System Taxonomy

Reference document for all enumerated values, role vocabulary, status strings, and architectural terms used throughout the application.

Last updated March 23, 2026 View as Markdown

Internal reference. Not tied to a specific admin page. Update this file as vocabulary evolves.

Contact Roles

Contacts are not assigned a single role — they are identified by presence of related records.

Role Condition
Member Has at least one Membership with status = active
Donor Has at least one Donation record
Volunteer Future — no model yet
Contact Default when none of the above apply

Membership

Status values (memberships.status)

  • active — current, valid membership
  • expired — past the expires_on date
  • cancelled — manually cancelled before expiry

Billing intervals (membership_tiers.billing_interval)

  • monthly
  • annual
  • one_time
  • lifetime

Contact Sources (contacts.source)

Set at creation. Never updated after the fact.

  • manual — created by a staff member in the admin
  • import — created by the CSV importer
  • form — created by a web form submission
  • api — created via API (future)

Page Types (pages.type)

Controls routing, widget availability, and landing page behaviour.

  • default — a standard public CMS page
  • post — a blog post (slug prefixed with blog prefix setting)
  • event — an event landing page (slug prefixed with events/)
  • portal — a member portal page (served under /portal/)
  • system — reserved infrastructure pages (home, blog index, events index, portal home); type is locked and cannot be changed in the UI

Event Registration Modes (events.registration_mode)

  • open — public registration form is live
  • closed — registration form is hidden; closed message shown
  • external — redirects to an external URL; link shown in widget
  • none — walk-in only; no registration form or link

Import

Duplicate strategies

  • skip — keep the existing contact, ignore the incoming row
  • update — overwrite existing contact fields with incoming values

Import session statuses (import_sessions.status)

  • pending — uploaded, awaiting review
  • approved — reviewed and accepted; contacts are visible
  • rejected — reviewed and discarded

Permissions

Verb prefixes (Spatie pattern)

  • view_any_ — list/index access
  • view_ — single record access
  • create_ — create new records
  • update_ — edit existing records
  • delete_ — soft-delete, restore, and force-delete

Standalone permissions (not tied to a resource)

  • use_advanced_list_filters
  • import_data
  • review_imports
  • edit_theme_scss
  • manage_routing_prefixes
  • view_any_member
  • view_any_form_submission, view_form_submission, delete_form_submission

Roles

Role Summary
super_admin Full access via Gate bypass. No explicit permissions needed.
crm_editor Full CRM, memberships, donations, import.
event_manager Full events, read-only contacts.
volunteer_coordinator Full contacts, tags, notes; read-only events.
treasurer Full finance; read-only contacts.
cms_editor Full CMS (pages, posts, collections, tags).
blogger Full CMS + navigation items.

Admin Navigation Groups

Ordered as they appear in the sidebar.

  1. CRM — Contacts, Members, Organizations, Households
  2. Finance — Donations, Transactions (future)
  3. CMS — Pages, Blog Posts, Collections, Navigation, Site Theme, Settings
  4. Tools — Widget Manager, Collection Manager, Custom Fields, Import Contacts, Importer, Membership Tiers, Tag Manager
  5. Settings — General, CMS, Mailing Lists, Integrations

Collections

Source types (collections.source)

  • custom — user-defined collection with arbitrary field schema
  • blog_posts — system collection; maps to published Page records of type post
  • events — system collection; maps to published upcoming Event records

System collections (source != 'custom') are read-only in the UI. Their items are resolved dynamically at render time.

Tags

Tags are polymorphic. The same Tag record can be attached to:

  • Contacts
  • Events
  • Pages / Posts

Tag types are not explicitly stored — the taggable_type column on the pivot table holds the model class name.

Web Forms

Field types

  • text, textarea, email, phone, number
  • select (requires options array)
  • checkbox
  • hidden (carries a default_value; never shown to the user)
  • honeypot (anti-spam; must be empty on submission)

Portal

Portal account statuses

  • Active — portal_accounts.is_active = true
  • Suspended — is_active = false

Portal accounts are linked 1-to-1 with a Contact. Login is by email + password. Portal is separate from the admin panel and uses a separate auth guard.

Mailing Lists

Contacts opt in via:

  • Manual toggle in the admin
  • Web form with mailing_list_opt_in field
  • MailChimp sync (bidirectional)

contacts.mailing_list_opt_in is the canonical field. MailChimp is treated as a downstream sync target, not the source of truth.

Related articles

← All documentation