4.1 New Feature: Import Selections

Altru 4.1 release has several exciting enhancements and is allowing our users to have a lot more flexibility within the system. Some of the features wanted by the majority of our customers include re-sending eTickets and allowing patrons to partially pay for event registrations with designations on fees. There is also the new feature of Import Selections. Altru support has been doing Import Selections for customers on a need-to-need basis, but it’s not something the majority of our clients are aware of. Import Selections is a feature in Altru that will allow for you to create custom lists within query.

When building a query we normally need the records to have something in common. An example of this is a query to see everyone who gave over $500 last fiscal year or all patrons who attended a specific program. Those groups of individuals have something in common; they all gave a certain amount or they all went to a specific program. However, let’s say you wanted to create a custom list of individuals who have nothing in common. You’re not sure if all of them gave, if all of them are a member, or if they attended an event. To query on a group of individuals who have nothing in common can be very difficult. Using the “or” statements to make sure you bring everyone in could result in bringing in people you didn't want or leaving out a specific person. This frustration can now be relieved with the Import Selections feature.

The Import Selections process starts outside of Altru. To use this feature one would need to create a .CSV document in Microsoft Excel containing the Altru Lookup IDs for the records in which you are querying on with the header column reading “Lookup ID.” No other columns or information is needed. Below are the instructions on how to import your list of Lookup IDs into Altru but please take note of the following:

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• This is not a constituent import or importing new constituents into Altru. This is importing a list of specific records that already exist in Altru.
  
• Be sure to have the Import Selections System Role before moving on.
  
• Please know you cannot import Constituent Lookup IDs with Member IDs in the same list. You must use one source of lookup IDs per list.
  

Be sure to mark the box to show this selection the Query Designer in order for us to pull in these records into query.

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2. From Analysis, click Import selections. The Import selections page appears.
   
3. Under Imported selections, select the process to use to import a selection and click Import. The Import selection screen appears.
   
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   • Note: To import a selection from the status page of an import selection process, click Start process under Tasks.
     
   
   
   
4. Under Import file information, browse to the *.csv file that contains the records to include in the selection.
   
5. In the ID column field, select which column of the import file contains the record ID to use to identify records in the selection.
   
6. For some record types, such as Constituent or Event, in the ID type field, you can select whether to use the system record or lookup ID. For the Constituent record type, you can also select “Alternate lookup ID” and select the type of alternate lookup ID to use.
   
7. For other record types, the import uses the system record ID.
   
8. Click Start Import. The program runs the process to import the *.csv file and generate a selection based on the selected record IDs.
   

The status page for the process appears so you can view the status of the process and whether it completes successfully. For information about the items on the status page, see Import Selections Process Status Page.

Two other ways to use Import Selections:

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• If you already have a query built but you wish to manipulate the list more you can export that list to Excel, make your edits, and import it back into Altru using the Import Selections process. Just be sure to output the lookup IDs for the source you’re using.
  
• If there is a certain group of records you frequently wish to exclude from your query results you can also import a customized list and exclude it from an existing query. You can do this by after importing the Selection pulling the list from the selection folder and says “Exists is equal to No” in your include records where criteria box.
  

We hope you enjoy this new feature. Check out everything coming in 4.1 on our new feature page.