Effect of address change on current employer

Question

I need your opinion on a standard CiviCRM behavior:

When you add or change the address of an individual AND you check "Use another contact's address", AND that target contact is an organization, then the current employer is changed + the "employee of" relationship. Regardless of the location type.

This makes sense for location type "work". But why does this happen for all location types?

Wouldn't it better to limit this functionality to location type "work"? Or add a checkbox on location types, so users can specify on which location types they expect that behavior?

Answer 1

@AlainB I totally agree that this should not happen for all location types. Do I understand correctly that:

• I change the address of John Doe
• I tick the 'use another contact's address'
• I then select organization CompanyB

and then companyB automatically becomes the employer of John Doe?

That sounds like unwanted behaviour to me, I would not expect the employer to change automatically even if I changed the work address.

Answer 2

It looks like a relic from an earlier era and an opportunity to simplify one tiny corner of the codebase. Maybe we could just document a CiviRules recipe to re-implement the current behaviour and remove it entirely.