CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I need to set an active/inactive contact status.
The idea is that inactive contacts dont show up on search results anywhere. Just excluding inactive group from search result wont do because then the contact is still searchable from other sources like "contact reference" custom field.

I need it because contacts are not supposed to be deleted.

Could it be done?

Dave - (not sure if this applies here but since you are discussing chickens and eggs) with the ACL hook we have running on the Greens  but yes it does allow people with access to some contacts in one 'area' to set the area for the contact to somewhere they do not have access for - and they therefore disappear from sight for the person with the original ACL - and appear in the contacts visible to the person with ACLs for the new area.

( was there a quicker way of saying that??)

You should be able to discuss this with any of the core team members on IRC. No guaranteed times but we are in US, India and Poland so a range of times. If you're having trouble hooking up, and are serious about writing / contributing some code for this - I would:

1. Review the UI and the underlying code for Activity and Case "move to trash". Note that the ability to include "deleted" items in Case and Activity search is given to CiviCRM 'admin' users only, and these record are excluded by default from listings, search results, etc.

2. Write up your specification - ideally on a wiki page or blog post and solicit community feedback. You probably should cover things like:
* is this a global change (all contact delete actions now "mark as delete"), or is this configurable (via UI or settings file)?
* do some users have a choice to "really delete" (in the CiviCase implementation, admins can undelete - but no one can physically delete via the UI)
* do you need some kind of archive or purge of "deleted" records?
* can "deleted" records be accessed in the UI (i.e. with the Find Deleted Records mechanism we have in Case / Activity, or ??).

3. Then we can schedule a chat to discuss any open issues, timing, help w/ any architecture questions etc.

...dave