Q&E for emails of individuals who have volunteered at least one time in the past years

Julie Gurnon

Hello Community Members!


I'm hoping someone can help me with my problem. My goal is to end up with an Excel document that has the email addresses for individuals who have volunteered during the past five years so I can upload those emails into a Volunteer Group in Constant Constact. I have email phone types set up as Home Email 1 and Home Email 2 (for spouse) and Work Email 1 and Work Email 2 (also for spouse).


I've tried everything I can think of to create a query and run an export but nothing is working. The last query I created was Individual/Dynamic with Criteria of Constituent Code = Volunteer. Then I tried to pare that down in the Export, but it is giving duplicates for those who volunteer frequently. I always have trouble with more complex queries like these, and I become frustrated after trying for hours to figure them out! In addition, my organization no longer pays for chat or phone assistance from Blackbaud, so I'm on my own. 


So, as I mentioned earlier, I would be grateful for any feedback.


Thank you!

Alicia Barevich

Do you code volunteers with the volunteer module? Are you querying on the Hours area of the volunteer tab? Or Job Assignments? You'll want to get the group you want in the query (it will give you duplicates), then attach that query to an export, with a "Phone" field set up for each of your 4 email types. (Or, would you really email both Home1 and Business1? You could just set up two phone fields, one for either Home1 or Business1, and one for Home2 or Business2).


Does that make sense?

JoAnn Strommen

Create your constituent query of volunteers. Do not worry about duplicates.  Go to the Export function (not export icon in query) and use your query for the records to include.  Then export your phone (email) types. You should get one line per name with the associated emails.


(Not sure how process may have changed for 7.96)

Melissa S Graves

How this query is set up 100% depends on how you record your volunteers. Not everyone uses constituent codes - some use the volunteer module, some use attributes, etc.


And if you have duplicates I have to ask - are you exporting directly from query? If so, please do not. Use the export module.

Julie Gurnon

Thank you, JoAnn. I followed your instruction
but came up with the attached Excel document.

I did go to the Export function, selected my
query, and under Criteria, I put First Name, Last Name, and Under
Phone Type, selected all 4 emails and put 4 as the number of
columns to be exported. Any ideas what I may be doing wrong?

Julie Gurnon

Thank you, Alicia. The only way I can query on
Volunteers is by constituency code, or under Time Sheets. I must be
doing something wrong in the Export process, but I can’t figure out
what!

JoAnn Strommen

By selecting the query you don't need additional "criteria". Is that where you made the selections or are they under "output".


Don't see an attachment to your post. But I know you can export multiple 'phone' listings as I do it frequently.


What version of RE are you using? - just to know where differences might occur.  I just looked in one of my Exports - i pulled phone from "Preferred Address / Preferred Phones" - that may be a difference.

Julie Gurnon

Thank you, Melissa and Joanne. We track volunteers by Constituency Codes or by Hours and Dates under Time Sheets. I am using the Export process as well. My last attempt yielded the attached spreadsheet.


Joanne, I will had included the phone types in the export Criteria and not the Query Criteria. I'll switch those and try again!



 

JoAnn Strommen

Sorry, I mis-spoke.  Create your query (group) of volunteers - no output needed other than name to see if you've got your volunteers. Don't bother with phone fields here as you need to select them in Export. Save. In Export, for records to use select that query, check the box to export both constituents separately to get your spouses who are volunteers also.  This does assume that they each have a record RE.  Then in output, select your names, go to preferred address > preferred phones. Select to export 4 types and choose those types.  (I have version 7.93 so my phones/emails may be listed differently/function differently if you are using 7.96.)


Does that make more sense?

Julie Gurnon

That makes sense, JoAnne. In my version, it doesn't have preferred phone types, so I went back to selecting the four fields as Criteria under Phone Type.


The columns do appear in the exported Excel document, but there are many lines without an email address at all, and those that do have them, they are not the actual addresses but just Home Email 1, Work Email 2, etc. I'm not sure where to go from here. It's almost lunch time for me, so I'll take a break from it. Maybe I'm unable to do it with this version. Thank you so much for trying, though!! I really appreciate it.

Alan French

Rather than (or instead of) outputting the Phone Type column, you need to use Phone Number to get the actual email address. You can leave phone type in there as well if you want, but if you've only got one type per column then there's probably not much point - you could just rename the column headings to reflect the email type.

Julie Gurnon

Alan French:

Rather than (or instead of) outputting the Phone Type column, you need to use Phone Number to get the actual email address. You can leave phone type in there as well if you want, but if you've only got one type per column then there's probably not much point - you could just rename the column headings to reflect the email type.

Thanks, Alan! I'll give it a shot.