Constituent Corner: Shared Phone Numbers

In The Raiser's Edge, you can use address sharing to link records so that an address change is reflected on all records who share that address. When you copy and share an address between records, phone numbers in the Phones/Email/Links grid are also shared. This means you can change the phone number on one record and it will be updated on all the constituents that share it. While a website or home phone number are likely to be shared by everyone who has the address, email addresses and cell phone numbers are more likely to be unique to each constituent. You can choose to share or not share phone numbers on a case-by-case basis.

By default, all phone types are shareable. To make a phone type shareable or not shareable, go to Config, Tables, highlight Phone types in the left frame, and double-click the specific phone type in the right frame. To allow the phone type to be shared, unmark the Do not share phones of this type box. To prevent the phone type from being shared on any record, mark the Do not share phones of this type box and click OK.

To share a phone number between records, you must use a shared address. For each phone number, select one of the following options:

Not Shared: Indicates the phone number is not currently shared, but has the ability to be shared if the appropriate options are selected.

Shared: Select this option if you do want to share phone numbers. If a phone number of this type is already on the other constituent's record, a prompt appears to overwrite the existing phone number of that type on other records. To accept the changes and update the numbers to share, click Yes. To maintain the numbers already on the records and not share them, click No or Cancel. To see which addresses are shared, click Show Addresses. If the phone type is not on the other record, the phone type and phone number are added to all records that share the address.

Do Not Share: Select this option if you do not want to share a specific phone number.

Cannot Be Shared: When the phone type is marked as Do not share phones of these types in Configuration, The Raiser's Edge automatically selects Cannot Be Shared as the phone type for the phone number and you are unable to manually change it. If you need to share this phone type, make it shareable in Configuration. This will change these phone numbers from Cannot Be Shared to Not Shared and you can then manually change those phone numbers to Shared.

You can also find this information in Knowledgebase solution BB192490.