News You Can Use: Exciting Password Changes on the Horizon

You asked, and we listened.  With more emphasis on security these days, several password changes are being implemented to help you further secure your Raiser’s Edge database.  The Raiser’s Edge 7.91, scheduled for release in late Q2, will include exciting password changes to look forward to.

Changes include:

You can optionally force users to change their passwords (my favorite new feature ).  With this option you can force users to change their password on a regular schedule that you define!  If you use this feature, you’ll be able to define a number of days before uses are prompted to change their passwords. You can optionally lock users out of the database if they enter incorrect passwords.  If you use this feature, you can select how many times the user must enter an incorrect password before they are locked out.

You can also specify how long they must wait before they are able to login again.

Other changes include:

• Passwords must be at least eight characters, consist of numbers and letters, and must contain at least one capital letter.
• Users will be unable to re-use their previous four passwords.

Finally, after updating to version 7.91 or higher, existing passwords from version 7.85 and below must be entered using all capital letters.  This means that the first time all users at your organization log in, they must enter their password in all capital letters (e.g., ADMIN1 instead of admin1).  If users don’t update their password they must continue entering their old password in all capital letters.  After logging in to version 7.91 for the first time, we recommend users immediately change their password by selecting Edit, Change Password from the menu bar.  Please share this information with all users at your organization so they can log into The Raiser’s Edge after the update.

Stay tuned in the coming weeks and months for posts on other enhancements in version 7.91.

Mail Musings: Address Processing

Most people can be reached more than one address - that's why you can add multiple addresses to constituent records. To keep from oversaturation, address processing ensures that each constituent only gets each mailing once, and only to the address you specify

In most mailings (Quick Letters, Labels, Donor Acknowledgement Letters, etc.), there are two address tabs: Ind Address and Org Address. These tabs are used to determine which address will be used for each type of constituent record.

An individual may have a summer or winter house in addition to their preferred mailing address. Address Processing allows users to mail to a Seasonal address as of the date of the mailing to avoid sending mail to the beach bums during the winter. For individuals who have their own organization relationships, you can specify on the Ind Address tab to mail to the Business address for that constituent so that they're contacted at work - where they might be prompted to send a donation.

If there's no address found based on the settings, you can either remove the record from the mailing, print the constituent's name with no address, or to print a specific address, such as the Preferred Address.

When working with organization records, address processing enables users to mail to an actual person at an organization. This is useful for larger organizations where mailings with just the company name may be regarded as junk mail. If you have contacts for the organization and wish to mail to them, you can select specific contact types, such as all Primary Contacts.

When an organization has several contact types, a Contact record can be assigned an Attribute. For example, you could use a Contact Attribute Category of Special Mailing Info with a Description of Newsletter. This way, only those Contacts with the Newsletter attribute would be considered in your Newsletter mailing.

The same thing goes for the Address record. If you choose to only mail to a specific address a constituent or contact has, you can use Address Attributes step of the processing to designate the addresses to consider.

If you don't have contacts, you can just to mail to the organization. If some organizations have contacts and others don't, the mailing can be set up to mail to a specific address of that organization.

These options can save a lot of time and loads of money for your organization. Next time you have a mailing, ditch the query, set up the mailing, and never look back!

For a more in depth look on address processing, as well as other specific examples, refer to Knowledgebase solution BB518.

Gift Gab: Suffixticated Gifts

Suffixes are often treated as afterthoughts, but occasionally a suffix can provide very important distinctions. For instance, there's a difference between Frank Sinatra and Frank Sinatra, as Jason Seaver discovered in The Breakfast Club (no, not that Breakfast Club).

Cal Ripken, Sr. was a great baseball man, but Cal Ripken, Jr. was a Hall of Famer; Richard I is in all the Robin Hood movies, Richard II was give the short end of the Henriad; James Bond is a pop culture icon, James Bond, Jr. is a pop culture footnote.

In other words, suffixes matter.

When you are looking at the Gifts tab on a Constituent record, a gift suffix can help you distinguish between hard credit and soft credit gifts with a glance. To add a suffix for soft credit gifts, follow these steps:

1. Select Tools, User Options from the menu bar.
2. Select the Color tab and highlight Legends.
3. Click View Gift Legend.
4. Highlight Soft on the left and make the appropriate selections, mark Suffix checkboxes and enter -sc.
5. Click OK.

Now, whenever a soft credit gift is entered, the suffix -sc will appear after the gift type. For example, a Cash gift that has been soft credited to a constituent will read "Cash-sc", distinguishing it from hard credit Cash gifts.

For more information, check out Knowledgebase solution BB520488.

The answer to the Brain Buster in this month's edition of The User's Edge is that Gaston's substitute teacher was also the football coach.

If a team was on its own 48 yard line and gained 5 yards, they would be on the opposing team’s 47 yard line.
If they gained an additional 3 yards, they’d be on the 44 yard line.
If they then lost 7 yards, they’d be back on their own 49 yard line.
If they lost an additional 6 yards, they’d be on the 43 yard line.
If they then had a big 15 yard gain, that would get them to the opposing team’s 42 yard line.

So:

48 + 5 = 47
47 + 3 = 44
44 - 7 = 49
49 - 6 = 43
43 + 15 = 42

Gift Gab: Recurring Gifts

A pledge is a promise to make a gift in the future. Sometimes pledges are simple, single installment affairs, and other times they are elaborate, Byzantine endeavors with irregular installment dates and different payment amounts. A pledge has a fixed total amount and a definitive end date.

Gift entry gets tricky when you have a constituent who wants to give a donation for an open-ended period of time. Recurring gifts enable you to track scheduled donations of a set amount without a definitive end date. Recurring gifts differ from pledges in that recurring gifts have no promised total donation amount. Like pledges, recurring gifts, are templates used to record the donation amount, payment schedule, and start date. Like a pledge, you can add an end date to a recurring gift, but it is not required.

To add a recurring gift, create a new gift and select Recurring Gift in the Gift Type field. In the Amount field, enter the amount the constituent wants to donate at regular intervals. For example, if your constituent wants to give $5 a week, enter $5 in the Amount field.

Click Schedule to open the Transaction Schedule screen (In Batch, select Gift, Installment Information from the menu bar or click the Installment Information toolbar button), and enter the schedule information.

The process for adding recurring gift payments is very similar to adding a pledge payment. After you have added the gift, select Gift, Apply to, Recurring Gift and the Apply Gift to Recurring Gift screen appears. The Transaction amount field defaults with the amount of the oldest outstanding recurring gift. Adjust it as needed. In the Pay? column, mark the checkbox next to the recurring gift toward which the payment should be applied.

Click OK to return to the gift record. The campaign, fund, and appeal will default to the same values as the recurring gift.

Read more about recurring gifts in Knowledgebase solution BB7689. Also, check out our White Paper on Implementing a Recurring Gift Program.

Import Insight: The Art of Importing

“Importing is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get”.  That might not be the exact quote, but there are many types of imports, each with its’ own flavor.  Some imports are complex and require more information such as linked fields, while others are simple.  Some imports allow importing the same field multiple times, such as phone numbers which use extensions.  Sometimes you might not have the unique ID (Import ID, Constituent ID, or SSN) of records in your database.  Other times you might not be importing new records, but instead making updates to existing records in your database.

My next few posts will focus on importing, and will touch on some of the above scenarios.

Let’s start with a simple import.  This is a long post, but stick with it; you'll see importing is much easier than it sounds.  In this example we'll import new constituent records with an addressee and salutation, address, phone number, and email address.

You can create a new file in Excel, or you can follow along using this pre-configurated import file (save the file to your desktop).  In the first row of the file we need to add our header fields.  These fields will map the fields from the import file to the appropriate location in the database.
ImportID, KeyInd, Titl1, FirstName, MidName, LastName, OrgName, PrimAddID, PrimSalID, AddrImpID, PrefAddr, AddrType, AddrLines, AddrCity, AddrState, AddrZIP, PhoneAddrImpID, PhoneImpID, PhoneNum, PhoneType, PhoneAddrImpID, PhoneImpID, PhoneNum, PhoneType

Note: you can type whatever text you like as your import headers; however, the advantage of using the Raiser's Edge headers is they will automatically map to the correct fields later.  If you choose to use your own headers, you will have to map your headers to the appropriate fields later in the process.

Brief information on some of the header fields above.

• ImportID - you don't have to use the Import ID, you can also use Constituent ID or Social Security Number.  For new records you can leave this blank if you want, or you can assign your own value.
• KeyInd - this tells Raiser's Edge whether the record is an individual or organization (use 'I' for individuals and 'O' for organizations).
• PrimAddID and PrimSalID - this is the format to use for addressee and salutation.  To get the desired value go to Configuration, Addressee/Salutations.  Select File, Preview, Addressee/Salutations Report.  Note the ID number on the report next to the sample addressee/salutation.
• AddrImpID - this is the import ID for the address record.  If you are going to also import phone numbers, we need to assign this value now, so we can link the phone number to this address.  We will talk about linking phone numbers to addresses in the next bullet.
• PhoneAddrImpID - use this field to link phone numbers to addresses.  The field value must match the import ID of the address (AddrImpID) field.

After adding the header fields on the first row of the import file we can begin adding information for the new records on the 2nd line of our file, for example:
C897,I,Mr.,James,C.,Maple,,6,16,A345,Yes,Home,347 Campbell St/nApt 2,Atlanta,GA,30096,A345,P246,4048975623,Home,A345,P247,4048795621,Cell Phone

The commas above represent a new cell in your excel file.  So 'C897' should go in the first cell with the header 'ImportID'.  'I' should go in the 2nd cell with the header 'KeyInd'.  So on and so forth.  If there are two commas together with nothing in them, that represents a blank data cell for that field.  Your file should appear like this:



Continue adding records by going to the next line in the file.
When finished, save your file in CSV (comma separated values) format and close the file.

To import these records go to Import, select Constituent from the Constituent category and click New.

On the General Tab select:

• What do you want to do?  Update existing records
• Options:  Import records not found as new records and Use duplicate criteria for new records
• What file do you wish to import?  Browse to the import file
• How do you want the system to identify existing constituents?  Use the Import ID
• What is the format of this import file?  Delimited
  
  Note about the above selections.  I selected to 'Update existing records' because it's possible records in our import file may already exist in the database.  By selecting to update existing records, and then 'Import records not found as new records and Use duplicate criteria for new records', we are using the tools in Raiser's Edge to try to prevent duplicate records.

On the File Layout Tab select:

• Field Separators and Text Qualifiers:  Comma, Quotation
• Import Field Names:  Field names are on the first line of the import file
• Sample Import Format:  Verify the first few rows of the import file

On the Fields Tab:

• Ensure all rows in the Field to Import column are mapped to the correct field in the Raiser's Edge column.
• Check the Extensions column.  Groupings of phone numbers in the file must share the same extension.
  
  The fields tab should appear like this after the fields are mapped:

One item to point out on this screen is the Extension column.  This column is used when the same field is being imported multiple times.  In this example we are importing multiple phone numbers.  The first set of phone fields will have a value of '00' in the extension column, the second set will have value '01'.

On the Summary Tab:

• Check the appropriate checkboxes. At the least, I suggest marking the Create control report option. The other options can also be helpful depending on what you are importing.
  
  Note about the options on the Summary Tab.
  
• The 'Create exception file of records not updated/imported' option is good to check in the event that you have exceptions during the import process, this option will create a new file with any exceptions.  For example, maybe a required field is missing on some of the records in your import file, selecting this option will kick the record into a new exception file.  You can then open the file of exceptions, make any required changes, and then import the exception file.
• 'Create an output query of the records imported'.  Use this option if you need to do a mailing for the newly added records.  You can use the output query in the Mail or Export module to create your mailing.
• 'Create an output query of the records updated'.  Similiar to the above option, but this is for records that have updates made to them.
• 'Create control report'.  As a general rule I suggest always keeping this checked, it is great tool to confirm the results of the import.

For more information on a simple import like this one, please check out Knowledgebase solution BB5765, which provides more details and a link to the sample file from above.

Stay tuned for the next post in the importing series.

If there is a specific type of import you would like to see discussed, please leave a comment and if there is a majority, I’ll try to focus on that next time.

Report Roundup: Getting Directly to the Point

The most straightforward way to generate a list of constituent names, addresses, and phone numbers is to run the Constituent Directory. The report can include up to two separate addresses and phone numbers per constituent. You determine the address and phone information to include on the Individual Address and Organization Address tabs.

To get started, go to Reports, Profiles, Lists, and Directories, highlight Constituent Directory and click New. The filters in this report beyond the standard Inactive/Deceased/No Valid Address/Attributes are pretty rudimentary (Constituent Codes, Solicit Codes, Assigned Solicitors), so if you are doing a select group of records you'll have to rely on a query to do the filtering for you.

On the Ind. Address tab, mark the Print two addresses on report checkbox to define parameters for two separate addresses. Mark the Settings for first address and Settings for second address options to define criteria for each address. You can include addresses only, addresses and phone numbers, phone numbers only, or no addresses (names only).

On the report's Org. Address tab, select whether to include addresses and/or phone numbers and, in Step 1, mark the Print only the organization option. Mark the Print two addresses on report checkbox and mark the options to define criteria for each address.

The Format tab has a few options to customize the report:

• Detail: Mark the options here to include Spouse, Maiden Name, or to Group the Directory by the first letter of the Last Name/Org Name
• Miscellaneous: Print the report in Portrait or Landscape
• Name Format: Include Addressee/Salutations for Individuals and Contacts

Once you have followed these steps, print or preview the report. You can use Export and Quick Letters to generate a lot of the same information, but the Constituent Directory report will give you the information you need with the minimum of hassle.

This is also in Knowledgebase; it's BB116606.

Constituent Corner: International Flavor

In today's global environment, it's likely your organization will have constituents with international addresses. For instance, the other day, Debbie Data at Nice Things Are Good was entering a gift from Jean Claude Van Damme. This was the first time that The Muscles from Brussels had donated to Nice Things Are Good, so Debbie entered him as a new constituent. To her consternation, she did not have Belgium in the country table, but she was able to add it on the fly. Since she had rights to add table entries, she was able to do this by following these steps:

1. Type "Belgium" in the country field.
2. Press Tab to move to the next field.
3. Click Yes when prompted to add Belgium to the country table.
4. Add BE as the short table entry.
5. Click OK.

With JCVD's donation in hand, Debbie was very pleased. Not only was the man who brought Guile to life now a constituent, but Nice Things Are Good had a new geographical demographic to explore. That's why Debbie was devastated when she printed thank you letters and Jean Claude Van Damme's address did not print.

Oh, snap!

Debbie opened Jean Claude Van Damme's record. Send mail to this Address was marked on his Preferred address. The Address Type "Maison" was included on the Individual Address tab and on the constituent record. He was active, alive, and had a valid address. What could it be?

Connie Configuration was able to solve Debbie's problem. Because Belgium was added on the record instead of the International tab in Configuration, Debbie never defined an address block. Since no address block was defined, the mailing had no field to merge. Here's are the steps Connie and Debbie followed to resolve the issue:

1. In Configuration, click International
2. Open Belgium
3. In the Display available fields for this country drop-down, select the appropriate country.

Note: If the country is not listed, select a country with a similar format and adjust the address block using the arrows and buttons at the bottom of the screen.

4. Highlight the appropriate fields in the Available fields frame and click the right arrow button to select them.

   Note: If you insert the wrong field or need to remove a field from the address block, highlight the field and click the left arrow button.

5. Under the Available fields frame are additional characters that may be needed to format the address: colon, comma, dash, period, forward slash, new line, and space
6. In order for the formatted address block to take effect, enter the country in the Country field on the Bio 1 tab of the constituent.
7. Click Save and close

To ensure the proper format of the address, they referred to the Universal Postal Union Web site which provides address processing information and sample addresses.

While it was convenient for Debbie to add a new Country on the fly, it would have saved her a headache if she had set everything up in Configuration. Once she defined the Address Block on Belgium's record in Configuration, she was able rerun her letters. A few days later, Jean Claude Van Damme received a letter thanking him for his Gift-in-kind of fifty-seven copies of Double Team.

As usual, this is all in Knowledgebase. It's BB55941

Bringing Up Batch/Query Qualities Crossover: Cleaning Up the House

You may find yourself hunting through a long list of queries. And you may find yourself scrolling through batches that have lost their relevance. And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"

As the days go by, your database will likely accumulate a number of queries and batches. Your organization may have reasons for saving every query and each batch, or they may have been created, committed, forgotten, and turned to clutter.

Deleting loads of queries and batches one at a time is prohibitively time consuming. Fortunately, you can streamline the process by deleting multiple batches or queries at the same time.

To delete multiple batches:

1. In Batch, select Tools, Delete Multiple Batches from the menu bar.
2. Select any applicable filters.
3. Select batches to delete by marking the Delete? checkbox.
4. Click Delete Now to delete the batches.

To delete multiple queries:

1. In Query, select Tools, Delete Multiple Queries from the menu bar (or right-click within the query list and select Delete Multiple Queries - The Raiser's Edge only). The Delete Multiple Queries screen appears.
2. Mark the Only show my queries checkbox as needed.
3. Indicate the query type and format to delete.
4. Mark the Delete column checkboxes for the queries to delete.
5. Click Delete Now in the action bar to begin the process.

Cleaning up your obsolete batches and queries will keep your database off the road to nowhere. You can also find this information in Knowledgebase. The solutions are BB520727 (How to globally delete multiple batches) and BB520787 (How to delete a single query or multiple queries at once).

Report Roundup: Nothing compares to Bruuuuuce!

I am a huge fan of Bruce Springsteen. My first Springsteen concert was at the Capital Center in DC during the 1984 Born in the USA tour. I haven't missed a tour since and am looking forward to seeing the Boss at Penn State on May 8. I used to think that no other concert performance could compare to a Springsteen concert...until August 18, 2008, at Hersheypark Stadium. Wow! That concert experience will be unmatched and uncomparable unless and until Bruce pulls me up on stage a la Courteney Cox to dance with him to "Dancing in the Dark!" Nothing compares to Bruce as seen from the pit.

I could go on and on about Bruce, but this isn't a Springsteen blog. It's a Raiser's Edge blog! The point is, that while a Springsteen concert is uncomparable, you can compare and analyze a variety of data in the Raiser's Edge. One of my favorite ways is to analyze giving data by using the Comparisons and Summaries Report in Demographical and Statistical Reports.

There are many data fields you can compare. I like 'Months in the year' under Gifts. You can monitor monthly trends from year to year for up to five periods. It's helpful for forecasting results as well as goal setting. You can even drill down further by choosing 'Days in the month.' Analyzing these giving trends can help you be proactive in revising your strategy to meet your fundraising goals.

You can also look at constituent trends. By choosing to use the Constituency Code field, you can use the Comparison Report to analyze any number of your constituencies for two time periods. It also shows the variance between time periods by dollar amount and percentage. The Summary Report will show you up to five time periods. It's a great high level overview of giving that you can share with your board of directors, your alumni council, your CEO, and any number of key influencers.

Now...back to analyzing potential set lists for May 8!