Marking Primary Addressee/Salutation as required fields after converting non-constituent to constituent?

Carol Chen

Hi Folks,


Does anyone happen to know if there is any way to make the Addressee/Salutation fields REQUIRED fields when converting an individual non-constituent record into a constituent record?


This situation often comes up for us when a donor who passes away and we are looking to convert their non-constituent surviving spouse on record into a new constituent records using the "Add this individual as a constituent" function. However, this step appears to skip over the Primary Addressee/Salutation field requirement so we've been able to save the converted records with the Addressee/Saltuation required fields as blank.


For now, we are managing these blank required fields thorugh a maintenance query.


We currently do have the individual primary addressee and primary salutation fields check marked as required fields under Config > Fields > Constituent but so far this requirement only seems to work when we created brand New Individual records vs. converting non-constituent to constituent records.


Any help/advice is much appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Steven Cinquegrana 2

Hi Carol,


This might work for you, it might not.


Under Configuration/Business Rules/Constituent options/Deceased options, there are checkboxes as follows:


1. If the deceased has a spouse ... Make the spouse a constituent, and further down

2. Prompt to update the spouse addressee/salutations.


This combination might be useful because, on saving the deceased Constituent, you should be prompted to ensure that the spouse's addressee and salutation fields are entered or changed.

Full disclosure: I haven't had time to try it today but I do recall this being setup on a client's installation a while ago and doing the job. Let us know how you go.


Cheers,

Steve Cinquegrana | CEO and Principal Developer | Protégé Solutions

Carol Chen

Thank you Steve --


This works for deceased records!


Under Configuration/Business Rules/Constituent options/Deceased options, there are checkboxes as follows:

1. If the deceased has a spouse ... Make the spouse a constituent, and further down
2. Prompt to update the spouse addressee/salutations.


Any suggestions on setting required fields for other non-constituent to constituent converted records that are NOT deceased that include, but are not limited to --

> Converting a non-constituent spouse to a constituent records

> Creating a memorial records out of a spouse record


Thanks!

Steven Cinquegrana 2

Alas, nothing springs to mind that can be done directly via the RE UI, Carol.


I bang on a bit in these forums about the beneifts of the VBA Module in these situations, and this would be another situation where a triggered event can be programmed to prompt a user to add/update these fields on Constituent_OnSave.


I wish the VBA Module weren't so expensive: so few organizations seem to have it though it's a very useful adjunct to the out-of-the-box functionality.


Cheers, Steve

Ryan Hyde

For non-deceased spouse situations, I wonder if it's possible to set up a business rule to pop up at you and yell "Hey! Remember Addressee/Salutation!" when you convert the relationship to a constituent and open the constituent up. All you'd need to do is pipe in your maintenace query into business rules and write whatever you want for the popup message.


The only reason I'm not 100% confident this will work is because I'm not sure RE sees the constituent record as an actual constituent until you hit save, so it might not yell at you until you go back in to the record, which would defeat the purpose. 

Jen Claudy

Unfortunately, I suspect that the last paragraph of Ryan's post is correct.  RE won't view the record as fitting the business rule until you open the full Constituent record itself and it won't view the relationship as a full Constituent record until you save it and reopen.  Please do some testing and post back here with what you find, because I'm sure it'll come in handy for others...and we might be wrong.  


I know at my last org, we had Primary Constituent Code as a required field and when creating a Constituent record from a non-constituent Relationship, it would pop up and require a Constituent Code to be entered.  But I can't recall if that was when choosing to convert the Relationship to Constituent or when clicking the Go To button to open the new Constituent record.  And Addr/Sals could be different.


You may be stuck relying on training for staff to remember to enter those in and an audit query to periodically check for those missing the Addr/Sals.


FYI if you haven't found the Go To button...it's the blue arrow with the tail.  Found on a number of different records, like on Gifts that will take you to the associated Pledge or Payment or Constituent (especially helpful for soft credits where you are opening the Gift from the soft-credited constituent's record).




 

Carol Chen

Thanks foir your feecback everyone!


Ryan and Jen - I'll do some testing based on your suggestions and report back to update with my findings...!

Carol Chen

Happy Monday Folks!  


Did some testing in RE and here are the result to report back with --

• RE indeed appears to have forgotten to program that a converted record is also a "new record", so the default required fields for converted from non-constituent to constistuent records appear to be cancelled out and don't work.
• Ryan -- you're correct: RE does not see the converted constituent record as an actual constituent yet until after hitting save so no yelling reminder to populate the required addressee/saluation fields
• Jen -- you're also correct: RE won't view the record as fitting the business rule until you open the full Constituent record itself and it won't view the relationship as a full Constituent record until you save it and reopen it either via Go To button or through regular constituent records search. The prompt to enter the Primary Constituent Code comes up after selecting "Add this Individual as a Constituent". The Go To button only becomes available after the new ConsID is generated after adding Primary Constituent Code.

As a result, I took a hybrid of Jen and Ryan's suggestions to fold into our data entry process moving forward for converting non-constituent to constituent record:

1. Create a Constituent maintenance query
   • ​​Key Indicator = Indidividual
   • AND (Primary Addressee = blank
   • OR Primary Salutations = blank)
2. Create a Business Rule
   • Config > Business Rules > User defined rules > Constituent > New Opening Constituent Rule
   • Add Rule name
   • Find and link Query Name (the Constituent maintenance query you created above)
   • Add Message > exact alert pop-up text > "Hey! Remember Addressee/Salutation!"
   • Select checkboxes for Execute this rule when accessing these records directly: for both Gifts and Actions since we want Addressee/Saluation fields entered correctly so that gift acknoweldgments and any letters generated will populate the correct donor info.
3. Open non-constituent record you want to convert into a constituent record
   • "Add this Individual as a Constituent" 
   • Add Constituency: Individual
   • Date from: <current>
   • Save > ID field generates a new donor ConsID
   • Select Go To button on the newly created records (to verify new record is entered correctly,open it and review all tabs)
4. If any alerts pop-up when opening the new record, fix and address any issues highlighted.

We will mainly be adding steps#3-4 above to our data entry process as a training for all existing and new RE users moving forward.

This conversion process is especially relevant for us post fundraising event after we gather attendee contact info.


We'll also be scheduling to run the missing addressee/salutation maintenance query as a part of our daily acknoweldgment process.


Many thanks for everyone's help troubleshooting this question.

Please let me know if there is anything else I may be missing!

 

Ryan Hyde

Carol Chen:

Happy Monday Folks!  


Did some testing in RE and here are the result to report back with --

• RE indeed appears to have forgotten to program that a converted record is also a "new record", so the default required fields for converted from non-constituent to constistuent records appear to be cancelled out and don't work.
• Ryan -- you're correct: RE does not see the converted constituent record as an actual constituent yet until after hitting save so no yelling reminder to populate the required addressee/saluation fields
• Jen -- you're also correct: RE won't view the record as fitting the business rule until you open the full Constituent record itself and it won't view the relationship as a full Constituent record until you save it and reopen it either via Go To button or through regular constituent records search. The prompt to enter the Primary Constituent Code comes up after selecting "Add this Individual as a Constituent". The Go To button only becomes available after the new ConsID is generated after adding Primary Constituent Code.

As a result, I took a hybrid of Jen and Ryan's suggestions to fold into our data entry process moving forward for converting non-constituent to constituent record:

1. Create a Constituent maintenance query
   • ​​Key Indicator = Indidividual
   • AND (Primary Addressee = blank
   • OR Primary Salutations = blank)
2. Create a Business Rule
   • Config > Business Rules > User defined rules > Constituent > New Opening Constituent Rule
   • Add Rule name
   • Find and link Query Name (the Constituent maintenance query you created above)
   • Add Message > exact alert pop-up text > "Hey! Remember Addressee/Salutation!"
   • Select checkboxes for Execute this rule when accessing these records directly: for both Gifts and Actions since we want Addressee/Saluation fields entered correctly so that gift acknoweldgments and any letters generated will populate the correct donor info.
3. Open non-constituent record you want to convert into a constituent record
   • "Add this Individual as a Constituent" 
   • Add Constituency: Individual
   • Date from: <current>
   • Save > ID field generates a new donor ConsID
   • Select Go To button on the newly created records (to verify new record is entered correctly,open it and review all tabs)
4. If any alerts pop-up when opening the new record, fix and address any issues highlighted.

We will mainly be adding steps#3-4 above to our data entry process as a training for all existing and new RE users moving forward.

This conversion process is especially relevant for us post fundraising event after we gather attendee contact info.


We'll also be scheduling to run the missing addressee/salutation maintenance query as a part of our daily acknoweldgment process.


Many thanks for everyone's help troubleshooting this question.

Please let me know if there is anything else I may be missing!

 

 

This is a really thorough solution. I like it! I may implement something similar in our database.