Entity roles

To include somebody as member of an entity, they must be given a role in that entity. Only those with the Max permission level for persons (such as Super Users) can assign roles, so any other users who notice that their membership information is incorrect or missing should contact the relevant entity. There is a fixed set of roles, making it easy to identify, for example all Trials Search Co-ordinators - providing their roles have been assigned correctly.

Archie does not allow person records without any link to an entity, so a person must have at least one role, but there is no upper limit to the number of roles a person can have.

Active roles

Each Entity role has an Active attribute, which by default is set to Active. When a person is no longer is active in a role, the role should typically be removed (or if the person has no other roles, the person should typically be deleted). But occasionally the role needs to be retained in Archie, for example if an Author on a currently published review is no longer is contributing to a CRG but has other roles within the Collaboration.

If you need to mark a role as inactive for a person who has your entity as Primary Entity and also active roles with other Cochrane entities, you should change the person's Primary Entity before doing this.

If all roles of a person are marked as inactive, the person's overall status will change to inactive.

Role vs. position

Experience has shown that some users can find the terms 'role' and 'position' a little confusing.

Basically, the two are fully independent, but they may in some cases overlap. Roles are what we use to signify the structural relationships within the Collaboration (e.g., Trials Search Co-ordinator, Author, Handsearcher). Position is an optional field in a person’s address that can be used to signify their role in relation to that workplace (e.g. Researcher, Senior registrar, TSC, ME - but probably never Author). This may in some cases, such as Managing Editor, overlap with their Cochrane role.