Attribute Cleanup Tool ?

Pam Gealy · September 2016

I have many people from our legacy system that came over to RE with duplicate attribute records for 'sports'. If they played Football for 4 years, they have 4 attribute records for Football. (these may or may not have accurate dates). In RE, I don't really care how many times they played football, only that they played football. Is there a way to clean these up and delete the duplicate attribute records. I'm creating a mail merge and listing out their 'participation' and Football (as well as all other sports) is printing multiple times.

Jen Claudy · September 2016

If you don't need the dates, this should be easy. Create a new Attribute for Sports with a Table of the various options for the Attribute Description. Query for those with your existing Sports: Football (there will be duplicates in your Query, but that won't matter). Global Add the new Attribute to the records in your Query. Then when you have finished all of the sports, use Global Change to delete the old/existing Attribute. You should be left with only one Attribute tag per sport on each record (no dupes). I would recommend using the Date field to record when the Attribute is added to the record, but you don't have to.

(Post again or message me if you need help using Global Change to delete the old Attributes...it's a little more than I am up for right now, and I'm not in RE so I can't do screenshots at the moment.)

Pam Gealy · September 2016

Jen Claudy:

If you don't need the dates, this should be easy. Create a new Attribute for Sports with a Table of the various options for the Attribute Description. Query for those with your existing Sports: Football (there will be duplicates in your Query, but that won't matter). Global Add the new Attribute to the records in your Query. Then when you have finished all of the sports, use Global Change to delete the old/existing Attribute. You should be left with only one Attribute tag per sport on each record (no dupes). I would recommend using the Date field to record when the Attribute is added to the record, but you don't have to.

(Post again or message me if you need help using Global Change to delete the old Attributes...it's a little more than I am up for right now, and I'm not in RE so I can't do screenshots at the moment.)

Hi, I ran into an issue. This is an education attribute. I don't think I can do a 'global add' of the new attribute if it is education. ?

Jen Claudy · September 2016

You can use Global Change to add (and then delete) an Education Relationship Attribute. Here's a screenshot:

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Just select the Attributes Field (highlighted above...you will see your actual Attributes listed alphabetically around this field, like "Honors" appears here, which is our only Education Attribute) and select Add or Delete. Fill in the applicable fields, and [Change Now].

My screenshot is an Individual Global Change, but you can also use a Constituent Global Change.

I highly recommend that you use a dummy record and test every step of your process before you do it "for real" as there is no undo in RE and Global Changes can be tricky. It's also usually best to do them (for real) when all or most other Users are out of the database for the day, and preferably just after a backup has been made. (If you are Hosted, you should be able to jump on Chat and confirm when the full backup happens for your database.)

Christine Cooke 2 · September 2016

Pam Gealy:

I have many people from our legacy system that came over to RE with duplicate attribute records for 'sports'. If they played Football for 4 years, they have 4 attribute records for Football. (these may or may not have accurate dates). In RE, I don't really care how many times they played football, only that they played football. Is there a way to clean these up and delete the duplicate attribute records. I'm creating a mail merge and listing out their 'participation' and Football (as well as all other sports) is printing multiple times.

If you are a school, I would think you would be interested in the years of participation -- long term it will become important. And also, that sort of info should be in Education Attributes not Constit Attributes.... so much stuffffff gets dropped into Attributes without contemplation as to where it should really best be located. ho hum.

Christine Adams · September 2016

We are in the process of figuring out the best place for this information. Currently, our sports are constituent attributes as well: category is the sport and description is the academic year they played so if they played all four years we also have four entries. However, a lot of times we are asked for the players from a particular year so we need them coded this way.

Brenda Anderson · September 2016

Pam Gealy:

I have many people from our legacy system that came over to RE with duplicate attribute records for 'sports'. If they played Football for 4 years, they have 4 attribute records for Football. (these may or may not have accurate dates). In RE, I don't really care how many times they played football, only that they played football. Is there a way to clean these up and delete the duplicate attribute records. I'm creating a mail merge and listing out their 'participation' and Football (as well as all other sports) is printing multiple times.

We use education attributes. Within the Education Attributes we have tables. Sports, Honors, Clubs etc. The Descripion in the table would be what club or sport. We list what years they played a sport and the position in the comments. These Education Attributes would only be for things that were done while a student. For other attributes such as things they did as an alum we would have them in regular attibutes. For cleaning up doubles I like Jen Claudy's post.

Attribute Cleanup Tool ?

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