Converting from Abila to RE

Ryan McDaniel

Hi, we are in the process of switching over from Abila to RE and we have very inconsistent data that uses various terms to describe the same thing – sometimes they would be an attribute, sometimes a constituent code, sometimes they are just written differently.


My thought is it would be best to take a list from a K-12 school that has already done it and make it our own rather than reinvent the wheel. If anyone would be able to share how they dealt with this or has a list they could share that would be amazing.


EX. We have, trustee, board, board member, and we have parent, current parent, hs parent just to share a couple of examples. I would love a priority list that says we have these constituent codes and below that we have these attributes:

1. Trustee
2. Parent
3. Alumni
4. Student...

Under Parent constituent code would then be attributes for current parent and alumni parent.


Not sure if there is a list that people would have or that can be downloaded from the database to show constituent codes and attributes (also ideally setup to submit to StatsOnline/DASL).


Thanks!

Ryan

Crystal Bruce

Discussion moved to Raiser's Edge forums. Thanks!

Marla Hager

Constituent codes in RE don't have their own attributes section or any sort of subcatetory (just the code and date fields), so you'd have to use the general constituent attributes bucket for those. We converted from millennium 7.4 in 2010, and there was soooo much cleanup because millennium allowed so much more flexibility in fields and formatting and such.


As for constituent codes in RE, you have a primary, and then others are secondary codes. In our case, we have six actual (person) codes, then a bunch of sub-codes. The six are Graduate Alumnus, Alumnus (attended at some point but didn't graduate with the class), Current Parent, Past Parent, Friend, Student. Other codes such as Trustee, Alum Parent, Grandparent, etc. are all considered secondary codes. Also, we found that working with constituent codes with dates was a nightmare, so most things that would need dates like Trustee and such, we store as job assignments in the volunteer section. So an alum board member would have a primary code of Grad Alum, a secondary code of Trustee, then a job assignment of Trustee with start and stop dates. When they leave the board, the constituent code is deleted but the history stays in the volunteer section.


I'm not sure if that answers your question, but I'd be happy to help further!

Ryan McDaniel

Thank you Marla, this is exactly what I was looking for! I really want to set it up in the most efficient way while we have this chance. Next conversion meeting is this afternoon, so this was very helpful, thank you!