I've recently started an internship and have been asked to assist in cleaning up some constituent records and appeals.  Apparently there have been a few different methods used in the past and they are going to agree on best practices from this point forward but want to make the most of the information collected in the past.  In reading past posts it seems to be agreed that solicitations should be done as appeals and mailings should be done as actions.  If this is the case is it possible to convert a past appeal to an action so they do not show up as an unsuccessful solicitation?  My second question is can I retroactively apply information to the comments field?  And lastly I noticed some appeals were showing up twice on constituent records.  What is the easiest way to figure out why and eliminate the duplicate one?  Sorry if this is basic stuff or a bit vague, any information would be appreciated.

The place to start is A: figure out why they have had cleanup projects in the past and yet they are back here needing to do it again.  This sounds to me like a lack of a regular auditing process after the last cleanup and lack of policies and procedures (either lack of them being created or lack of them being followed).  I know you are only an intern but I highly suggest that you not start a project like this without building in the policies and procedures and leaving with a regular auditing process in place.

Where I start after that is probably an audit.  You would just query on how many "errors" you have in the database.  Then you prioritize them and as you "clean" them up you develop or update policies and procedures and a corresponding regular audit process.

You can't convert appeals to actions but you can globally add an action using a query of who has that current appeal.  Then you can globally delete the appeal.

I have never found a  good way to query on or gloabally eliminate duplicate appeal assignments.  I clean them one by one as I find them.

Hey thanks for the quick response.  I'll keep you all posted.
D