Help with actions/attributes

Aldera Chisholm · November 2015

I need your brain power on a data entry issue I am having.

We track our solicitors meetings as part of their deliverables. They are entered as actions which makes them very easy to query and report on.

However, one of my team entered all their meetings as attributes (Attribute type "development", date was meeting date, comments was meeting and then all the meeting details in the notes field.) To complicate matteres, all these are entered on individual relationships who are not themselves constituents. (For example, employees of a government office.) I believe he went this route as you cannot enter an action on a non-constituent who is a relationship.

Obviously a deficiency in training on my part, so I know what I'll be working on in the new year.

I'd like some advice on how to clean this up. My first step will be to go through all these people and make them constituents, or link the relationship to the existing constituent. I don't feel like I can just put the actions on the company, as with the example of it being a gov office, each of the relationships is working on a different grant or program. (Perhaps I'm wrong there?)

Assuming I get the constituent part fixed - what is the best way to migrate this info over and clean it up, and I'm hoping the answer isn't "go through them one by one." I'm hoping someone may help me come up with a brilliant query and global change or something?

Thanks so much in advance for your help!

John Heizer · November 2015

You should be able to find a way to Export those Attributes and then Import them as Actions, although I'm not sure if the Attribute will have all the data that you really want on the Action. I'm confused about the details being in "the notes field" because there is no notes field on an Attribute (and you've indicated that the Comments is used for "meeting"). If that info is in a completely unlinked Notepad then that will definitely complicate things getting the two lined up, particularly if there is more than one Attribute & Notepad per Constituent.

You may want things differently, but here the Action would go on the Organization record with information in the Contact field about who the meeting was with, not on the Individual (regardless of whether or not they are just a Relationship or a full Constituent). Yes, it wou For us an Action with an Individual is about their giving as an Individual, not as a representative of an Organization.

John Heizer · November 2015

P.S. Getting all the fields linked correctly may be tricky, particularly the Contact, but it can be done. I'd be happy to help you offline if you need specific guidance.

Christine Cooke 2 · November 2015

Another aside on the training part of things. I would also suggest reviewing what type of permissions your team has in Security. Personally, I would not allow others besides the DBA to be adding Attribute drop-downs.

It is too easy for folks to do that and make a muddled mess of things, instead of stopping to ask where the info should really go.

I also suggest a simple "how-to" page with screenshots, be made easily available and obvious to anyone having to enter info like actions, attributes or constit notes vs. action notes.

Aldera Chisholm · November 2015

John, to clarify what I mean about the Notes on the Attribute tab, here is a screen cap. I didn't explain what I meant very well. I may take you up on that off-line offer once I have figured out the big plan. I like the idea of the action going on the Org record, I may propose a system change.

Christine, they are using existing drop-downs rather than creating, thank goodness, but just using them in new and creative ways! I agree on the how-to page - I will be adding that to my list of flash training modules I have as my 2016 project.

John Heizer · November 2015

Aldera Chisholm:

John, to clarify what I mean about the Notes on the Attribute tab, here is a screen cap. I didn't explain what I meant very well. I may take you up on that off-line offer once I have figured out the big plan. I like the idea of the action going on the Org record, I may propose a system change.

Christine, they are using existing drop-downs rather than creating, thank goodness, but just using them in new and creative ways! I agree on the how-to page - I will be adding that to my list of flash training modules I have as my 2016 project.

Because there are multiple Attributes per Individual Relationship, and you'll want an Action record for each of those Attributes, it will get a little tricky. You'll have to Export to something like Access where you can then create the links between one Individual Relationship record and multiple Attribute records, getting a row for each Attribute. The same note will wind up getting repeated on multiple Actions. There's a lot of information that would be nice on the Action record (ya know, little things like WHO made the Action) that you won't be able to capture because it just doesn't exist currently, but this will still be much better than what you've got. At first I thought that trying to get the Action on the Individual Constituent record instead of the Organization record would also add a level of complexity, but I just did a quick test and that shouldn't be a big problem, but you'll want to make each of those Relationships a full Constituent before doing the Export so that you'll have a Constituent ID when you Import the Action records. But I'd still advise getting the Action on the Organization record and putting the Individual Relationship as the Contact on the Action (in which case you'll need to make sure each of those Individual Relationships are flagged as a Contact on the Organization record before you Export the data).

Help with actions/attributes

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