Active profiles and archived profiles in the database

What is the difference between "Active profiles" and "Archived profiles" in the database?

Your database has two default views. Active profiles is who you work with now. Archived profiles is who you no longer work with, with their history kept intact.

You switch between them from the view dropdown at the top of the database table, under Default views.


1. What should the Active profiles list represent?
Everyone you currently work with, or reasonably expect to work with again soon.
  1. Every profile added to your database starts here, whether it is an offline profile you created or a Vome User who signed up.
  2. This is the pool that every other part of Vome draws from. Assigning opportunities, scheduling shifts, sending emails, starting sequences and enrolling in courses all pick from active profiles.
  3. Your custom views are built on top of the active list, so a person who is archived drops out of all of them at once.
Treat it as your working roster rather than a permanent record of everyone who ever helped you. A tidy active list is what makes your counts, your call-outs and your reports trustworthy.

2. What should the Archived profiles list represent?
People who are no longer active with your organization, but whose record you want to keep.
Common reasons to archive someone:
  1. They finished their term or their placement ended
  2. They moved away, or they are seasonal and gone until next year
  3. They stopped responding and you have closed the file
  4. They did not pass screening, or they are no longer eligible
  5. They asked to stop receiving your opportunities
Archiving is a status, not a punishment, and it is fully reversible.

3. What exactly happens when I archive someone?
Four things, and Vome lists them in the confirmation popup before you commit:
  1. They are removed from your Active profiles list and from every custom view, and become reachable only from the Archived profiles view.
  2. All of their assigned opportunities become unassigned. As a result they can no longer reserve shifts or claim hours, and any upcoming reservations they hold are automatically cancelled.
  3. If they are in a sequence with a status of Active or Paused, that status changes to Inactive.
  4. If they are assigned to any sites, they are unassigned from all of their linked sites.
There is also an optional fifth action in the same popup: you can update their form submission statuses to Rejected, and choose which submissions that applies to.

Taken together, those four effects are how you revoke someone's access. Point 2 is the one that does the real work. Once their opportunities are unassigned, the opportunity disappears from their homepage and they lose the ability to book shifts, log hours and take part in the opportunity chatroom.

Archiving does not close or delete the person's Vome account, and it does not sign them out of Vome. It removes them from your organization's working lists. Their account is theirs, and it may well be connected to other organizations.

4. Where can I archive from?
From the database in bulk, or from a single profile anywhere it opens.
  1. Go to your Database
  2. Select one or more profiles
  3. Click Actions > Archive profiles
The same archive action is available on the profile panel wherever it opens, including from the Forms module, the Sequences module, the Courses module and the Sequence Expirations report. It behaves identically in all of them.

5. What is the best practice before I archive someone?
Record why. This is the single habit that pays off most.

The archive popup has an Add context for archiving (optional) section, and we strongly recommend using both halves of it:
  1. Leave a note. The note title is pre-filled with "Archived Profile Reason" so these are easy to spot later. Write one line explaining the decision, and attach a file if there is one. The note saves to the profile and stays with them.
  2. Assign a profile tag. A tag is what makes the reason filterable across your whole archived list. Useful tags include Term completed, Moved away, Seasonal, Did not pass screening and Requested removal.
Six months later, someone on your team will open an archived profile and ask why this person was archived. A note answers it for one profile. A tag answers it for two hundred.

Two more things worth doing in the same popup:
  1. If they have pending form submissions, mark them as Rejected so your form counts stay accurate.
  2. Check whether they hold upcoming shifts. Those reservations are cancelled automatically, so if the shift is soon, tell the shift lead.

6. I manage a site. Should I archive, or unassign from my site?
Unassign, in almost every case.

Archiving is organization-wide. If your organization uses Sites and the person is linked to one of yours, archiving them removes them from every other site admin's lists too, not just from yours. Vome catches this: when a site admin archives someone who is linked to their site, the popup opens with Unassign from my site(s) already selected, and explains the organization-wide impact of archiving instead.

Choose Continue to archive only when the person is genuinely finished with the whole organization. The note and profile tag context is available on the unassign path too, so you can still record why.

7. How do I reactivate someone, and what comes back?
Reactivating is one click. Restoring their access is not, and this is the part that surprises people.
  1. Switch the view to All archived profiles & fields
  2. Select the profile
  3. Click Actions > Reactivate


What comes back on its own: the profile returns to your Active database and to your custom list views, with all of its data.

What does not come back on its own: their opportunities. The assignments that archiving removed are not restored automatically, so you need to reassign each opportunity to give back their homepage access, their ability to reserve shifts and their ability to claim hours.

Vome prompts you for this straight after reactivating a single profile, with a Reassign opportunities step so you can do it in the same sitting. Reassigning in bulk for several profiles at once is planned for a future update.

Idea
This is another reason to tag on the way out. If you tagged everyone from last summer's cohort, bringing them back next season is a filter, a reactivate and a mass assign rather than a memory exercise.

8. Why can I not just delete them instead?
Because the account is not yours to delete.

A Vome User account belongs to the person who created it, and the same account can be connected to several organizations at once. Deleting it from your database would delete their account everywhere, including at organizations that have nothing to do with you. Only the account holder can delete their own Vome account, from their own settings. Archiving is your equivalent, and it is the right tool.

Full explanation, including what you can delete: How do I delete a Vome User from the database?

Summary
  1. Active profiles is your working roster. Archived profiles is your kept history.
  2. Archiving removes them from active and custom views, unassigns every opportunity, cancels upcoming reservations, sets Active or Paused sequences to Inactive, and unassigns them from all sites.
  3. Unassigning their opportunities is what actually revokes their access.
  4. Always leave a note and assign a profile tag explaining why, in the same popup.
  5. Site admins should unassign from their site rather than archive organization-wide.
  6. Reactivating restores the profile but not the opportunity assignments. Reassign them afterwards.
  7. You cannot delete a Vome User because their account may be linked to other organizations. Archive instead.