Donors updating info online in wrong formats

Robin Richardson

More often than not, when we have online donations or updates to profiles online, constituents do not use the correct formatting - all lower case, or upper case, for example. Our gift accountant and I try to do this as we're processing gifts or updates but sometimes things get missed. Does anyone have any ideas about how to clean these up?  Any queries that can catch these? Thanks!

Sunshine Reinken Watson

These are best caught before you process them. I don't know of any built in queries that can find upper case, etc. I hope you find an easy solution!

Chris McGrane

Hello Robin,


You can use some basic Javascript to format fields upon user entry. Mandating the format of input fields has allowed us to clean up data and make it clear to the client the format of the input they are using. I'm happy to help anyone who isn't familiar with JS or implementing it in NetCommunity (hosted and non-hosted).


Here are some basic formatting examples I've setup for you to view. It includes basic formatting for Titles, Addresses and Phones. There are a lot of formatting possibilities but these are just to give you an idea.

https://ctsciencecenter.org/dev/format/

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions!


Chris McGrane
cmcgrane@ctsciencecenter.org


 

Robin Richardson

Thanks, Chris!  I don't have any Javascript experience and our web guy wants nothing to do with NetCommunity. I may be in touch with you at some point if I get brave enough!


Chris McGrane:

Hello Robin,


You can use some basic Javascript to format fields upon user entry. Mandating the format of input fields has allowed us to clean up data and make it clear to the client the format of the input they are using. I'm happy to help anyone who isn't familiar with JS or implementing it in NetCommunity (hosted and non-hosted).


Here are some basic formatting examples I've setup for you to view. It includes basic formatting for Titles, Addresses and Phones. There are a lot of formatting possibilities but these are just to give you an idea.

https://ctsciencecenter.org/dev/format/

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions!


Chris McGrane
cmcgrane@ctsciencecenter.org


 

 

Chris McGrane

Hello Robin,


I cant say I blame your web guy as NetCommunity is a poorly written piece of software that no longer complies with modern web standards. If you do feel like implementing these scripts, it is very easy to do so.


Thank you,


Chris McGrane

Michael Steven

Hi Chris, I wouild be interested in formatting some fields within NetCommunity to a standard format, namely converting a bank account holder field to all caps.


It would also be nice to capitalising First name and Surname, and each word in Address Lines and formatting Phone number into the format '0000 000 0000'.


I had a look at your examples, and think I can see how they work, but as this example is creating and modifying fields, not just Javascript to amend existing NetCommunity fields...

 

Chris McGrane

Hello Michael,


Send me a PM with your org site / the page with the form and I'll make an example for you.


CM

Michael Steven

Hi Warren,


Thanks for the message - we were actually in contact with a colleague of yours last year, and unfortunately your product paired with PCA predict would not be economical for us due to low volumes. We also have Address Accelerator within RE, so all addresses are run through this on the backend anyway - we just want to not be warned about profile updates, when the only difference is london vs London etc.


Also, thanks to Chris - his solution helped get fields into the correct cases using CSS - UPDATE - Actually, I jumped the gun there - the CSS actually only changes what is displayed - whatever the user typed is still fed through to RE, think this needs to be some JS to actually convert the values in the fields.


Thanks,


Mike

Michael Steven

Actually, I jumped the gun there - the CSS actually only changes what is displayed - whatever the user typed is still fed through to RE, think this needs to be some JS to actually convert the values in the fields.

Chris McGrane

Warren, solicitation is not allowed on the Blackbaud forums.

Chris McGrane

Michael, here is an updated version of my proposed fix. This will change the input value to uppcase when the user types within the input.

https://jsfiddle.net/notchris/1ykp0h4d/1/


-CM

Holly Herbert

Chris McGrane:
Warren, solicitation is not allowed on the Blackbaud forums.

Thanks, Chris. I've removed Warren's posts from this thread because they violate our terms of use. Please let me know if you have any questions.


Holly

Community Manager

Michael Steven

Hi Chris, many thanks - I can confirm this does work as intended, with upper case coming through to NetCommunity as required.


However, I found the change  of case while typing visually distracting, and more importantly made it almost impossible for the user to go back and add to/edit what they had already typed in the box (e.g. try typing "Firstname Surname" then going back to add "Middlename" inbetween them - the cursor will jump to the very end after entering one character)


To solve this I changed 'keyup' to 'blur', so the case conversion only happens once they navagate away from the field, so perfect now.


Am I correct thinking that there is not a similar function like toUpperCase to change input to capitalized case, and this would require quite alot more JS?


Many thanks for your help.


Kind regards,


Mike

Chris McGrane

Ah that's also a good way to do it, nice solution using blur! Do you mean capitalized as in, John Doe opposed to JOHN DOE? If so, I'm sure that's not too difficult but you may have issues with people like myself with multiple capital letters in their last name.


-CM


 

Michael Steven

Yes - capitalizing the first letter of each word and leaving all others intact - in the same way CSS text-transform: capitalize; works but using JavaScript.


Multiple capital letters in their last name shouldn't be a problem - if it is similar to text-transform: capitalize; it will only capitalize the first letter and leave others as the user has input eg:


macdonald > Macdonald

macDonald > MacDonald


I would not want it to make any presumptions whether or not someone wishes any character after the first character to be capital or not; as both Macdonald and MacDonald are correct. Being in Scotland with over 2k constituents with Mc or Mac in their surname, we know to not make presumptions - else receive a prompt reply correcting us!


If there is a simple solution, that would be great, but I may be over-complicating the matter when can easily be resolved in RE when processing the transaction.


Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.


Mike

Chris McGrane

Hello Michael,


Here is a solution to capitalize the first letter of each word in an input.
Example:
https://jsfiddle.net/notchris/1ykp0h4d/4/


-CM

Michael Steven

Thanks, this works for us!


Again, I have gone for blur instead of keyup and have used input[id$= along with the last section of the field ID, so it can be applied to all fields ending with _txtFirstName for example across the site.


You can see the JS I use for both uppercase and capitaliza across multuple fields here:
https://jsfiddle.net/bc7ep1tv/


And in action here:
https://supporting.nms.ac.uk/donate/dd


One this is that it doesn't seem to work on the Address Lines field - I think that is down to it being a textarea field whereas the others are not?


Thanks for solving this for us!

Warren Sherliker 2

Chris McGrane:
Warren, solicitation is not allowed on the Blackbaud forums.

Hi Chris,


I did want to open up another feed on this. We have loads of solutions that, as I am sure you are aware, can help people with answers to questions exactly like this one. Surely it helps to let people know those solutions exist. We are also Blackbaud Preferred Partners so about as close to a partner solution as you can get.


What would you suggest is the best way forward. We don't wish to annoy anyone but you can see our point. To be honest I am happy to completely stop posting anything even though we have both free and paid for solutions. 


I did suggest that Blackbaud should look at providing 'add-on and partner' companion forums to each product line and that would be a way of clearly delineating between something that is paid or free and a partner product.


Really would be interested in your and other peoples views on this. We really are a company that do not want to annoy anyone, we are trying to help. It may be worth me posting this as a topic at some point? or if someone else feels like doing so please could they if they think it would help your forum users.


Cheers


Warren

Warren Sherliker 2

Michael Steven:

Thanks, this works for us!


Again, I have gone for blur instead of keyup and have used input[id$= along with the last section of the field ID, so it can be applied to all fields ending with _txtFirstName for example across the site.


You can see the JS I use for both uppercase and capitaliza across multuple fields here:
https://jsfiddle.net/bc7ep1tv/


And in action here:
https://supporting.nms.ac.uk/donate/dd


One this is that it doesn't seem to work on the Address Lines field - I think that is down to it being a textarea field whereas the others are not?


Thanks for solving this for us!

Just a hint on this - we made the change only on first entry to the field. The reason being that people often have their own preferences and after having seen data change they then have the option to go back and change it as needed. Names are a great example of this i.e. McShane or MacDonald ... You can apply rules but you will never fit everyone and only making case changes on first entry allows people to make those changes themselves if it matters to them. So add a [patched] attribute or similar to the field after you first change the case and don't do so in future if the patched attr exists.


Anyway - there you go, good luck.


Cheers


Warren