Action Tab Notes

Nancy Hegdahl

Can you please help me out with the discussion we are having here. Do you put notes in your action tab notes more than in your notes tab? Is there a best practice for this?

Michael Langley 2

Nancy Hegdahl:

Can you please help me out with the discussion we are having here. Do you put notes in your action tab notes more than in your notes tab? Is there a best practice for this?

My rule has always been. If it is simple information not regarding a contact or move with the donor, then it goes into Notes. If the note is regarding a move or a contact of any kind, it should go with the corresponding action.

Ryan Hyde

We only use the Notes tab for longer pieces of information, such as news articles copied/pasted from the internet, obituaries, longer stories that the constituent has provided for us via a survey, that sort of thing. Any description of an interaction we had with the constituent belongs in actions. 

Austen Brown

Nancy Hegdahl:

Can you please help me out with the discussion we are having here. Do you put notes in your action tab notes more than in your notes tab? Is there a best practice for this?

We use Action Notes to detail what the action was about, what was discussed, etc.  Constituent notes are reserved for important constituent information (i.e. biographical information) or recording the reasoning behind changes to the constituent record (i.e. marking a constituent record as "do not solicit").

Elizabeth Johnson

Hi Nancy, I echo Ryan and Austen. When I inherited my current database they were no real guidelines other than most things went into notes. I explained that was not an effective way to use the system and was told we were doing it so long this way not to change it. I cleaned up the table options after having locked them down. Made it easier to use actions when they were so moved. Enter new director who agreed and now I'm trying to move everything whenever that project rises to the surface in priority. I love using ImportOmatic for this as I can move everything in one import once I get it clean enough. Otherwise, I couldn't include the solicitor (action taker).


When an action happens it is logical to me that it goes into the action tab. What that also means is that you can report on it better (perhaps this will change over time with NXT since notes and actions are now grouped together) Right now, if I want to report on notes I export them and throw them into an MS Access report I built so I can kick them out in a nice clean fashion. Also, images embedded in notes, in my experience do not show up in NXT. So please keep those in the media tab. There have been some great threads on that lately.


It has been a while since your original post. How did your conversations go? Did you make any decisions already?

Nancy Hegdahl

Thanks
Elizabeth, yes the director told me to follow my instinct and to
put everything in actions. So that is the way we do it. I like what
you said here.

 

Nancy
Hegdahl

Donor
Records and Finance Administrative Assistant

United
Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities

3000
5^th Street NW

New
Brighton, MN 55112

651-255-6110
nhegdahl@unitedseminary.edu

 

Michelle Geange

Ryan Hyde:

We only use the Notes tab for longer pieces of information, such as news articles copied/pasted from the internet, obituaries, longer stories that the constituent has provided for us via a survey, that sort of thing. Any description of an interaction we had with the constituent belongs in actions. 

Hi Ryan

for info such as you mentioned above, we save to the media tab and make a general note about it in "notes".

Ryan Hyde

We use the Media tab for photos and scans of newspaper articles. If the article is online though, we typically copy & paste it into notes. 

Heather MacKenzie

Here's how we do it:


If the notes we want to put in are related to contact/interaction with the donor (aka an Action) then they go into the notes tab of the action.


The Notes tab only holds notes like why and when we marked a record inactive or why we marked no valid address, or that we learned their child just graduated high school as the valedictorian.


The Media tab holds scans of anything - documentation related to a gift, the wealth profile, an article, etc.