People have various roles in their life: parent, child, teacher, student, etc. In Sunflower, there are three major roles that people are assigned, Property Custodian, Steward Contact, and asset User.
In Sunflower, a Custodial Area is the organization defined as encompassing a number of assets. All Custodial Areas have a person who has been designated as the person who is primarily responsible for property matters. This person has primary responsibility for the assets within the Custodial Area. In NOAA, we have traditionally called this person the Property Custodian.
The second role Sunflower allows us to assign to a person is the role of Steward Contact. Whereas a Property Custodian is associated with a Custodial Area, the Steward Contact is associated with a particular asset. In NOAA we attempt to assign the person who does the day-to-day work in property management, tagging the property, filling out property forms, etc., to the role of Steward Contact. This is done by entering this person's name in every property record for every asset which they take care of. A Steward Contact can then directly manage their own property.
The third role Sunflower allows us to assign to a person is the role of asset User. This person would ordinarily be the person who has direct physical custody of the property and uses it in their day-to-day work. Again the person must be associated with every asset for which they are the User.