Should I nest elements that I will consult frequently in no-sql?

I have a non-relational database in MongoDB where I store items with the following structure:

    {
      "_id": "64586748c079e955385c18af",
      "operator": "KILIN",
      "department": "EXAMPLE-DEPARMENT",
      "city": "MIAMI",
      "locality": "Usaquén",
      "neighborhood": "LISBOA",
      "start_date": "2023-04-29",
      "final_date": "2023-04-29",
      "reason": "programed",
      "description": "AV 88 # 8123",
      "status": "not_validated",
      "customers_affected": [
        {"ENEL-BOG-00013":{"name": "tecniglas", "Phone": 3456752}},
        {"ENEL-BOG-00111":{"name": "pepsi", "Phone": 2354321}},
      ]
    }

The database deals with many service outage alerts. My question is focused on the "customers_affected" element. There are a number of customers in the country, and each alert can affect them depending on their location. I will constantly have to be querying the customers for each alert to send notifications (either by sms or email). My doubt is if I should leave it as I have it structured or if I should save in another collection all the clients and link them somehow with the alerts.

Solution

List out your pros & cons e.g. (nb: I'm not claiming this is exhaustive)

Option 1: Keep customer data within the same document

Pros:

Easier to query and update customer data in a single operation.
Less data duplication, as customer data is only stored once per customer.

Cons:

Documents may become very large if there are many customers, which could impact query performance.
Customer data is not normalized, which may make it harder to manage and maintain.

Option 2: Store customer data in a separate collection and link it with the alerts

Pros:

Normalizes data, making it easier to manage and maintain.
Allows for better separation of concerns between alert data and customer data.
May improve query performance by reducing document size.

Cons:

Requires additional queries to fetch related customer data, which could impact performance.
Requires maintaining relationships between alerts and customers, which may add complexity to the application.

It's up to you to decide which option best suits your use case. If you have a relatively small number of customers and don't expect frequent updates, keeping the customer data within the same document might be a simpler and more efficient approach. If however you expect a large number of customers and frequent updates, storing customer data in a separate collection and linking it with the alerts might be a better choice for performance and maintainability. And: as you will constantly have to be querying the customers for each alert to send notifications, it may be better to store the customers in a separate collection and link them to the alerts using a unique identifier.

NB: This is response is "generic", without much information on volumes or predicted growth and without any ability to perform any tests.