RE No Valid Address vs RENXT Do not Mail

Bob Wiebe

I have a question related to best suggested practice around “no valid address” for institutions which use both RE and RENXT. Search on community was helpful but the question remains.
As you know, RENXT does not have a “no valid address” box to check. Instead, one can change an extinct or incorrect home address to former address and click do not mail. How should this be managed on the data base side?  Some options which come to mind

• For all preferred addresses changed in RENXT, go to DB and deselect “no valid address” box, deselect “send mail to , change the preferred address to former.
• Keep the no valid address status in play and ensure it is added to all addresses changed in RENXT to “do not mail”

Either method seems to add work. The former begs the question as to what the purpose of the no valid address function, which is built into every query and export, now is. Has it become a dinosaur? Or is there still some purpose for it? It does feel like a loss not to be able to tell on Bio 1 whether an address is valid or not.

How have others dealt with this?

Note: on an earlier thread it was stated that certain actions in RENXT automatically populate the NVA box in RE. I have not seen this happen, although I do note that checking "do not mail" in RENXT unchecks the "send mail" box in DB.
Note, if it makes a difference, we define “no valid address” as either an address which has been moved or that it is spelled wrong.

 

Judith Raub

Sorry no help.  We require all changes to be made in data view.  If the staff member only has access to RE NXT web view, then they submit in actions a task/other and a type called Biographical Change Request and it feeds to a query that my Data team makes those updates in RE NXT data view.  We have limited access to adding/correcting things in the database bio area as I have lots of codings in comments for where the info came from and NXT web does not allow any of that yet (hopefully it will).


We are using the same definition for No Valid Address.


Good luck!

Dariel Dixon 2

The DNM checkbox is still a great tool, but I also wonder if it's use is somewhat redundant.  I do believe while there are some changes that are better handled in NXT (ie. address updates), some things just don't carry over well.  You can see the HOH thread here for and example of a change in NXT not working as expected.  https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/159/47623


However, I do believe that if you are completely marking the constituent as having no valid address, I would definitely jump into DB view for that.  While NXT does have an icon for Do Not Mail on the address, it is very easy to miss.


It is also worth mentioning that this change is different from a solicit code change, which IMO work better in NXT.

Stephanie Crawley

I've always found the No Valid Address checkbox to be useless. The problem with it is that it is totally manual. If you check it because at a given moment you don't have a valid address for the constituent, then later someone or some process updates the address, nothing automatically un-checks No Valid Address checkbox. So even though you do now in fact have a newly updated valid address on a constituent, queries that exclude constituents with "No Valid Address" will exclude that constituent. At the organizations I've worked, I have made the policy that the No Valid Address checkbox should never be used. Instead, I use dates on the address to show it isn't good, as well as attributes on the address that explain when and how it became known that the address is no longer good. For example, "Returned Mail" as an attribute on the address with a date and description saying what the return mail note from the post office was.

Christine Cooke 2

I have always seen the No Valid Address with a different definition that Do Not Send.  


No Valid is not a choice, it is a fact.  We do not have a valid snail mail address for this record.


Do Not Send is a choice in come cases and redundant in others.  When an address is marked Not Valid, then yes, also uncheck Do Not Send and add a To Date to the Address.  But if the record is CHOOSING to not receive Snail Mall OR you are CHOOSING to not send it for whatever circumstance (possible hostile relationship but must be kept for historical purposes), the Do Not Send is Unchecked, the To Date is still blank because this address IS Valid, just not in use.  Also, a Solcit Code is added as explanation Requests No Mail, or Admin says No Mail.


So with NXT not including No Valid Address -- that is an issue in my eyes.  And I would agree with what others have mentioned about protocol that changes are made on the other side only.


Nothing worse, okay maybe, but never a good thing to send snail mail to someone you should not - grows bad feels.

Phillip Bicknell

We use RE7 No Valid Address when running Gift Aid queries. It's not the only way we mark-up a record, but it is an important one because it's linked to a pop-up warning.


In Ideas you'll find my (Guest) ask for this:

https://community.blackbaud.com/products/raisersedgenxt/ideas

'Add "Has no valid address" to NXT', ref RENXT-I-495, now with 188 votes, probably because another idea was merged in.

 

Dariel Dixon 2

Stephanie Crawley:

I've always found the No Valid Address checkbox to be useless. The problem with it is that it is totally manual. If you check it because at a given moment you don't have a valid address for the constituent, then later someone or some process updates the address, nothing automatically un-checks No Valid Address checkbox. So even though you do now in fact have a newly updated valid address on a constituent, queries that exclude constituents with "No Valid Address" will exclude that constituent. At the organizations I've worked, I have made the policy that the No Valid Address checkbox should never be used. Instead, I use dates on the address to show it isn't good, as well as attributes on the address that explain when and how it became known that the address is no longer good. For example, "Returned Mail" as an attribute on the address with a date and description saying what the return mail note from the post office was.

Wow Stephanie Crawley‍, that is very declarative!  I don't know about never using the checkbox (we have them set to a business rule), but I think that both the checkbox and the to/from dates can be used in tandem.  I do agree that there should be an easy button or plug-in that allows you to uncheck that box when making massive address updates from a product like AddressFinder or some other addressing tool.  I'm in the process of doing just that right now, after our regular NCOA update.  But, I just know to add it to the regular process and I have a query set with a global change for this exact thing.