TIMSS 6: Setups for Phone Number Integrity

In TIMSS 6 I've noticed a couple things you can do to help with data integrity of phone numbers.

First, the COMM_LOCATION type has a default value and a display order. The default value is available for all types on the top half of the APP005 screen. You can set a default value, but I would recommend not doing this for phone locations. The main reason I would not is that once it is set, you can't change it.

If all your phone numbers were WORK phones, then go ahead and default it in. However, if you really want to track the location, and it's defaulted in, I bet 99% of you phone number will be entered as WORK and none will be HOME or anything else. And since once it's entered into TIMSS as WORK you can't really change it, I'd opt not to default it in (alright, you can change it, but it's not straight forward).

The one thing I would do is set the Display Order for the codes under COMM_LOCATION to display in the order they are most often used (i.e. putting WORK at the top and CELL at the bottom).

Second, when defining the phone format for a country, you can set the min and max length of a particular field. For the US and Canada the area code is 3 and the phone number is 7, so you can set the min and max for both to 3 and 7, respectively. This will make sure users enter the correct number of digits.



One way this really helps with when people enter the area code, hit tab, enter the 3 digit prefix, hit tab (moving to the extension field) and enter the last 4 digits of the number. If you have set the phone number length (max & min) to 7, this will throw and error when the user tries to save.

Applies to: TIMSS6