Make "Household"-free configuration supported
Disabling the Household
contact-type is a fairly a common but obscure customization. (See, for example, this popular Q&A on StackExchange.) Basically: Household
is a power-tool that isn't needed everywhere, so a number of implementers/consultants/support-folk will take measures to disable it -- thus preventing the users from misusing or growing confused by it.
On the other hand, the codebase has special bits sprinkled in for supporting the three canonical contact-types (Individual/Household/Organization), so there is likely some risk in disabling it, and the admin UI clearly takes measures to prevent anyone from disabling any of those three.
The support disposition of this came up in regression report #1246 (closed) - to wit: if one has gone under the hood to do this customization, should one expect it to work or to get socialized support when there's a regression?
This issue is meant as a vote of "Yes, it should be supported - and what would it take for that?" Here are a few loose/general things:
- Expand the automated test-coverage for this scenario
- Update admin UI so that one can disable it through the GUI
- Ensure that related elements which implicitly depend on
Household
are somehow toggled based on whetherHousehold
is active. This answer highlights several such elements. Ideally, an official toggle would be forgiving and could be freely re-enabled, but it would also be acceptable to take a more destructive approach (like in the Stackexchange threads) as long as it's very clearly communicated (i.e. indicating what data+configuration will be destroyed).