Importing a Constituent with Multiple Majors into One Education Record

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William Scrimsher
William Scrimsher ✭
Sixth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
Hi everyone,


I'm the newest Database Manager for my Foundation, and I've found a need to more gracefully import new Alumni.

When I followed my predecessor's instructions, it left me with dozens of duplicate, empty or half complete education relationship records.

My Supervisor has told me when he did it, there was a way to manipulate the data so it'd all file under the correct education record, but trying to figure a way out myself has been a dead end.

Does anyone have any advice or tips for how to accomplish this?


Billy
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  • Mark Guncheon 2
    Mark Guncheon 2 ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Pick a constituent who has all the same data that you want to import.  Export that constituent's data including all the parts that you want to import. Don't forget Constituent ID and Import ID. That will give you a file with those column headings. Use that to create your import file and test, test and test again.


     
  • Dariel Dixon 2
    Dariel Dixon 2 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    William Scrimsher‍, I'm a little rusty when it comes to alumni imports, but if I recall, I think one of the two IDs has to be the same.  I'm thinking its the education relationship import ID.  The Major import ID should be unique.


    If you can share a bit of the instructions, I think that would probably be helpful.
  • William Scrimsher
    William Scrimsher ✭
    Sixth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    Dariel Dixon,

    I attached the example I was building, modified for privacy.

    Most of the instructions I received were outdated, and the "new" version is single lines, such as "Update Addresses" and "Bring in Degree and Honors info".

    I understand I'm going to need to write most of this again in order to have it last, and maintain it so it keeps up to date with any future changes.
  • Dariel Dixon 2
    Dariel Dixon 2 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    William Scrimsher‍ I'm almost certain you need two Major Import IDs, since you have two majors.  Some of the IDs should be the same, however some need to be different.  It's been a while though.


    Do you have a good idea of how many double majors you have?  When I did this at my last job, we didn't have a lot of them, so I manually added them by hand from the exception file.  We always had exceptions that needed to be added by hand due to various reasons.  It may be just as easy to see what the number of exceptions are.
  • William Scrimsher
    William Scrimsher ✭
    Sixth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    Dariel Dixon,

    Thank you so much for your reply.

    I know my Supervisor said he figured out a way to do it years ago, but I'll definitely need to dig into more profiles to figure out why it's not going.

    I'm not too sure how many Double Majors we have each semester, I've only done the import once.
  • Kristin White
    Kristin White ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Name Dropper
    Hi Billy,  


    If you use the same ID for ESRImpID and each ESRMajESRImpID then use extensions on the Field Tab of the import for the 2nd major should import into one education record.


    Happy Importing!

    Kristin

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