Adding Additional custom Fields to user account content...bad idea?

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Alex Overton's picture

Hi, Firstly, thanks for a Great Distribution!

I am creating a custom content type on OA. This will be a directory/white pages of Services and with a user reference to list person all who belongs in the the "named" service (node).

I was thinking about adding two or three Taxonomy Reference Fields to the User accounts custom fields. These referenced vocabs would then be used to Group Personnel per department/service. They would also be used to list similar roles and hierarchy via taxonomy weights and parent and child relationships in the vocabulary.

My Questions are : Is this opening a can of worms in terms of Upgrades to OA...and possible issues in the longer term?

Am I better off trying to leverage the "Groups" and "Teams" in OA and/or even use the Spaces for Grouping this instead.

Is it a wise idea to use the user accounts this way ...I have heard of issues in the past. Just wondering about possible conflicts/permission display issues relating to how user accounts are rendered etc.

Is there a better way of doing this?

Thanks in advance for any advice/tips

Alex