The User's Edge
The Official Blog of The Raiser's Edge

What to do with Attributes you no longer use

Does your database have attributes that you no longer use?  Maybe you converted to Raiser's Edge from another system and now have all sorts of miscellaneous data in attributes; or you simply have historical data stored in attributes that are no longer used.  Maybe there are so many values in the attributes table that when you add a new attribute to a constituent, it takes forever to find the attribute category you’re looking for.  Have I got great news for you!

The Raiser's Edge 7.85, which is scheduled for release in July, gives you the ability to mark attributes as inactive.  When you mark an attribute inactive, it no longer appears in the attributes drop down list as a selection when you add a new attribute to a record.  To mark an attribute as inactive, go to Configuration and select Attributes.  On the Attributes page, mark the checkbox in the new Active column for each attribute to appear as available in Records. If you do not mark this checkbox, the attribute is inactive.  For more information, see the Configuration and Security Guide.

All attributes will still appear in other areas of The Raiser's Edge such as Query, Export, and Reports.  Having inactive attributes display in these areas allows you to continue to use this information in queries, or other areas.

If you have an attribute in your database that you no longer use and want to completely remove it from your database, check out Knowledgebase solution BB133434.  This solution will assist you in removing the attribute completely from your database.

Posted: Jun 17 2008, 08:33 AM by Kevin Brunson | with 3 comment(s)
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Comments

Jo Ward said:

You say "On the Attributes page, mark the checkbox in the new Active column for each attribute to appear as available in Records. If you do not mark this checkbox, the attribute is inactive."

This seems to say that all attributes will, by default, be inactive, and that positive action must be taken to make it active.  Is this really what will happen, or will the upgrade automatically populate the new Active column with a check mark, and only new attributes would need to be manually activated?  

# June 17, 2008 3:23 PM

Kevin Brunson said:

Jo, great question and I'm glad you asked.

The upgrade process will designate all existing attributes in the database as 'Active'.  Once you are on version 7.85, any newly added attributes will need to be manually 'activated'.

# June 17, 2008 3:53 PM

Janice Price-VanDyke said:

I think this is a great move forward but does not address the issue of selectively removing an attribute from some but not all records that have it.  I thought I would pass on this eureka moment I thought you might like to pass onto other users.  First, I am a hosted client so I don't have visibility to our database (or this would not be such a big deal!).  

Here is the scenario - to make it easy for my users to query on those celebrating reunions in the upcoming years I mark a constituent attribute of reunion cycle.  In the desc I put the reunion (25th, 60th, etc), In the comments I put a mention of their gift cycle (we count gifts for 2 years prior to the reunion in their total) and in the data I put the first date of that weekend (we do it over memorial day weekend).  So I have more than one year going at one time.

The problem comes at cleanup time. I have to pull out one year (about 8000+ constituents!) and put in another.  Easy, you are probably saying, just pull out all the data to an extract, delete all entries, nuke the attribute, recreate it and import wanted into.  Ah, but then all of the queries my users have setup are now going to reference a not-existing attribute and they will have to fix them when they go to run them.  Ring!  I can hear my phoning ringing off the hook.  

I think I just discovered another method - I pull the data, including the import id, of those who have attributes I want to delete.  I created a dummy attribute like 'reunion to delete'. Do an import update on those records and change the category to 'reunion to delete', run a global delete on that. Then I import or globally mark the new batch of reunions and I am done.  

Funny how your mind wanders as you are hand-deleting data!  Hope this helps others!

# June 30, 2008 10:29 AM