables show what kinds of purpose changes are supported in the Change a User's Purpose and Upload Data tools.

Upload Data supports a limited set of purpose changes, as documented in the following table. The basic process is outlined as long as it takes no more than two steps to complete. Changes that require more than two steps should be performed through Change a Company Purpose and Change a User Purpose.