Acknowledging Letters Sent

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Kristin Meli
Kristin Meli
Eighth Anniversary First Comment Facilitator Level 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hello,


We have an annual holiday dinner we hold each year. We are working off a large excel spreadsheet for our mailings. Is there a way to import the list into RE to acknowledge the letters we have sent?


Kristin
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  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
    Ancient Membership 2,500 Likes 2500 Comments Photogenic
    Do you have constituent IDs in your excel file? (If not, starting now make it standard procedure to include whenever you pull lists/data from RE.) Where do you plan to record the acknowledgement letter?  That makes a difference too.


    If you do, you will want to create a constituent query. Criteria: Constituent ID one of.  You can copy up to 500 IDs at a time from your excel file to here. Once you have the query created, use Global Add (if it's an action) or Global Change to put the data where you need it. (Do not just say to mark gift as acknowledged for the constituent as it will mark all their gifts as acknowledged.)  Test, test first with 2-3 records.


    Here's link to KB article on copying/pasting the IDs into the query: https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/41666


    If you don't have ID's... post again.  Other lengthy work arounds.
  • Kristin Meli
    Kristin Meli
    Eighth Anniversary First Comment Facilitator Level 1

    Hello,

     

    We do not have the constituent ID listed, can
    you still import them?  And I’m thinking we want it to be
    acknowledged under the actions tab. So we have a trail of the
    letters we have sent in RE.

     

    Kristin

  • Ryan Hyde
    Ryan Hyde
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Likes 500 Comments Name Dropper
    Oof. So yes, please do make sure your new procedure when exporting data from RE is to always always always include constituent ID (or Import ID, either one really). Even if you don't think the list you're grabbing will ever need to be re-imported, just add the ID. You never know what is going to happen down the line.


    That said, instead of posting my usual very very long workaround process for this, I'm going to ask you read this discussion thread:
    https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/159/33566?post_id=124758#p124758


    Be sure to note that there are two pages of comments, and that link takes you to the 2nd page (just one post), so you'll need to go to page 1 of the comments. You'll see my workaround using Excel and VLOOKUP first, and then later down youll see Faith Murray's suggestion to use import to create a potential duplication list. Both fixes have pros and cons to them. Feel free to ask followup questions here in this thread though.


    Best of luck!
  • Ryan Hyde
    Ryan Hyde
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Likes 500 Comments Name Dropper
    Oh, and yes, importing this type of thing as an action seems to make the most sense to me.
  • Kristin Meli
    Kristin Meli
    Eighth Anniversary First Comment Facilitator Level 1

    Thank you! I’m new to RE so I’m very lost!

  • Ryan Hyde
    Ryan Hyde
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Likes 500 Comments Name Dropper
    Well if/when you get your list imported, you're going to be a seasoned vet :) But don't get too intimidated too quickly. I'm a big believer that jumping into the deep end is the best way to learn to swim.
  • Kristin Meli
    Kristin Meli
    Eighth Anniversary First Comment Facilitator Level 1

    Haha thanks! Looks like your instructions
    helped others, so hopefully it works for me! Thank you for all of
    your help!!!

  • JoAnn Strommen
    JoAnn Strommen Community All-Star
    Ancient Membership 2,500 Likes 2500 Comments Photogenic
    Ryan thanks for posting and the link for the workaround.


    Kristin, it's definitely going to look overwhelming. One bite at a time.  Look at the fields on the Action record that you want to be entered and include them all in your import. Again, though take seriously recommendations to have recent backup of database and test import using 2-3 records before importing them all.
  • Cathleen Mai
    Cathleen Mai
    Tenth Anniversary 100 Likes 100 Comments Name Dropper



    If you go for the "export everything from RE and compare the data outside" approach I can recommend Ablebits Merge Wizard.  https://www.ablebits.com/

    It is an Excel add- in, I think you can test it for free for a month and then it costs about 100$ one time fee if you decide to keep it.  You can compare and merge tables without having to write your own Vlookup formulas.  Also I sometimes use Importacular from Zeidman, but you would have to look at each constituent that is not clearly matched and depending on the size of your list this might take more time than the export/ compare option. 


     

     

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