To those of you who use AddressFinder.  I am interested in your answers to the following:

1. Were you aware that AddressFinder returns NEW addresses with the County from the OLD address on it?
2. Do you expect the service to work this way?
3. Do you expect the service to return the address with the county blank?  with the new county?

Melissa

Yes they have a county append service which they have the choice to promote when I call to order my AddressFinder service but to send it back with the old County is ridiculous.  Send it back blank if I decline county append.

I have AddressAccelerator but not every place does and I am curious how many did not even know this was happening.  I run AddressAccelerator on the whole database before I send it for AddressFinder (as recommended by BB) but I assumed I was getting back addresses already CASS certified so why would I think to run it again after?  It's not in the recommendations from Blackbaud on the Data Health Center page...

Now I know but I am most upset that BB does not even see this as a problem and that they assume we all know this is happening.  Of course it benefits them to leave it in there because then they cen upsell people to AddressAccelerator to "fix it" but I think that any service that sends me back incorrect data is a bad service.  Blank is better than incorrect.

Kelly Grant
Product Support Lead
Data Enrichment Services, Blackbaud

 Kelly,

 I don't use either of these services but here are my $.02 anyways. 

 Clients need to be absolutely clear that they are not getting back the correct counties when they use this service.

We do use counties quite a bit and to globally delete them after an import of this type would cause a significant amount of extra work. I wouldn't consider that a viable work around.

 Better to send back blank data than incorrect data. Those of us who spend our days cleaning data and setting standards and guidelines and permissions for our end users (and some days just wishing we could do their job for them, it would be so much easier ) and sending nice and not so nice emails to our end users to PAY ATTENTION when updating addresses don't need incorrect data coming back from a service we pay for. Though it makes for nice job security.

 FWIW,

laura

I would simply like to see where in AddressFinder documentation it is clear what fields are changed and which are returned with the old data attached.  I can't even find a user guide for AddressFinder or Data Enrichment Services so other than KB what documentation is there? This is something that is never fun to catch when you have been producing county giving reports incorrectly since you started using AddressFinder and THEN you go to Knowledgebase to find out it is not working as you thought.  How many other subscribers have no idea this is happening?  Especially those who are not subscribed to this forum.

I understand now WHY the service works the way it does.  My issue is with the lack of communication/documentation about how the service works and what recommendations you have to keep your data clean after using AddressFinder.  I do not recall receiving anything when I signed up for the service at my new job that explained how it worked.  I think it should become practice to send to all new subscribers of the service Knowledgebase solution BB273890 or some other hints and tricks document explaining how to fully get the service to work for you.  In fact, due to staff turnover maybe it should come through every time we download our data from AddressFinder. 

for future releases - for those of us who have an AddressAccelerator subscription I would recommend that you add to the interface a checkbox that says - validate all new addresses - so it does it automatically when they are imported.  Or you could even add to the interface a place to "subscribe to county append" if you want to and have your data come back with the new counties.

In Feb, I found out that AddressFinder doesn't automatically do anything, NOR give you any options to do anything with addresses returned as "no forwarding address" "po box closed" etc - I thought, as did my predecessors and coworkers, that these addresses that are no longer valid were marked as Do Not Send and/or the constituent marked No Valid Address.  Not the case.

I have now set up a series of Queries and Global Changes to change the info source, unmark the Send Mail box, mark the No Valid Address box and then more queries for ones that we need to research/look up (like those with active memberships or volunteer status).  But it was a big problem that we didn't realize was there.

This last time, in May, when I got my file returned, it came with a link to a video.  The video explained how to submit and download NCOA returns...and then I clarified things like the County box (which we just started using) with Chat Support (which I HIGHLY recommend).  I now have a series of queries and Global Changes to correct or add the County to records according to zip codes - and then a query to show which ones are in zip codes that straddle two or more counties and need to be looked up (www.melissadata.com - you can copy and paste the address block and it will basically give you everything you need). 

A big pain, but the video and subsequent chat support helped me to write my procedure and it's documentation.  And I'm lucky enough to have a laptop now, so while it's slow moving, I can run Global Changes from home while watching tv or cooking dinner (instead of twiddling my thumbs late at night and eating from the vending machine).

Nice to know that I'm not alone, though. 

We don't have Address Accelerator - what's the difference, what does one do that the other doesn't?  Not that we can afford to add anything right now.

I know I'm mega-late in responding to this thread but FWIW...

 1) Yes, painfully aware...

2)  NO.  I didn't.

3) New county would be awesome but I saw in BB's reply that they can't do that.  I think that's a bit of a cop out because you can (at least I do) set up a manual AddressAccelerator batch for all my returned forwardable addresses which cleans up the county codes.  I'm thinking that if BB really wanted to, they could extend the capabilities of AddressFinder to add on the capabilities of AddressAccelerator in this regard for people that have both services.