This field is on several objects and becomes "read only" after the first time it is saved on a record.  Is there any way to get write access to this field, once it has been set?  What is it's purpose / why is it read-only?

Thanks in Advance --

The importID is the Key to the record - some places do not make constituent ID's mandatory so the importID field is a field that allows you to link to an existing constituent record so that you do global updates or changes to information in the record. This is extremely helpful if you use features such as addressaccelerator or if you send data to a mail house and have it run through NCOA and then want to upload the changes back into your database.

Chris Anderson:

This field is on several objects and becomes "read only" after the first time it is saved on a record.  Is there any way to get write access to this field, once it has been set?  What is it's purpose / why is it read-only?

Thanks in Advance --

If you absolutely need to change it, you can create an import file with existing data, change the ImportID on that file and then import the file into RE.  Depending on whether you are doing a constituent record, address record, relationship record, gift record, etc... there are varying degrees of difficulty, but if you just do a record update on the import based on constituent ID it's fairly straight forward.  Generally, I wouldn't mess with this too much.  You can use aliases or many other fields for alternate ID names.  You need the import ID fields to import and identify relationships within certain tables.  If you do any imports, you'll either identify your own ImportIDs before the import or the system will automatically generate one.

 

Jana