Best Practices for Annotate Pop-ups

Susan Finlay

When I say annotate pop-ups I'm talking about the when you check box Display annotation automatically. So every time you open a record this annotate pops up.

I work for an organization that loves to use annotate pop-ups for everything. It's to the point where the important stuff is being ignore because there are just too many unnecessary annotate pop-ups. I have started slowly moving the one that are more notes or no longer necessary (ones with date reminders) to the notes tab and then deleting the annotate. Does anyone have a best practice on how to use annotate pop-ups? I was taught they are only used for important information that everyone in the organization needed to know not just staff personal notes/reminders. Like don't not solicit this person, Only call the assistant, etc. Maybe I'm wrong about it but love to know how other organizations use it.

JoAnn Strommen

@Susan Finlay I understand.

I agree best use would be for info relevant to all who open the record. We have some very strange annotations on records. Dev officers like to see that alert at the top of web view screen but I am working to make those more relevant to all. When I find them I usually check with DO and if they want info kept, do as you are doing and move to notes. We have a note type of ‘Annotations - Archive.’

Things like ‘do not solicit’ we code using solicit codes, not in annotations as solicit codes can easily be filtered on for mailing/email/phone lists.

We do use them for notes from a gift officer regarding an expected payment and how it is to be designated. That has been quite useful. We expect them to be dated and have dev staff initials and if it can be deleted once it's not relevant.

SIde note: do you know that you can have user defined rule annotations pop up when opening constit record or only have it when opening gift or actions? You can also designate only specific security groups to see the business rules.

Rachel Cavalier

We do what @JoAnn Strommen does - a date goes on the ones that are to be temporary (e.g. for expected gift designations) and those get deleted.

Faith Murray

@Susan Finlay
We generally use it to notify of critical things that may otherwise get missed. For example, “send no thank-you letter”, “If card fails, donor requests we switch to ACH”, “Speak very loudly when calling as she is hard of hearing”, “Do not talk about cats” – etc.

The first one (no thank-you letters) I have thought could be better structured as a field with an attached Business Rule (in case someone gets lazy and posts a gift without checking the donor's record first). Then the alert would pop up during batching. However, I'm waiting on this until BB supports business rule pop-ups in webview.

Like others, we put initials and a year at the end so it can be removed if old.

Carrie Powell

@Susan Finlay, I'm with you! Most of our pop-up notes were inherited in the conversion to NXT and are really old. When I find one, I have been disabling them, but it would be great to have some guidelines so people don't keep creating them for less-than-important reasons.

Spring Velazquez

@Faith Murray
Our fundraisers also like the alerts on webview so I just add them there since they don't have to be an annotation to display. Primarily I'll have requests to add information that is helpful to anyone who opens the record like you mentioned. I love to note students who are legacy along with family members because not everyone delves into the relationship tab

Rose Dixon 3

@Faith Murray We have a solicit code called “Does not want receipt” and use that exclusion in our letters. We also put a corresponding Solicit Code Note on the notes tab to explain the donor's wishes (instead of using the annotation which is annoying when processing donations!).

Dariel Dixon 2

@Susan Finlay, this is a great question to ask. For me it's a feature that should be used sparingly. If you create too many annotations or alerts, they end up getting ignored. So it's a balancing act of informing without overloading. I don't think note features should be there, as there's a place already for those things. I think these annotations should be used for highlighting important information, but if it's more than a sentence, it needs to go to a note field. No one is going to read anything longer than that.

Cindy Shanks

@Susan Finlay For us, anything relating to solicit code, should live in Solicit Code period. We use Annotation for “special attention” like addressee/salutation to honor their specific requests, such as wanting to exclude their spouse's name on the official receipt. We would exclude any records marked with an annotation during global clean ups - this helps avoid adding their spouse's name back in. It is also useful to provide pronounication of their names, and/or restrictions of their recurring gifts. This field is available for viewing in query and/or export. Hope this helps.

Elizabeth Johnson

@Susan Finlay We also use them sparingly. I ask all users when they add them to date and initial them so people know who to go to to ask questions or how old the data may be. Some users are kind to provide a date as to when they can be removed. Two that come to mind are "speak loudly – hard of hearing 2024-08-04 ESJ" or some indication when someone is ill or a loved one is ill.