Solicit Code - How to Clean up or prevent duplicate entries

Options
Dawn Pello
Dawn Pello
Tenth Anniversary Photogenic 5 Likes First Comment
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hi all! Does anyone have any ideas on how you can prevent the same solicitiation code from being added more than once to a record. For example, each year after phonathon we globally add those who requested No Phonathon.  However, some of the records have it on twice.  Is there any easy way to remove the duplicates and prevent a code from getting added to a record if it's already on there?

Thanks!

Dawn
Tagged:

Comments

  • Ryan Hyde
    Ryan Hyde
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Likes 500 Comments Name Dropper
    That seems odd . . . to my understanding, it's not actually possible to have the same code on a record twice. 


    So first, let me ask this: do you have multiple solicit codes that are similar to one another but not identical? If so, you can go to Config > Tables > Solicit codes and use the Table Cleanup tool to merge similar records.


    If not, then you've stumbled onto a bug of some kind. In this case, I would query for everyone who has the solicit code in question on their record and save this as a static query. Then globally remove the solicit code from all of these records, and then add them again. This should result in only one instance per constituent.


    Still though, if I were going to bet on this, I would bet you've got multiple similar codes.
  • Michelle Kolak
    Michelle Kolak
    Tenth Anniversary 25 Likes 10 Comments Photogenic

    Ryan Hyde:

    That seems odd . . . to my understanding, it's not actually possible to have the same code on a record twice. 


    So first, let me ask this: do you have multiple solicit codes that are similar to one another but not identical? If so, you can go to Config > Tables > Solicit codes and use the Table Cleanup tool to merge similar records.


    If not, then you've stumbled onto a bug of some kind. In this case, I would query for everyone who has the solicit code in question on their record and save this as a static query. Then globally remove the solicit code from all of these records, and then add them again. This should result in only one instance per constituent.


    Still though, if I were going to bet on this, I would bet you've got multiple similar codes.

    You can't manually choose the same code, but if you import them or have solicit codes in you defaults, they can be duplicated. 

     

  • Ryan Hyde
    Ryan Hyde
    Tenth Anniversary 1,000 Likes 500 Comments Name Dropper

     

    You can't manually choose the same code, but if you import them or have solicit codes in you defaults, they can be duplicated. 

    Ahh, actually that makes a kind of twisted sense. Or at least it looks like other stuff I've seen before. I bet if you were to manually go into the record and open up the solicit code menu, all of the duplication would suddenly vanish. 


    To mitigate this problem in the future, here's what you could do:
    1. Instead of importing solicit codes, import just the constituent ID, making sure to do a do an "update existing record" constituent import.
    2. Before you import, tell the import module to create a static query of records updated.
    3. Once that import is done, find the static query, and add the criteria "solicit code <does not equal> [solicit code you're trying to add]"
    4. Save this query (it'll create a new query separate from the first one as "records in X query)
    5. Use this new query to globally add the constituent code. 
    Though you should experiment a bit because updating the query might not be necessary. You should see what happens to people in the initial static query who already have the code. I'm not sure that global add will create the same duplication error you're seeing or if it'll just say "nope, can't do that" to the records that already have the code on their record.
  • Jen Claudy
    Jen Claudy
    Tenth Anniversary 1,500 Likes 1000 Comments Name Dropper
    Assuming you have a Query you're using for the Global Add, just add Criteria to the Query to exclude records that already have that Solicit Code.  Test first with one or two records to be sure you get what you want, and then do the whole thing.  (I.e. add "Constituent ID one of..." to your Query and pick one or two records that are already in the Query.  If something goes awry, you only have those few records to manually clean up.)


    As far as cleaning a mess from past Global Adds, as Ryan said, you can create a Query with the simple Criteria of "Solicit Code equals..." save as a Static Query, use Global Change to Delete the Solicit Code from records in the query and then use the same Query and Global Change to add it back, but now it should only be once.  Depending on how many Solicit Codes and how many Constituent Records you're looking at, this could take a bit of time.  You could export everything, clean it in Excel, globally delete everything, and Import back what you want to keep, but I don't know that that would really save you much time in the long run.  (It really depends on how many codes and how many records.)
  • Alice Le Hardy
    Alice Le Hardy
    Eighth Anniversary Photogenic First Comment

    Dawn Pello:

    Hi all! Does anyone have any ideas on how you can prevent the same solicitiation code from being added more than once to a record. For example, each year after phonathon we globally add those who requested No Phonathon.  However, some of the records have it on twice.  Is there any easy way to remove the duplicates and prevent a code from getting added to a record if it's already on there?

    Thanks!

    Dawn

    I would definitely use Table Cleanup to ensure that you don't have duplicate solicit codes.


    If this isn't the case, do a query where you are looking for records with 2 solicit codes the same and globally change these records to take one away.

    Could you not just exclude those that already have the solicit code from being included in the global add?

Categories