Managing Relationship & Acknowledgee Addresses

Dariel Dixon 2

I realized today while I was getting ready to do my tribute acknowledgements that I had an issue with some of the acknowledgement addresses.  We had some constituents that had new or updated addresses, that were being reported at both their preferred updated address, and an older address.  I realized later that the relationship address for the constituent had not been updated even though the record itself had changed to a new preferred address. 


I realized that I would have to break the link and recreate it for the address to change, but that doesn't seem like an optimal way to handle what should be a pretty routine situation.  Is this an issue anyone else has run into, and how did/do you handle it? 

Keith Wilson 2

Hi Dariel, when you change an address on the constituent record, you should get a dialogue box asking to update any shared addresses. A quick review of the linked addresses should tell you whether or not you want to update all addresses associated with that record. If you select the option to update all linked addresses, it will change the address on the relationship record as well.


Grant it, there are instances where you might not want to update all shared addresses, and in that case you will need to break the link individually and then re-link to the current address manually.


Hope that helps.

Keith Wilson

 

Dariel Dixon 2

That's a good question Keith Wilson‍!  I honestly can't remember if I got that pop-up or not, or if I wanted to share the address or not.  I don't think I would not have shared it (the person the address would have been shared with is deceased).  I'm certain that I entered it as a new address, and not updated the already existing address, but the pop-up should have triggered either way.


I'll be on the lookout for these things in the future.

Keith Wilson 2

Actually, it only works if you make changes to the Primary Address on the constituent record. Adding a New Address only adds another address to the record and any linked addresses are unaffected. 


Attached are the steps I use to update/change a Constituent Address (in RE Database View).

Dariel Dixon 2

While I don't update the address in this exact same way, I definitely did set it as the new preferred address.  I thought that was what triggered the pop-up.

Paula Washburn

Is there a way to break the link of shared address globally?

I could not find the Linked? field to query on. I have searched the knowledge base but was hoping for a solution that was not individual to each record. Thank you for any suggestions!

JoAnn Strommen

@Paula Washburn I would be greatly surprised if there were. I do not know of any way to do this globally.

May I ask why you want to break the links? Personally I have many addresses in our db that are not linked and I wish they were so changes would be one step.

I see you've posted your question in an existing post. Does your question have something to do with acknowledgments?

Paula Washburn

@JoAnn Strommen
Thank you for responding! I replied here because it mentioned shared addresses. We have had several addresses changed “accidentally” that were linked and it is a mess! I do love the fact that they can be linked, but if not properly managed it can be a nightmare. Do you know if there is a field I can query? I know it shows up in my address tab as linked? yes or no; but I can't find the name of that field to query it.

JoAnn Strommen

@Paula Washburn I don't see it in query options but it is a field you can pull in Export. If you can query on records you want or worst case your whole db, you could get the info using export for what addresses are linked and the type of relationship.

Just a thought.

Paula Washburn

@JoAnn Strommen
Thank you so much! I am relatively new, and exports is new to me; but I did it! I truly appreciate your help! Have a great day!! ?

Keith Wilson 2

@Paula Washburn We have too many addresses that are NOT linked and that is a huge problem! AddressFinder will update the preferred address for a constituent but the spouse address remains unchanged because the addresses were not linked. We also work with a ton of organizations that may or may not share the address with the current contact which can add to the chaos. There are always different reasons to share or not share an address, but as much as possible I would recommend keeping them linked!

Paula Washburn

@Keith Wilson
Thank you for your response! I agree, if they have been linked properly, I would love to keep them! We have just had too many situations where mail was sent to the wrong place. We are trying to figure out “how” it happened but want to make sure it doesn't happen again.