With Exporting, Sharing Is Caring
Published
In today’s world, we all want to find ways to connect with each other and share information. Does your church have a membership or staff directory that needs to be published on your website or printed? Do you need to share information about attendance or giving—possibly with someone who doesn’t have access to Blackbaud Church Management? Do you want to be able to fully utilize the valued information in your database? Then you need to know how to effectively export your data.
Using the Export feature in Blackbaud Church Management, you can share any piece of database information (aka field) for use in just about anything—a mailing, a spreadsheet, a website, or even another database. And you can do so in just four steps!
Step 1: Determine Your Export Type
Export Type refers to the type of record you want to include in the Export report. If you want to send a mailing to your church members or create a directory, select Constituent. If you want to share information about giving, select Gift. Or if you want to look at how your staff interacts with your church members or new visitors, select Action.
Tip: To help you determine which export type you should use, think about how you want to use the data. If you want one mailing per person or all the information about a person on one row in a spreadsheet, you’d select Constituent as the type. If you want each gift to show on a separate row in a spreadsheet, you’d select Gift.
Step 2: Select Your Format
Export Format defines which software program you want to use to export data. If you want to create a mailing, you can specify one of two mail merges: simple (everyone receives the same letter template) or conditional (different letter templates based on a condition). If you want to use the information in a spreadsheet, you can choose comma-separated value. Or if you want to publish to a web page, you’d select html.
Step 3: Select the Records to Include
You can include all the records in your database or use Query to define a specific group of records for your export. For example, you may want to send a mailing to people who haven’t attended a service this year.
Step 4: Select the Fields to Include
Since you can include any database information from any type of record, you can include as many fields as you need in your export. For example, you can include contact information such as names and addresses for a directory, spousal information, or additional information such as when someone became a member. Basically, any information you track in your database can be included in your export.
Want to learn more about exporting data from your database? Check out our new eLearning course, Blackbaud Church Management: Database View - Basics of Export today!
Step 1: Determine Your Export Type
Export Type refers to the type of record you want to include in the Export report. If you want to send a mailing to your church members or create a directory, select Constituent. If you want to share information about giving, select Gift. Or if you want to look at how your staff interacts with your church members or new visitors, select Action.
Tip: To help you determine which export type you should use, think about how you want to use the data. If you want one mailing per person or all the information about a person on one row in a spreadsheet, you’d select Constituent as the type. If you want each gift to show on a separate row in a spreadsheet, you’d select Gift.
Step 2: Select Your Format
Export Format defines which software program you want to use to export data. If you want to create a mailing, you can specify one of two mail merges: simple (everyone receives the same letter template) or conditional (different letter templates based on a condition). If you want to use the information in a spreadsheet, you can choose comma-separated value. Or if you want to publish to a web page, you’d select html.
Step 3: Select the Records to Include
You can include all the records in your database or use Query to define a specific group of records for your export. For example, you may want to send a mailing to people who haven’t attended a service this year.
Step 4: Select the Fields to Include
Since you can include any database information from any type of record, you can include as many fields as you need in your export. For example, you can include contact information such as names and addresses for a directory, spousal information, or additional information such as when someone became a member. Basically, any information you track in your database can be included in your export.
Want to learn more about exporting data from your database? Check out our new eLearning course, Blackbaud Church Management: Database View - Basics of Export today!
News
Blackbaud Church Management™ Announcements
01/26/2021 11:00am EST
Leave a Comment