Managing Alumni/Donors' Geographic Area - Reporting

Amelia Ketzle

Hi, all - 


We are working on our RENXT implementation right now, and in our old system (Ellucian Advance), we had developed a table of Geo Regions which was driven by Zip Codes (MSAs or CBSAs, not sure which), as well as a few custom regions of importance to us.  I know RENXT offers the mapping tools in the List option on the web view (which is really cool!), but I'm not seeing a way to report specific "regions" like this in a standardized way each time.  Meaning, we don't want two different people pulling their concept of what represents "Southern Illinois" and one of them includes a certain city and the other doesn't.  So the need is for a way to apply the same definition to these particular regions of interest to us whenever we are utilizing them, so anytime we want to include constituents of a particular type in "Southern Illinois", the definition of Southern Illinois doesn't change.  It looks like you could use Lists and save a list for others to use, but that would only define it for that specific set of criteria, so if I need to pull Alumni in Southern Illinois one day, and a week later, my colleague needs to pull donors in Southern Illinois the next day, that saved list won't help her.  


I hope that wasn't too long-winded.  Does anyone have any ideas for how this could be done in RENXT?


Thank you!

JoAnn Strommen

I'm dealing with similar issue in new position.  I have found where previous admin record southern CA and northern CA, etc in the region fields on the address tab.  This is used for weekly reports that pull for MGO. I've been told she may have done this identification using the mapping and zips.


I'm still figuring out if it's the best option out there and understanding how the whole db is structured.

Dariel Dixon 2

There's really only one way to handle this currently, and that is with an attribute/custom field.  As JoAnn Strommen‍ mentioned, the region field from database view is the proper place for this information, but that field isn't available in the web view.  I would probably create the attribute as a table, and set it up from there.  I'd probably also go ahead and duplicate this information into the region field, for if(or when) it makes its way over into the web view.


The region field needs to be available in web view.  It's worth creating an idea for in the idea bank.  But it's one field of many that need to become available.

Amelia Ketzle

Thanks, Dariel Dixon‍.  How do you define these regions in NXT, though?  I see that we could populate this field with our existing region codes, but in our current system, those are defined by zips in yet another table.  New addresses are assigned a Geo Region based on the zip chosen.  Hope I'm not missing something obvious!

Laura Easterly

Amelia Ketzle‍ If you're going to set it up as an attribute/custom field for NXT, you'll probably need to export the region codes for each record from RE and then import that as the new attribute/custom field.  And once that's been done for all existing constituents, you'll have to repeat the process semi-regularly for any new records.  There might be a better way, but that's how I'd approach it.

Dariel Dixon 2

Amelia Ketzle‍ That is the million dollar question.  I do not believe there is a way to automatically assign a region, but you could possibly create a query based off zip codes using one of.  You could use that query to do a global add/change.  Obviously, all of these steps would be done in database view.  That's similar to what Laura Easterly‍ is describing.

Amelia Ketzle

Wow, thanks, everyone!  I really do appreciate the time you took to describe the options (even if they're not the options I would have hoped for).  At least I know what not to spend my time on!  As distressing as it can be to lose functionality and data during a conversion, there is a liberating aspect to it occasionally, too!

Kylea Johnson

If the volume isn't too large, you might be able to use the new automated workflows in NXT to remind yourself to add or change the region attribute. ? They're supposed to add actions to records that are new to lists, but I haven't personally tried it out.

Karen Diener 2

Just wanted to add to what Laura Easterly‍ and Dariel Dixon‍ said.  You'll need to run this process regularly for new constituents but do not forget to run it for address changes.  I worked with a client who had a similar piece of hard-coded data, and while it was correct at the time of entry, there was no process in place to make sure it stayed correct after they ran AddressFinder or even manually updated addresses.


Karen

Amelia Ketzle

Thanks for all the ideas.  This sounds like it's going to be a lot to keep up with in NXT!