Bug with Constituent letters in RE 7.93 patch 11

Gina Gerhard

I did not know about this bug, so thought I would share the information and the suggested workaround from Blackbaud below.  I followed their suggestion and was able to fix the issue.



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We recently went up to RE version 7.93.5782 patch 11 and just discovered this bug that Blackbaud has acknowledged is an issue with patch 11.



When running constituent letters, if you are merging out the organization name from preferred address it's now NOT printing out the organization name but INSTEAD printing out the constituent's system name.

• ex: Our letters used to be:  Ms. Jane Smith, ABC Organization, address....
• Now they are coming out:  Ms. Jane Smith, Jane Smith, address ...WHOOPS!

Blackbaud says the fix will be in the 7.95 release (whenever they make that available and we're all comfortable upgrading).



In the meantime here's their solution (I've not tried this yet). You've got to do this on EVERY letter format ....

 

In the meantime, you can modify the export and letters to use Address Processing>Organization Name instead.  This will give you the Organization name you are wanting.  Unfortunately, it would also mean you would have to add Organization Name to the output of the Export, then edit the Word Merge to remove the Organization name from Preferred Address and insert it from Address Processing instead.  There is no quick swap out for that part of the process.

I'm including a Knowledgebase article for your reference on this topic: Individual Constituent Name exports in the Preferred Address Organization Name field in a Constituent Export

http://bbmarketplace.force.com/bbknowledge/articles/Article/73088



Here's a brief run down of the steps to make the necessary change.  Unfortunately, you will need to do this with each Letter/Export that has Organization Name from Preferred Address.



1. Go to Config>Letters

2. Open a letter impacted by this problem

3. Click the button to Edit Export

4. In the output of the Export, go to Constituent>Address>Address Processing>Organization Name

5. In the Address Processing window, leave Individual Address as Preferred Address

6. In the same Address Processing window, switch to the Org Addrss tab; change Step 1 to Export only the organization's address and leave it at Preferred Address and click OK

7. Click Edit merge document at the top of the screen

8. Locate the field for Organization Address and remove it

9. Go to the Add-Ins tab, click the drop down next to Insert Raiser's Edge field and select Organization Name from Constituent>Address>Address Processing>Organization Name.

10. When all of the Organization Name fields have been replaced, click the Add-Ins tab and click Save and return to RE7 to Merge

11. Click Save and Close on the Export

JoAnn Strommen

Gina,

Is this bug an issue doing letters from actions, constituent record, in Mail?  When is the problem occuring?



That is the version of RE we are running and I have not noticed this as an issue in Mail functions.  Receipts/Donor Acknowledgement letters are pulling org name and contact fine.  Am running some receipts right now and they look fine.  Just wondering in what circumstances I need to watch diligently.

Gina Gerhard

JoAnn - It's my understanding this is only an issue when running constituent letters (using the Letters function on a record).  But those letters are created with merged Exports so it might also affect any merged Exports you have created as well.



And this also may not be affecting you if your merged Exports are using address fields from Address Processing. It's only happening when you are using fields from other Address fields (like from Primary Business, All Addresses).

• The easiest way to check is to go to a record where you have multiple addresses, and run your Constituent letters or exports.  See if the Organization name is coming up 'funky' like ours did with the constituent's name instead of the Organization.  If the Organization name is coming up OK, then there's no problem with that letter/export.
• Also run other letters as well, like gift or action letters to check for the problem.
• I went ahead and checked all our letter formats (constituent, action, gift, etc.) and made sure they were all based on the Address Processing addresses.
• Many of our letter formats were somewhat 'messy' with address fields pulled in different ways. So this was an opportunity from me to clean them up and get them more consistent.

John Heizer

I didn't even know they'd gone as high as Patch 11.  I'm pretty sure we're on Patch 8.

Tatyana Leifman

This bug also affects Constituent Exports when exporting Preferred Address Lines or Preferred Address Block.  I encountered it when pulling info into an Excel spreadsheet (donor names & addresses) for our mailhouse.  I had an Export that was set up with all the relevant fields including preferred address, and then one day I noticed that the Organization name column is now populated by the donor name rather than the organization name.  Had to change the preferred address fields to Address Processing.