Action Reports for Career Development Center

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Our University Career Development Center would like to use RE to record their contact with area businesses and their relationship with them. We are looking at entering Action Reports on the already-existing Corporate accounts in RE. I'm wondering if others use RE to assist their campus Career office. If so I would love to hear about the pros and cons and what challenges you have faced.



-Anna Miller, Director of Annual Giving, Minnesota State University Moorhead

Comments

  • Not quite the same, but I am in the midst (breaking for end-of-year data entry madness) of setting up our Foster Care Program staff with RE access.  My hope is that they'll be able to use NXT, which does mean me entering new consituents at present, but they will use RE to track the various communications, qualifications/trainings, and details about our Foster and Foster-to-Adopt families.  More than just Actions, we're looking at also using part of the Volunteer Module and potentially other sections as well.



    My biggest recommendation is to use an Action Type (or Types with a prefix so they all appear together) or an Action Category (one you don't use for anything else, like Advocacy) for the Career Office.  Then you can easily report on just those records and also easily exclude those records from Development reports.



    Another thing you might consider is adding a Constituent Code to the applicable records, and in Security restricting access to only those records for the Career Office.  That may help make RE less daunting to them, and protect your other records from possible user-error edits/deletions.  If there is data on the records they'll be using that you don't feel they need, there may be additional Security options.



    I've used Custom Views before to only show our Visitor Services staff at a previous job the information they needed to see...unfortunately, to edit anything, they had to go to the regular RE:7 view, which made me not care for Custom Views much (and they were time consuming to set up).



    If you're thinking about migrating to RE:NXT, and Actions are the only piece this office will be adding or editing, I think that would probably work out great for you.  Let me know if you're considering this route, and I'll share what I discover next month when I get back to setting up my db for our Foster Care staff and I can let you know better how it's working, what you can and cannot access/restrict for a User Security Group.
  • The pros of having any department record their outreach in the database is financial.  We've increased this kind of tracking and now our solicitors can target local businesses we already partner with for other projects and ask them to give.  Plus, if we have alumni working in those businesses we also can establish workplace giving programs.  Absolutely code these businesses with a constituency or an attribute to record this kind of relationship.



    We create a code for that department and then action type(s) that makes sense for them, with a leading acronym for their department.  We then restrict usage and editing of this type to their department, but allow our solicitors to view the actions.  Then we create clear policy and process for usage to ensure that they can get the reporting they need, but that we can piggyback and glean info for our fundraising purposes, all while keeping a structure in place that is controlled and logical.  Action defaults are also created with their department acronym leading the name.  Teach users to filter their view on the action tab for their department's action types, if there is a great deal of actions from other users, and this will help to not overwhelm them with data.



    Action attributes come in handy here.  Again, we name the attribute with their dept. acronym and create attributes and tables that track the data important to their reporting needs.



    All around it's a win-win.

    The Cons are only that you need to work with that department to make this function in a way that meets their needs but is as simple as possible so that it actually gets ued.  You will need to be kept in the loop when there is turnover so that new users are trained and new department heads are on-boarded.  And then you need to train, write instructions, create reports.  The inital work to establish this is hefty, if you want it to be done right and utilized.

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