OLX duplicates

Amanda Tindale

Sorry if this has been asked elsewhere before, but we having a headache linking records using OLX. It seems to require all of our chosen search fields to be present in order to find a match, even though I have unticked Exact Match in the settings. It's very frustrating and very time consuming, as we're having to check against one search field at a time. For example, if the record exists but has no email address, and the donation does have an email address, it doesn't seem to find it. If our record has a full first name, but this time the donor has only put an initial, it doesn't seem to find it. If they missed a space out of their postcode, it doesn't seem to find it. It's driving us crazy - it has taken over 50 hours to process 800 donations! Are we doing something wrong? Surely this can be a more automated process?

Austen Brown

Hi Amanda Tindale‍ - What is your default search criteria set to? You can find out by going to Account > Integration options > Constituent Matching.  As you are having issues with donor entry for zip codes and emails, I would recommend that you avoid utilizing those fields.  Instead you could focus on fields that have drop down menus instead of text fields such as State or Country, in addition to donor name.  


As for the review process taking about 3.75 minutes per gift, that seems a bit high.  When we need to do a manual search for a constituent record, we choose the following information in quick succession for any records within RE that may have the same information:

• First Name and Last Name
• Address (you may need to alter the "new value" cell to match your database standards)
• Phone Type: Email
• Phone Type: Home

If none of these fields match, we add a new constituent to the database. 


Let me know if you have any questions.  I hope this helps. 

Amanda Tindale

Thanks for this - the processing time also includes the editing we do when in batch, but anything that can speed up linking/creating records would be great. The fields we have checked to look for are:


First name

Surname

Address

Postcode

Email address


It seems to struggle with any kind of matching, not just the examples I gave before. I don't want to remove email address, because sometimes we have records without a postal address, just name and email, so the OLX donation is a good way to find and include their postal address. Part of the challenge I think is that address is a free text field for the donor to type in, so the way they format it often doesn't match what we already hold on RE.


I've just checked and it doesn't link to our table of cities, which I think is part of the problem. It displays on our website as City & County (free text) and then County as a drop down table, which is optional. I think this is the cause of a lot of the errors - people are writing the county in the city box, or writing something random which doesn't match our city table. I'm looking in the OLX settings in General, but for some reason it says NZ Cities and only has one entry - Auckland. But we're in the UK! Now I'm really confused!


Thanks

Amanda

JoAnn Strommen

Do you have NetCommunity as well. From what Austen Brown‍ replied, it may process slightly different.  We do have both. I will say I find the matching process a bit clunky. When we search for record I look for match only on last name. In the lower box, I can then see any/all matches and choose the one with the correct address.  The free text entry certainly does lead to many non-match situations.


Is there a reason you need city and county in the same field coming in from OLX?  I think separating them would also be a huge help.

Amanda Tindale

No, we don't have NetCommunity, just NXT.


We don't want to have city and county in the same field - I don't know why it's doing that, or how to change it. I would rather have city use our pre-defined table of entries, rather than a free text box where people write random things, but I can't see a way to change that either.


It's frustrating, as one of the records I had to manually link this morning had the same name, email address and postal address, so the only difference I could spot was that the donor had missed out a space in their address lines, and added their phone number. It would save so much time if it could find a potential match with all of that info!


Thanks

Austen Brown

Amanda Tindale‍ - You should try reducing the number of boxes clicked for your default search settings, it sounds like there are few constituents that meet all of the five criteria OLX is using to search RE. Try different combinations and see if they yield more matched results... Surname and Postcode, or Surname and Email Address.

Amanda Tindale

Thanks, I'll experiment with it and see if that improves things. It does seem to be trying to match all fields exactly. I've also asked Blackbaud directly about how to edit the city & county field and how to link to our city table. That would definitely speed things up.


Thanks for your comments!

Austen Brown

Of course! I'm happy to help!  The OLX Idea Bank is also a great place to look and see if someone else shares your idea for improvement.  If you don't see your idea there already, you should add it.