Media Tab Best Practices

Alicia Van Straten

Looking for some best practices on uploading information to the Media tab.  We upload the following types of information:

Scholarship Donor Agreements

Endowment Donor Agreements

Grant Applications

Proposals

Grant Award Letters

Grant Agreement Letters

Grant Decline Letters

Emails documenting the following - changes to scholarship criteria, scholarship renewal agreement emails... (thinking this should actions)

Check Stub Details

Grant Mid Way and Final Reports



As we have not had a procedure for making these consistent, these tabs are a mess.  So I'm looking for some good ideas that are out there for how to best streamline these.  We do not have the prospect module so we do all of our proposals and such in actions.  Example - we submit a grant application and are awarded the grant.  That is all tracked in actions.  A new action is added after the "Grant Submitted "action gets moved to awarded status that is a flag to do the final report to the funder.  When that time comes, we get notified to do the report (30 days out), go into RE to get more info as our outlook does not sync with Actions anymore after moving to Outlook 21013, find the correct action, then find the corresponding media entry to review the final report guidelines. Doable but cumbersome as the media tab is a mess.  We have cleaned up our Actions process so now moving onto next piece.  Appreciate hearing how other track/manage these pieces.  Thank you!

 

Jen Claudy

Your first consideration needs to be whether you are considering migrating to RE:NXT (now or relatively soon).  NXT Attachments replace the functionality of RE:7 Media, and unlike everything else (thus far), these pieces work very differently.  There are several other posts in the Community about this (I usually respond to anything regarding Media, because it's a big deal for us...we're in year 5 of 100% electronic filing).  You can find these posts by searching for "Attachments" (even if you're looking for RE:7 Media info and not considering migrating to NXT).  Read those posts, and message me if you want more info (I did a screen share with another Community member a few weeks ago, and showed her how it works, currently, as well as how I understand it will work eventually when this piece of NXT is "done").  NXT will someday (hopefully soon) allow you to put Attachments on more than just Constituent Records...somewhat how Media can be linked to Proposals in RE:7.



That said, I suggest that you do your clean up to use the Media Type to indicate the type of information, as in your list, and use the Title Field on the Media Records to indicate what it's related to.  We file all gift paperwork, and the pdfs are named like: c4567891+2015-12+g12345...the Constituent ID+Year-Month+Gift ID.  The filename is then entered as the Media Record's Title.  Since (unfortunately) not all Records have IDs (specifically Actions and Proposals), you can either create one on an Attribute, use the Import ID (except it's sort of hidden in the Properties), or use some other field that identifies, in your case the Action, what it relates to...something that is unique to that Constituent and easy to recognize.



You can then make the Title Field appear as a column on the Media Tab, and sort by it, so that can help a lot in finding the right record.  As I mentioned, we put gift paperwork on the Media Tab...when the ack letters are signed, they get scanned and then added to the files, but we open the paperwork file, save to the desktop, add the ack letter page, and re-embed to RE:7 (then delete the original...which seems like extra work, but our staff often reference the gift paperwork when editing and personalizing the ack letters).  But the point is, one Media Record per gift...not one for the gift paperwork and another for the ack letter.



Hope this helps give you some ideas.  I don't know, because I haven't done it (yet, I have a little scrubbing to do there on some older stuff), but I don't think you can export & import or globally change Media Records...



Oh, if you are considering NXT (or Hosting, if you are Locally Installed currently...NXT must be Hosted), you will want to be embedding Media, not Linking....and possibly putting off this cleanup until you're there.  (NXT Attachments are drag-and-drop, which is significantly easier & faster than RE:7.)

Alicia Van Straten

Jennifer Claudy:

Your first consideration needs to be whether you are considering migrating to RE:NXT (now or relatively soon).  NXT Attachments replace the functionality of RE:7 Media, and unlike everything else (thus far), these pieces work very differently.  There are several other posts in the Community about this (I usually respond to anything regarding Media, because it's a big deal for us...we're in year 5 of 100% electronic filing).  You can find these posts by searching for "Attachments" (even if you're looking for RE:7 Media info and not considering migrating to NXT).  Read those posts, and message me if you want more info (I did a screen share with another Community member a few weeks ago, and showed her how it works, currently, as well as how I understand it will work eventually when this piece of NXT is "done").  NXT will someday (hopefully soon) allow you to put Attachments on more than just Constituent Records...somewhat how Media can be linked to Proposals in RE:7.



That said, I suggest that you do your clean up to use the Media Type to indicate the type of information, as in your list, and use the Title Field on the Media Records to indicate what it's related to.  We file all gift paperwork, and the pdfs are named like: c4567891+2015-12+g12345...the Constituent ID+Year-Month+Gift ID.  The filename is then entered as the Media Record's Title.  Since (unfortunately) not all Records have IDs (specifically Actions and Proposals), you can either create one on an Attribute, use the Import ID (except it's sort of hidden in the Properties), or use some other field that identifies, in your case the Action, what it relates to...something that is unique to that Constituent and easy to recognize.



You can then make the Title Field appear as a column on the Media Tab, and sort by it, so that can help a lot in finding the right record.  As I mentioned, we put gift paperwork on the Media Tab...when the ack letters are signed, they get scanned and then added to the files, but we open the paperwork file, save to the desktop, add the ack letter page, and re-embed to RE:7 (then delete the original...which seems like extra work, but our staff often reference the gift paperwork when editing and personalizing the ack letters).  But the point is, one Media Record per gift...not one for the gift paperwork and another for the ack letter.



Hope this helps give you some ideas.  I don't know, because I haven't done it (yet, I have a little scrubbing to do there on some older stuff), but I don't think you can export & import or globally change Media Records...



Oh, if you are considering NXT (or Hosting, if you are Locally Installed currently...NXT must be Hosted), you will want to be embedding Media, not Linking....and possibly putting off this cleanup until you're there.  (NXT Attachments are drag-and-drop, which is significantly easier & faster than RE:7.)

Thank you Jennifer for the response!  Honestly, I have not looked into NXT at all for our organization and not sure what it is all about.  We have a RE consultant/trainer coming in early January so I may ask him to give me more info.  I like using the gift ID as a way to tie the gift to whatever paperwork that goes with the gift as that gets automatically created when the gift is created.  We have a very small staff and so less manual is better.  I have been looking at the title field on Media and thought the same thing you did, how can we use that to "code" items and make them easier to find/recognize.  We just have so many things that we put in the media tab (some I'm not sure that should go there) that I have to really sit down and try to categorize/organize them and then just come up with some business rules/procedures that will make sense for all of us.  That is always the challenging part.

Unfortunately I don't think we can limit to just one attachment per one gift.  For example Grants.  They have the check themselves that typically comes with a check stub full of some sort of donor/fund information.  Then there is the grant agreement letter we need to sign and send back, then there is the grant award letter with reporting rules and guidelines and then the final report we send the funder after the grant has been used.... I wish there was a way to add additional items to an already posted media attachment.  If there is, please share!  Also, you mentioned the following "somewhat how Media can be linked to Proposals in RE:7."   How do you do that if you don't have the prospect module?  I would love to add proposals or word documents to an action but it is a mess with the limited upload capabilities.  Am I missing something here?

Jen Claudy

Definitely talk to the person coming in January about RE:NXT, but also check in with your BB Account Manager, because that is likely the best source for information like pricing.  Plus, that person can put you in touch with someone like me as a reference, for a phone call to talk about the product.  RE:NXT is essentially a new user interface for RE...your data is still in your RE database, and you can still access everything from the RE:7 user interface, exactly as you do now (except if you're a Local Install...you'd have to move to Hosting, and that does have some differences, good and bad).  You can then access your database from a web browser on any device from desktop in the office to mobile phone in the car to tablet at home on the sofa.



When you need multiple Media Records per Gift/Grant, I would either tack on something at the end of the filename/Title, or add a Description to each.  For us, on grants, when paperwork comes in like you're describing, it's usually in a different month, so that creates a unique filename, and then I might add a short Description as well.



You can't link to Proposals in RE:7 if you don't have the Prospect Module.  I believe that module comes with RE:NXT, though.  I apologize, it was a little late and I forgot you had said you don't have the Prospect Module.  In RE:7, you can link a Media Record to a Proposal Record which means the Media Record can be accessed from the Constituent Record Media Tab or the Proposal Record Media Tab.