Sarah's Shortcuts: Overcoming a Bad Memory

Over the past few years, I've come to accept that my memory is not particularly strong. Fortunately, that hasn't caused much of a problem for me in my work, but if I was responsible for your data entry, you might have reason for concern. And really, even if you or your colleagues are with it 24/7, there's always at least a slight margin for error (especially when post-lunch sleepiness rolls in).

The good news is that Raiser's Edge includes the option to create user-defined pop-ups that can serve as wonderful reminders when you open particular records. Let's say you periodically receive gifts from constituents who are marked as having no valid addresses. Your organization may have a policy in place to update their addresses when new donations come in, but if you're in the process of entering fifty new gifts, you may very likely forget to check whether the donor has a valid address.

That's where pop-ups come in handy. By creating user-defined business rules, you can set up Raiser's Edge to give you a pop-up reminder when you open particular records. In the example above, I could create a query of everyone who has the No Valid Addresses checkbox marked and then design a business rule to remind me to update their addresses when adding new gifts. I could even tailor the message to only appear for certain user groups if I didn't think everyone suffered from an insufficient memory (not saying they don't).

Knowledgebase provides step-by-step instructions for setting up user-defined pop-ups (BB1495), so give it a try and let me know how it goes!