Visitors information - Events or Attribute?

Since you have the events module, I would use it.  Especially if you are moving toward online registration.  The great thing about using the events module, and setting up an event for each sanctuary day, it's really easy to see who has or has not attend x number of visit days.  For those who have attended more than one, you could add them to prospect donor list for the development office. Multiple visits = having more than just a passing interest in what ya'll do.

I like Actions. We have a "Site Visit" action type for our branch visits and that serves us well for reporting. Or course we do a lot of other engagement with prospects & donors in Actions, so these visits show up on our existing prospect pipeline reports with the other Actions. They could/would as events as well, however, my point is they fit nicely in with other meetings and calls as part of our moves management strategy. If you use a specific action type, such as Sanctuary Visit, you can segment easily when reporting, etc. As far as getting them into RE after a visit, you can set up the Action once and then do a Global Add to apply it to the participant records. Always options in RE - good luck deciding how best to handle!

 

You should be able to move or convert existing data from Events to Actions, if you choose that route.  If you decide to keep them as Events, you could also do what I do in many cases...add an Attribute, and then when everything is entered, convert that (using Global Add) to an Event and remove the Attribute (using Global Change).


Adding an Attribute is really easy via a Constituent Default Set.  You could even use the Attribute convert method for Actions...it eliminates the step of clicking on New Registrant or New Action since (I assume) the actual Event/Action data would be the same for every record.  Actions also have Default Sets...so do Event Registrations, but not all fields are available, so it's more limited (Invite Date and Registration Date are not available in a Default Set).


Personally, I like the Events option, because if you end up using Online Express (which comes as part of RE:NXT) for Event Registrations, this is where that data logically ends up.  I would probably opt for one Event Record per Month of Sanctuary Visits, and use Registration Date (or Response Date, if you use an Event Registrant Default Set for data entry) to store the actual date of the visit.  And the Event Record itself provides a place for storing any information (including Actions, Notes, and Media) that you might want to retain for a specific Sanctuary Visit during that month but not want to replicate all of that on every applicable Constituent Record.