Where Did the Organization Field Come From?

by Shawn O'Hern 25. September 2009 13:57

In Password Vault 3, passwords have 7 fields: Description, Username, Organization, Password, Email, URL, and Comments. Six of these should be self-explanatory. But what about the Organization field? This field is simply another field that can be AutoCompleted and that can be used to hold an additional piece of information. Where did the name come from, though?

 Turn the wayback machine to late 2004/early 2005, less than a year before development began on Password Vault 3. Like many other people, I was using Password Vault 2 at the time, and that version only had three password fields: Description, Username, and Password—and only the last two could be AutoCompleted. This system worked for me the majority of the time, but there was one web site that required three fields: WebAssign, which I was using for my Physics course (I was still in school at the time). WebAssign needed your username and password as well as your "organization," which I believe was the name of the school (Update: It looks like WebAssign renamed that third field to "Institution" at some point in the past five years). It annoyed me that I wasn't able to AutoComplete that third field, so alas, in Password Vault 3, the Organization field was added. Taking the name of the field from the WebAssign login form perhaps wasn't the best idea, but I wasn't sure what else to call it. And naturally, by the time that field was added and the new version of Password Vault was released, the Physics course was over, so it was never even used for its original purpose. But that is where the name came from.

The Organization field will be carried forward into Password Vault 4. In addition, a number of custom fields will be added; you can name these whatever you like. At some point in the future, I may convert the Organization field into another custom field so that it can be renamed if so desired, but I don't know when that will happen yet.

Here's a quick survey that you can answer in the comments: Do you ever use the Organization field? Did you know what it is for? What would you have named it?

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