Best practice for recording past addresses?

[jakecivi]

Is there a best practice for recording past addresses or address history? I could imagine manually changing the address type to a "past" type, but that allows for only one and is manual. Otherwise, maybe this belongs in developer discussion. Thanks.

[jakecivi]

It would be even better if there were a way to keep track of previous addresses in cases where that information is updated automatically, like in an event registration where the name and e-mail address matches. Has there been any work done on this? Thanks.

[joanne]

It depends how often you want to look at the past addresses and why.
 
We occasionally have a problem with the address of one user being overwritten by the address of a new person ( too complicated and not relevant to explain how that actually happens).

We have logging enabled on our site and I find that using the change log to track down when the overwriting occurred is good enough for me, but the change log can be slow to load and I sometimes have to look at the details for several changes for the contact  before I find the one I want, so it can be time consuming. 

[petednz]

we had a solution for a client way back that gave them a tab with all 'old' addresses listed - can't quite remember if it was hooks or what - and can't offer to just dig it out and pass on - but it is one option - but i think there have been other recent discussions about tracking former addresses. more searching on the forum might dig those up for you.

[FrTommy]

Might want to take a look at this extension. I'm using it and it seems to work fine.

https://civicrm.org/blogs/jaapjansma/future-addresses-beta-extension

[jakecivi]

Thank you. Interesting. I'll take a look.

Joanne: The log is marked as beta.. is it okay to use?

[joanne]

We have been using it for 2 years now.  It hasn't caused any problems, but you do need to disable it before an upgrade and re-enable it after. 

Also there have been a couple of occasions when it has stopped working and we have had to 'reboot' it by turning it off and then on again. (I think this is associated with mini-upgrades to functionality rather than being random.)  So if you are after a absolutely guaranteed method of tracking old addresses logging is not for you.