Name: Keeping a Clean eTapestry® Database – Tips to Keep in Mind
Uploaded: 2025-04-16T18:31:01.861Z
Duration: 1 h 2 min 8 s
Description: Keeping a Clean eTapestry® Database – Tips to Keep in Mind

Transcript for "Keeping a Clean eTapestry® Database – Tips to Keep in Mind": Hello, everybody. Welcome to this week's eTapestry, webinar here where we're going to be talking about some tips and tricks, for keeping a clean eTapestry. I mean, we are now in spring, so, of course, it's always time to, to to consider, you know, what are some spring cleaning things you can do, not only around the house, not only around the office, but also within your eTapStreet database. First and foremost, I wanna say I always love coming in, and seeing all of the people who are saying hello to each other in the chat. That is very, very welcome. That is very, very well appreciated. I think it helps bring us all together as a cohesive group here learning about some eTapestry stuff. I will say though that as much as I love seeing where everybody is reporting in from, I mean, Steven Ramos has to come in here with the, with the cowboy hat wearing cat GIF and saying meowdy from Los Angeles. He's really, really up in the game here. So but, again, thank you everybody for, for introducing yourself, saying hello to everybody. Before I get rolling here, I do want to go over some quick housekeeping tips. First and foremost, audio for this webinar is entirely broadcasted through your computer speakers. If you are having any choppy sound or or having issues with, everything kind of running smoothly, usually, a quick refresh of the browser will usually resolve most of those audio or video technical issues. I do wanna call out that we do have the documents, that's right next to chat. So if you click on, docs, you will see not only a PDF of the slides that we are presenting today, but I also included some additional help documents and KB articles that can really, help out. We get a little bit further into some of the topics that I'm going to be bringing up here. I'm gonna go over the agenda here in just a moment. You can always, use the cogwheel on your screen to, adjust your settings as needed. I you know, we always appreciate feedback and all of that. So be sure to, if there is any, so I believe there's a survey set up at the conclusion of the session. Always appreciate that being filled out by those who attend. Also, as everybody is doing, please, you know, continue to use chat to ask your questions, or answer, questions from your friends in the nonprofit community. I noticed that over the last few sessions where somebody might ask a question, and they end up, getting that question answered by somebody else listening in. So that's always greatly appreciated as well. We can always give each other, the opportunity to see each other's questions, but also give everybody a helping hand as far as being able to, help out with, answering those questions that they have. Alrighty. So quick introduction. Most of you know who I am. I'm Geoff Arbuckle, customer success manager here. Been working with eTapestry for nearly twenty years. I'm located in Beech Grove, Indiana, which is, right in the, right in the heart of Indiana within the Indianapolis city limits. Nice and sunny today. It's still a little crisp outside, but, spring is coming. So at least I can say that. But, I think most of you know who I am, and, that's why, you hopefully come to these that, you do appreciate the the, information share from that twenty year experience with eTapestry. Alright. So let's now talk about what I'm going to, what I'm going to cover here in today's session in our agenda. Because I also want to be able to say that I don't wanna oversell or undersell the information I'm going to be providing here. This really is going to be tips and tricks for how you might approach, cleaning up your eTapestry database. There's not going to be a whole lot of examples, shared in today's session. Of course, on Tuesday next week, we do have the, the ask the expert session. So I will get into a little bit more there, but these are tips that are oftentimes not thought about or they are asked to support or to customer success. And these are the the types of things that you yourself can do, within your database to kind of work with the data, kind of do a little bit of cleanup, kind of maybe even restructure some of the ways that you're recording information. But I wanted to share these tips because if nothing else, they are a fantastic reminder for the the various things that you can do within the system yourself. You don't have to hire us to help with services to do all of this or anything like that. So, so the first section we're going to go through are the simple tips. These are the very, very, very simple things that you can do, like managing the queries that you have in your database, maybe even cleaning up some of the the categories that you have of queries and reports. Also, how to manage, and maybe possibly even quote unquote get rid of some of your user defined fields. Then we're going to move on into the intermediate tips. These are things like getting into managing duplicates, managing, the addresses in your database using our address finder or also known as the national change of address. And then we will get into and touch a little bit on the advanced ideas for database, overhaul. These are your mass updates and your importing, that you are able to do. So, and, yes, d e yes. This is being, recorded. So all of our webinars are always recorded. You will usually, receive an email, either later today or tomorrow, around twenty four hours after the conclusion of the session, and you'll be able to to get back in and listen to that. Definitely make sure that everybody take advantage of the docs section whether you do, go there during today's session or in the recording. Okay? So without further ado, we have, oh, we have a 25 people listening in. Fantastic. So let's get started with those more simpler tips and talk about some of the things that people either forget that they can do or not even realize that they are able to do to help keep a clean database. Alright. So like I said, this first section is going to be very simple. This is, do you have too many categories for queries? Do you have user defined fields that you no longer use? I know a lot of folks it doesn't really matter if you are using eTapestry or another Blackbaud product. There are a lot of folks that inherit databases. You've come in over the last year or two or over the last few months and, you know, you're working off of somebody else's database that they set up possibly decades ago And now they've moved on and you've kind of taken over everything. So the you know, one of the things that you'll often find is is that, you know, they're going to have a lot of queries and stuff set up and they're going to have a lot of user defined fields set up that you may not want to use anymore or may not have been in use for years. So let's talk about some of the things that you can do to kind of work around that. First and foremost, when you get into, queries and you get into, you know, you go into queries under the, you know, the query section across the top of the screen and you click on, manage categories or or manage queries or you click on the view all for the categories that are listed there, you might find a couple of things. Now I've got a couple of callouts here where, one, you might see that you have categories with, like, 52 or some people have categories that have hundreds of queries within them, and it will always tell you how many of those items there are inside that category, right underneath the name of the category. So in this case, we have base, and that's where you have, you know, potentially dozens of queries saved within. But, also, you'll see in the top left corner or the top right corner, sorry, that it will show you how many categories you have, and I have 22 categories in my test database. A A lot of that has to do with years and years of doing, webinars or doing, tests when people ask questions. And this is one of those things that might end up starting to compound, especially for those of us on this side of the, of the Blackbaud, and customer divide. Right? But that can also happen quite a bit when you're dealing with, inheriting a database. So if you want to kind of change around what those queries within those categories are, you can click on the name of the category and it will show you all of the queries within there. Now every single query will have these links underneath it. Of course, you can preview it or you can copy it, but we're going to mostly talk about how to move or delete those, queries. Now when you click to move a query, it will bring up a little box and it will say select the new category that you want to move this to. And if you want, you can select a new name for it as well. This is entire this is incredibly helpful if you are kind of coming in and saying, you know, I know there are people here who used to run a bunch of reports or they have a bunch of queries that I don't think I'm going to really run anymore, but I don't really want to delete yet because I don't know where they're being used. But maybe I wanna move them into a new category where they're kind of out of the way from the other categories that I might use more often. So that would be a good reason to move a query from one category to another. The other option, is to delete. Now if you delete that, it will give it'll pull up a little confirmation, that, you know, are you sure you want to delete this item? And it will say the name of the query again. And note the word permanently because deleted queries aren't able to be undone, and they can't be recovered. So be careful if you are deleting a query that you are sure that you're no longer going to need that query ever again. That's why I wanted to give you the option as far as moving because if you move a query, at least it still exists until you know for certain you no longer need it, and then you can delete it. But you can at least get it out of the way of, you know, whatever category might be, your go to category for a lot of your queries. Now I also call out there on the right hand side of the slide to look out for these various icons, and that's the little e logo and that little tree branching out, that, indicates, like, those are your query associations. Those are system defined queries. Query associations, will not be able to be, may not necessarily be able to be deleted because they may be used in a compound query or they may be used as the starting query for another query, And therefore, deleting it will not, will not be allowed because if it's a system query, we don't allow you to delete or edit those anyway. But if they are a, if they are used as the starting query in another, query's setup or makeup, that's going to end up, causing a lot of problems with that query. So we don't want to wreck a bunch of queries, just to delete one. Now they can still be moved, but they won't allow you to be able to delete that. Great question, Geoff. Is it possible to have categories within categories of queries? At this time, no. Now that is something that we have been asked, over the years, several times. So one thing I would recommend is, if you go to the community, definitely go into the ideas tab within community and submit that as an idea or see if somebody has already submitted it because you can upvote that. We do pay a lot of attention to those suggestions that are put into the ideas in the community, because those are, you know, that that we can find out what makes your life easier from looking at what those suggestions are. So I would definitely do that. As far as undoing the query associations, yeah. I mean, if you find out that there's a query that is associated with another one, you can click on that little icon, and it will show you what queries that it is, basically feeding into or that it's a part of. And you can go in and edit those other queries, before you delete anything. So, yeah, you would be able you do have the opportunity to kind of mess around with how those queries interact with each other before deleting one in particular. But, yeah, you can always click on that little icon, and it will show you what those associations are. Now as far as deleting categories, once you have moved all of the or you've either moved or deleted all of the, queries out of that category and it says that there are now zero items, you are now able to click that delete button, and then it will ask you, are you sure you want to permanently delete the item? Again, remember, permanently, they mean it. It won't be able to be undone if you delete a category by mistake. So and that works, similarly across reports and communications as well. Each report has a has a move or a delete, and each, category, in reports has that delete function once you have either moved or deleted them, all out of that, category. Same thing for communications. Each communication template has a move or delete, and each communication category has a delete. And, Tina, yes. Great question. Can you rearrange the order of the categories? Yes. Absolutely. Now when you are on the, when you, like, click on queries and then you say manage queries and you see that that big list of the categories, you are able to click and drag those categories into the order that you want. The only thing you need to remember is and you can do that with the queries as well. You can rearrange the the order of the queries within a category. The thing that you need to remember is is that there is a save, link in the tasks, box that you would need to remember to save the list order once you do that. Because if you move things around and then you just leave the page, it won't remember what moved around. So you should be able to kind of click and drag both categories and queries into the order that you want. And then as long as you remember to save the list order, it will remember that order of the categories or of the of the queries or reports or whatever within. K? So, yes, just remember that anything you can do with queries as far as moving and deleting or the categories and queries as far as deleting, you can do the same with reports and communications the exact same way. So that is there to kind of, you know, help you because if you if you've had an eTapestry database for years, especially if you've had, you know, maybe a couple of predecessors and you're inheriting now for the third or fourth time a, database, you're likely going to have a bunch of queries, a bunch of report definitions, probably a bunch of communications templates as well. It's always a good idea to, maybe try to first understand what those queries are or what those reports are doing. And then those that you don't need, just get rid of them at that point, because you'll probably find that you'll need to do some things on your own. And that's especially going to be the case if you make any other changes to your database like how you are recording things. So that brings me to talking about user defined fields. Now user defined fields do not have an option to delete a field, especially once they've been saved. The reason for that is is that while the system can create the the field, but, the problem is is that the system doesn't know once the field is saved if it's in use. So if you save a, a user defined field, the system will assume that it's in use and it will show up on, various accounts or journal entries or whatever the case is. So we don't allow for that to be deleted. But you can disable a, user defined field so that they no longer show up on defined fields pages within accounts or defined field sections within, GIFs or within other journal entries. So to do this, you'll click on management, you'll go into user defined fields. Now once you go into user defined fields oh, hang on a second. That is not supposed to be there. Sorry. Once you go into the user defined fields, and you click on a category and you click, on the field itself wait a minute. Let me double check here. Oh, yes. I'm sorry. The the header on this I'm sorry. This one is supposed to be shown. Sorry. The header on this, on this slide is, incorrect. But, what you will find is is that the categories allow for you to delete a user defined field category. However, in order to do that, you have to move all of the fields out of that category in order for it to be deleted. So when you click on the name of a category or you expand the category, that's where you get into the move. So you can move it to a different category just like you would with queries, reports, and communications, or, you can disable the field by clicking the enable. And what that will do is it will basically gray out that field, and then it will show that it's disabled. Now you can re enable that field at any point by clicking disabled, and then that allows for you to bring that back. Oh, great question, Sharon. Can you change the name of a UDF, and is it wise in querying later? You can absolutely change the name of a UDF. It won't really have any effect on, querying or reporting. It will just change the name of the of the column, or it'll just change the name of the field itself when you get in to, doing the actual query. So, like, when you're looking for the field or if it's been queried on before, it just changes the name. To change the name, like, for example here, if I didn't want this to say speaker request field number one, if I click on that field, I can change that to say, you know, speaker request or, speaker number one request or something like that. And it will have you can change the name, it will change it globally, and it won't throw off any queries or reports that already use that field. Jeanette, great question here too. So if you disable a field, then it won't show even in the places where it has been used. So if you disable a user defined field, if it's not been used, it will just be as if it was never created. You won't see it in the category that it was in. If, though, it has been filled in, it will still keep that historical information that was filled in, but your only option to make a change to it will be to make it either, if it's a drop down menu or a checkbox, you can deselect whatever it is that's filled in and then once you save, then it will disappear. But it will still hold that historical information for you even if it's disabled, and then you can go in later and remove that information if you no longer need it whatsoever. Keep a keep a bookmark on that for one of the more advanced things that I'll talk about, toward the end of this session. K? Now the same thing applies if you click on one of the fields that's a drop down menu or a checkbox type field, you will see that the values also have the ability to be disabled. You disable it by clicking enabled. You can re enable a value by clicking disabled. So user defined fields, if you want to disable the whole field, click enabled. It will it will toggle it to disabled and it will no longer show up, any place that you that it hasn't been filled in for. If you want to just disable, one of the values within a multi select field, then you can you can just click the enable for that value on that value step, and it will disable that value. So that option would no longer be made available to you. Joanna asked, every one of my constituents list every single UDF ever created, not just the ones relevant to them. Can I change this, I mean, on an individual basis? So, usually, by default, your view will show, like, it will only show the fields that are filled in for those people. I would probably go into management, my user, and, go into your preferences and see, there should be a preference there to be able to say that you want, only you you only wanna see the user defined fields that are filled in. Everything else will still be available, but you would have to expand the category to see the rest of them that haven't been filled in. If they've already been filled in, then, yeah, I mean, unfortunately, there's not really a way to change that view because the system wants to try to show you the information that's being used. Now as far as funds, funds approaches campaigns, these these also can be disabled. Much like with user defined fields, they cannot be deleted, but they can be disabled the exact same way. So if you have a bunch of funds or a bunch of campaigns or a bunch a bunch of approaches that haven't been used for years or are no longer relevant to you, you can click disabled under each one of those, and it will disable those. Now disabling them, much like with user defined fields, won't affect, any queries that have used that field or that fund or that approach or that campaign. And, you know, it will still display on a report if that's been filled in for that gift. It just cleans up the list that's available to you when you're filling out a gift. Okay? So don't worry about disabling any of the fields or any of the, any of these types of funds campaigns or approaches if you are concerned about historical information, being shown on a report. It will still show that information if that, you know, if that fund, for example, has been selected. So it will not mess up any of your past reports. So if you are looking at things that say, you know, this is for an appeal letter from 2015 or something, you can disable that approach and just get it out of the list so it's no longer, an option that you have to scroll past every time you're filling in that field for a gift. Alright. So those are kind of the really more simplistic things you can do. Deleting queries, moving them around, you know, disabling fields, so that they no longer show up. But level two, we're going to get in now and talk about managing your constituents. You know, maybe you have a bunch of duplicate accounts in your database. Maybe you get a bunch of, returned appeal letters from constituents who have moved. How can you potentially manage that data so that it will be correct when you get into, you know, looking at the database, doing your mailings, and so forth? So first things first, let's talk about running the duplicate report. Every single user who has the access to run reports have the ability to run a duplicate report. To get to that, you'll click on reports in the, on the ribbon at the top of the page and open up that menu, then you will find eTapestry standard reports. And the very first section of reports that will appear on the top left hand, side of the two columns are the account reports and within that you will find duplicate reports. Now I will go ahead and tell you that here in a few weeks, I will be doing a webinar about standard reports and the various reports that are handy dandy reports for you to be able to use and take advantage of. So this is one that, I wanted to call out in advance and, just because this one is so important as far as being able to kinda get your database under control, especially if they need to be cleaned up a little bit. But when you click on the duplicate report, you'll be asked for two things. Number one, you'll, be asked for a query. So you'll wanna select a query to check the database for those duplicates. I would say for most of you, you will probably just check the entire database. So you'll do base all constituents. Now if you have, you know, tens of thousands of accounts inside your database, then in section number two under delivery options, you might have a different selection than what most other people might have. If most of you are really only checking, say, five to 10,000 or fewer, so, you know, like anywhere from, you know, a couple of thousand accounts all the way up to 10,000 accounts, you should be able to select to display the results on screen. However, if you have tens of thousands of accounts, let's say you have 50,000 accounts, I would recommend that you select to, schedule the report to, to run overnight. So to do that, you would select, like a, you know, an Excel file and, you would say schedule for off hours at that point. And then what it will do is it will take you you know, it will schedule that to run, you know, you can just have it run once tomorrow, for example. And then overnight, it will run and it will be made available to you. But what's really cool about this report is regardless if you have, if there's a way or if there's, you know, if you regardless, if you run it to screen or you have scheduled it to run and then you came into it later, one of the cool things is is that it will run it will show you the duplicates on screen and it will allow for you to either merge the accounts or you can select to, say that they are not duplicates. Now if you do click that they're not duplicates, then the system will no longer think of them as, you know, potentially the same person that will think of them as two separate entities, two separate accounts. If you click to merge, then what you will do is you'll be taken into this page where you'll be able to, duplicate you know, you'll be able to say this is what I want the duplicate account to be, the green arrow will show where that duplicate is going to be merged into, These can be swapped. These can be, you know, you can say, okay, well, I only want the account info to merge, but I want defined fields to replace or something like that and it will, basically go into the process of saying, okay. Well, any for anything that you say merge, it will fill in empty data. It will leave everything else, alone. If you say replace, it will basically overwrite the target account's information. Oh, Joanna. That's, that's interesting. Joanna said, does anyone else find that when you say, that they are not to be merged, it freezes and you need to start again? I've not seen that before. Yeah. I would certainly Joanna, Jen, I would certainly let the support team know because that sounds like a, that sounds like a bug to me. It shouldn't be freezing on you like that. Lexi asked, I've been working away on the, duplicate report this week. Is there a way to mass update this and select, like, 25 accounts that I know are not duplicates and not have to check each one at a time? As of right now, Lexi, no. There isn't a way to, to kinda mass do those. So I would say, you would still just kinda have to work through that. But that might be something worth putting into our ideas bank as well. Nicole asked, does it matter which account you're merging into? My organization always has to merge into the smaller account number. Is this necessary? No. Technically, no. I would typically say that usually you would keep I would say just personally my preference would be to keep the lower account number. The account number is what you see in the parenthesis at the top there. There is no actual preference. It's whatever you feel like is the account that you want to keep. There's it's not going to exclude any journal entries or anything of that nature. So, yeah. So that's definitely something to, to to take a look at there. And that's gonna be based on your own preference. Yeah. And, Jeanette yeah. Like, you know, Jeanette and Michelle mentioned normally merge into the older account so that you can see the earliest date. And then, yeah, I check with, which account has the most information, most up to date before deciding how to move. Yeah. It's totally going to vary from one organization to the other how you manage that for certain. Now the one really cool thing, and this is, you know, kind of kind of been spoiled by one of the questions, but one of the great things about the the duplicate report is that you do not need to merge or ignore or replace all of the duplicates in one sitting. You know, the system remembers when you ran the report the last time and then you can pick up where you left off. So every time you return to the report until you run it again, you will see this blue banner and it will say, you know, you have a copy of this report from whatever that date was that the last time that report was run, and then you can view the existing report and you can continue on. Now you can always run the report again and then it will, it will replace that older report with the new one, but again you can still come back and view the existing report. So that's one of the really cool things that you can do with, you know, with those as well. Now let's talk about the address finder, the NCOA. Now there's a couple of different ways that you can do this. There is one way that you can do this from the standard reports just like with the duplicate report. So if you go to reports and you click on eTapestry standard reports, there is under the account reports the option for the data health scorecard. And if you click on that, it will give you This information in the, address finder, it will say, you know, when, you know, it says, eTapStreet analyzed all however many accounts that you have. We found accounts in your database whose addresses need attention. So it will basically kinda give you a grade. It it gives you that, you know, how much money is wasted per mailing because of, you know, bad addresses and the cost of postage and all of that. But you can click on the run the address finder from here and go through the process of doing the address finder. Now there is another way, that the dupe that this can be done without going into the standard reports. So the other option is to go under management and then click the address finder in COA under the admin menu. Now this skips that grading and that, you know, analyzation of your data, and that data health scorecard, but what it does do is it will go into this process here. Now if you are in The United States, I'm speaking directly to you for this. Now if you are, elsewhere, like, I know at least in Canada, there is a process that you reach out to. I believe you can just start the process with support, and then they will get the, services team involved with running the, the address finder. Joanna, I would check with support on as far as The UK. But, yes, you should be that's something you'd certainly look into. But the, but if you are in The United States, this, will then ask you for the query. It will tell you how many times that you have to run the report until the next time you enter into a new year of your contract. And then basically from here, you have the options to say, you know, you only wanna look at primary personas, you own you wanna standardize all return addresses, you want this to run on whatever date. The first option will be overnight, so it'll be after midnight, it'll be tomorrow's date. And then it you are able to fill in some additional information about, who is going to be notified with the report of what's happened, and then provide some additional information, and then you click, schedule. So then, yes, Dana, there is a limit on how often you can run it. Now it may vary from one organization to the next. So if you go into the address finder section like this, you'll be able to see how many times you can run it until then, like I said, the start of your next contract year. It is based on year. For some of you, it may be two times a year. Some of you, it may be four times a year. So, it may vary from one organization to the next. But once you run this, what will happen is if it's a if it's a need of standardization based on, in this case, specifically the USPS, it will standardize that address. If it needs to be updated, it will change that address and it will mark a defined field saying that it was updated. It will also leave a note in the account saying that it was updated and what the previous information was and what it was changed to. Then, you then can, you know, you'll also be able to see it's like, okay, was somebody had somebody moved but didn't leave a forwarding address. That will be an option in that defined field. So you do have the ability later to kind of query on some of that information as well. So, definitely recommend that if you have the ability to run this, especially if you are in The United States, go ahead and schedule it. When you you know, especially a little bit before having to do a mailing because that's gonna be one of the questions the postal service is going to ask you is if you've standardized or updated your information. But, and certainly in Canada, I would connect with support. And for those in The UK, check with support if that is something that is possible to run over there. I don't remember for certain if that is something that is available in The UK. Question that came up here, from Jen. If, if you ask the system to standardize all return addresses, is there any danger to impacting any addresses in a negative way? The answer to that should be no, because what it is standardizing is it's standardizing from the people who will be handling the mail. So it should be easier for them to read, easier for them to sort. It should not have any kind of negative impact. Is there any is there a way to mass delete the journal entries it puts in the accounts? No. Not in a mass delete sort of way because I believe those are entered in as notes. So it would show up as a note in the in the journal, and there's not a way to mass delete those. Sharon asked, can you show me where that UDF is located, updated, or not able to update? So that should be under, base, and it will appear in the, it should show up in the personas of the addresses. So, yeah, I don't actually have that field because I can't run the address finder on my database. But that is something that you should be able to find, and it should be available in the persona under the base category. But I don't think those defined fields will show up until the the until the database runs the address finder. Alright. So let's talk a little bit more, and this is gonna be something that I can really only lightly touch upon because this can be something that can be a relatively small project. It may be a relatively large project. I can talk a little bit more about this in the ask the expert next week, because I have a feeling that this is going to be the section where most people are going to have the most questions about, like, okay, you know, this is how you will, you know, be able to make mass changes, mass updates, and, you know, and be able to do types of things like that within the database. So the ideas that I had here was, you know, you're inheriting a database or you've done something for years, but the, yes, Michelle. That is the field that Sharon was asking about, the address finder codes. Yes. So yes. So this is, you know, like, you've been working within the database for a long time, and maybe you've come up with a new vision for how you are wanting to collect data, how it's going to be stored, and what fields it's going to be stored in, how those fields, appear in the database or how they, you know, how they might tell the users what you are collecting. Or maybe you're thinking about importing a bunch of updated information from constituent accounts. So this this is something that can be done and it will be done under the management tab. Now the first one I want to talk about here is the mass updates. So under management, if you go to mass updates, that's gonna be one of the buttons along the bottom of that management menu. There are three different ways that you can mass update. Now, the most common mass update is updating existing items. So this is updating existing accounts, so updating user defined fields on the account. This could be updating existing persona, so maybe you are, maybe you are wanting to update the the old way that we used to use that would be, like, let's say you wanna change all of the, people who don't wanna be mailed to you or emailed to, you change all of their email addresses to do not email or something like that. I do think you can mark people as opted out with that option as well, but I could be wrong on that. But, the next most popular thing is, like, updating all of the existing transactions to change what their funds are within a query. So let's say you have a query of everything that used to be, you know, 02/2015 fund a and you now want it to just say 02/2015 fund or whatever. You can use the mass update to update that information. You can also create some new items. You can create relationships between accounts. You can, create, new notes, new journal entries like contacts. What you can't do is you can't create new gifts, but you can create new scheduled payments for pledges if they're not set to automatic, to auto process. The same with manual processing recurring gifts. You can add new scheduled recurring gifts to the recurring gift schedule for anybody who's set to manual. You can also remove a few things. So you can remove existing mass interactions. So let's say you do a bunch of mailings and you've saved a bunch of mass interactions, you can delete those in a mass way because those are just receipts that that somebody was a part of a mailing and might be from mailing from years ago. The, other thing that you can do is you can remove account user defined field text values. So let's say, one example that I know of is let's say you no longer want to record people's birth dates or something like that. You can say, I wanna remove all of the information from this list of accounts in this specific field, and then that will help you later to disable that user defined field so that it no longer shows up and no longer gets filled in. Now when you select, and like I said, the most common thing that people will do here is to update existing items. Now this is pretty much the same process regardless if you are doing existing accounts, existing personas, or existing transactions. The first thing you will do is you will select a query for those accounts or for those journal entries that you want to update. It's really important if you're updating anything that's journal related like transactions, notes, or contacts, you want to make sure that you are creating a query of just those journal entries that you want to update. In fact, it will even warn you of that. But when you click to, you know, select your query, then you will say do you want to assign or remove the data from that field and then it will, you know, go through which values from the account, from the transaction, from whatever journal entry that you want to update. So in in the event that maybe you have an account that has everybody marked as a board member in one way, but now you have a new field that marks them in a separate or a different way that, you can say, okay. Take this user defined field list or I'm sorry. This account list of the of the people marked with the user defined field of board member, and then, update that so that it fills in or removes that data from that field or fills in the information into a different field. And then you say, okay, next. It previews. It tells you how many accounts that will be updated, and then it will, give you the information regarding, like, you know, if you want to go ahead and and continue and what will happen if it does continue. Now when you're creating new items, so let's say you wanna create, new contacts or mass interactions or something, you basically say, what do you wanna create? In this case, you wanna create a new contact entry, and you will say, here's the query of the accounts I want this contact entry to be filled into, and then you fill out the rest of the information. Again, the preview will say what's the, the amount that will be, what's the number of accounts that will be updated and then you continue through and it will say, okay, make sure that you want to do this and if you are okay with that then it will say here's the, information that was at or this is the number of accounts that this information was added to. Now when it comes to importing, same thing, you go under management and you click on import. Now this is something I suspect I might get a little bit more into in the ask the expert, but I did definitely want to provide some tips. There are also some, documents in the doc section that goes through doing importing, with some, tips and tricks around doing importing and what can be imported. But basically importing allows for you to import several different items. Account information, which can also either create or update existing accounts. So it can either create the accounts or update the ones that are already there. You can add a gift, a note, or a contact entry to a, to an account. It allows for you to work within a spreadsheet to enter information and edit prior to importing, but the file must be a comma delimited CSV file. Now some of the items will have requirements, like for example, gifts must have funds, dates, and gift types. Notes have to have a date. Contacts have to have a date and a, a contact method, and a subject line. So take that into consideration depending on what it is that you're importing into the system. And then multiple journal entries can be imported into a single account. So basically, each line will be a different journal entry, and then it can be imported into the existing account all together. It won't recreate or won't create new accounts or doesn't necessarily create new accounts because there's the possible duplicate report. So before completing the import, you will, have the opportunity to review and look at whether you need to merge, replace, or ignore any of the possible duplicates that show up on that report. So it will not, it gives you the opportunity to say, I don't wanna deal with these, duplicates later. I wanna deal with them now and then, make sure that they merge correctly at that point in time. Now these can be handled one by one or they can be handled in bulk, basically saying, you know, here's the list of all of the possible duplicates. You can say, okay, well, I'm gonna go through line by line to make sure that, yes, these are duplicates. Or you can say, after a cursory look, it looks like they're all duplicates. There's a way that you can apply the same process of merge or replace over all of them, and then it will merge or do whatever action you told it to do. But tips to remember, now after each import, there is an import template that is saved in eTapestry so that it's quicker for subsequent imports using the exact same, columns and the exact same fields that you're mapping into. Okay? So if you import once, it will typically remember that going forward. Import files can only have the exact same information imported once, meaning if you have a file, you imported it in and then you say, well, now I'm gonna use this exact same file because I can't remember if I did this file earlier today or not, it will say, nope. You've already imported this information. You can't do it again. And then for the account information, you can update that information with using journal entry or I'm sorry, using imports. But journal entry information cannot be updated. So if you are trying to say, I want to change all of this information in these gifts on this field, these gifts already exist in the system, I want to update this information with this import file. You can't do that. It will only add those journal entries. It won't allow for you to update that journal entry. So there are some files that I have in the doc section that go into imports, so I definitely recommend that you check out that information. I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that next week at the ask the expert on Tuesday. Let's see here. Lexi, yes. I was attempting to do some mass updates this week and came across an issue when I tried to make a query with a bunch of account numbers. I added account numbers as the field, and I was looking for in a list like 70 accounts separated by commas and it did not work. I then put took the commas out and did a slash, before each number and that also did not work. What should I have done differently? If you're using account numbers with your query so the account numbers can only be looked at as either it basically works off the same thing as as amounts. Right? It's going to be, greater than or equal to, greater than, less than, or you can use the greater than one, less than 250 or whatever. Right? That one is I'm I'm not entirely sure exactly how that was being used. But if you're looking for specific account numbers, it would have to be set to it I I think you have to set it as being the exact number that you're looking for. It's not something that you will be able to, like or you have to do it in a range. You you aren't able to do that. I I'm I'm a little curious about what that is. I would probably reach out to support on that, Lexi, and try to figure out what maybe happened there. On many different accounts, you wanted to update a bunch of information. Then, the account number is probably not gonna be the best thing to use on that. I would oh, and did the exact number and then listed them. If you have the account numbers, what I would probably do is I'd probably put that into a spreadsheet, save it as CSV, and then put it over, and save it in Excel as a CSV file and then import it that way, and then do the updates through the import as opposed to mass update. Because it may not be the it it may not be the easiest thing to try to query on a bunch of different account numbers unless they're subsequent. They're like they're, you know, sequential. Yeah. I would say I mean, you could yeah. Jeanette has a good idea there is create a custom account query, to put the exact accounts in there. You could do that as well. So you can type out the number or the, the number of the, the account number can be found by doing double slash, forward slashes and then the account number. So that would be the that would be one option there. K? Alright. So with these last few minutes here, I do wanna go over a couple of things. Definitely wanted to bring this up again. I know a couple of people raised their hand, last week about, these programs here, but we are still, always on the lookout for folks who might be able to engage with us and with our, with your peers through either being a Blackbaud champion, which is kind of like, a an additional, like a community plus, if you will, where you can get in there, interact with not just the other users of eTapestry or other Blackbaud products, but you can engage with us as well. Always able to provide feedback through the champions program as well. You can also, get some development opportunities in there as well. We also have the reference program where you can, share your experience with prospects who are looking to hear from Blackbaud customers about the product that you are using. You have the ability to completely and totally control how often you are, looking to, take a call from somebody who might be looking for some additional information about how you're using the product. We also have the ability to spotlight your success by either inviting you to present with me on a webinar or, then, also, be able to perhaps contribute a blog to the community. Or if, if you are interested, you know, you might be part of a, of a podcast or whatever the case may be. But if you're interested in any of these programs, please feel free to let me know in the chat, and I will take the information and get you in contact with that team. But those are definitely three things that, we are looking for some advocates, if you are interested in, getting involved in one of those. But, of course, we always also have our resources available to you. The Blackbaud U, this is a great way to take a look at the eTapestry curriculum, get into, you know, some of the training courses that are available there, a great way to, at the very least, get a basic understanding of how the products work. We also have our customer support and knowledge base, and then be able to get into, a little bit more, one to one, talking to your peers within the community. That's a great way to share ideas, share how you are doing certain things, ask questions of the various peers. Also in the community, you will find that I have, been posting blogs there as well. So that is definitely something that, you would certainly want to take a look at as well. Oh, Michelle asked, if we need to start tracking date of birth, yes. And Lexi's right. That would be a user defined field. You can set a user defined field up to be either month, year, or a day, month, year, or month, day, year, depending on your location. So that is definitely something that you could use to to start tracking that information. Now one other thing I did wanna bring up before we, close this out here. We do have here in a couple of weeks, in the May, our product update briefings. They are regional, so I am putting a few I'm putting two links into our chat here. If you are in North America, that link is where you can go to sign up for the, the product update briefing where you can learn about some things that are coming soon or things that we've recently released. We also have a, European product update briefing sign up page and you can use that to get into that product update briefing. I would, it's a good thirty minutes of just seeing some of the stuff that we've recently released over the last, few months and then some of the stuff that we have planned coming up before the end of the year. So I definitely recommend and, take advantage of that. Also, let me get you the link to next week's, ask the expert so that you are able to get into that session as well. So one moment here while I pull that up. Sorry. I didn't have that already. Here's the ask the expert 04:22 is when it takes place. I put that link there too so you can come and, ask some questions about some of your various cleanup, situations that you may be working on. But with that, I want to thank everybody for attending. Definitely, again, a reminder that you will get a recording here, but there are also some docs in the doc section that I definitely recommend that you, take advantage of because it does get into a little bit more information regarding, like, importing, you know, address finder, mass updates, the duplicate report, and so forth. So definitely definitely recommend that you, take a look at that and, check that out as well either, before leaving the session today or, once you get the link to the recording. But, hope to see all of you next week at the Ask the Expert, and, hopefully, this has been helpful information. Just some things to take into consideration. Some of it might be stuff you already do. Some of it may be stuff you already were aware of, but it never hurts to have the reminder, and it never hurts to see if there might be some other things that might come to mind as you are, you know, really kind of working with your data and getting things kind of nice and cleaned up there. Thank you so much to everybody. I hope you have a great rest of your day, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.