Data discrepencies

Marita Gonsalves

Hello all,


We're completing our first year with Blackbaud.  I discovered an issue with our data when I went to pull a Parent of Alum list earlier this week where it didn't pull all 

users who should be on that list.  This list was pulling the correct number of records when it was created in July 2019.  I did a little digging and discovered a lot of other discrepancies in the data.  

1. The Parent of Alumni is missing because the Parental Access and List as Parent somehow got unchecked for a large number of current, past, and alumni parents.  Blackbaud has been unable to explain

how and why these boxes got unchecked and implied that it was "some data import" that we did.  Their solution? Redo the import that was done last May and they sent me a bunch of

of the old data import files to update and do the data import.  Unfortunately, these relationship files also contain the parent/child relationship of adult parents to their parents (i.e., the 

students' grandparents).  I'm talking about close to 40K+ records - looking up each relationship is going to take way too long.

2. The personas/roles under Access in the User Record is not showing all data.  For instance, the role/person of Past Employee is not showing up for a fair number of people

 who should have that role. Yes, you can pull this information in a list, however, it is not displaying in the user's record.  Blackbaud support claims it is a "display" issue

which they are working on rectifying.?


Based on what I see, the anomalies are not consistent - something that I'm not sure is good or bad.  There seems to be no rhyme or reason as why some user records display correctly while others do not.


Has this happened to anyone before?  If yes, what was the fix?  Does data just "change"?  At this point, I do not trust our data.  How do you ensure that the data stays accurate?



Thanks,


M

Boyd Reilly

I'm curious.  Can you see the data changes in Handle Profile Changes?


I've had issues in the past, but not to the extent you are having where data has been changed and I know the person didn't do it.  As an example, I've had parents delete their education background.  I know they didn't do it because I can see they didn't log in.  Sometimes the Handle Profile Changes doesn't even say who changed it.


I opened a ticket about this and really had no resolution.

Susan Ott

Not sure if this is related but in January I did a lot of grandparent data imports in preparation for ConnectRE. Because there were so many records and so much info to import, I broke it up into batches. I imported bio info first, then contact info, etc. When I imported the bio info, all my deceased grandparents were marked correctly - checkbox and deceased date. Then when I imported contact info - address, phone, etc., it unchecked the deceased box for all grandparents previously checked. That was not a field that was included in the 2nd import yet it wiped it out. The answer I was given from support was to import the contact data first and the bio data second so it wouldn't be unchecked!!! I had the hardest time convincing this person that a field NOT included in a data import should not be impacted. After back and forth, I finally got a response that it was an issue and marked as critical. A week later I got an update they had fixed the issue with the deceased checkbox. Now I'm wondering if the issue is more widespread than just that one field...scary thought considering how many thousands of records I have been updating through imports.

Janet Wittenberg

Hi Susan,

Your assumption is correct, that non-required fields not included in an import should not be wiped out by an import.  I'm sorry you had a challenge getting that recognized when you contacted Support.  Since we replaced the old 'data refresh' process with imports, ALL of our own activity with conversions and all customer 'refreshes' are working through these imports. So they are getting a lot of traffic and attention. I am not aware of any additional issues with incorrectly updating data.


As we are adding more fields to auditing in the coming releases, we are still looking for any places where the person who made the change might not be recorded correctly.  


Janet

Susan Ott

I've noticed that profile changes will be attributed to someone that hasn't worked at the school for more than 5 years or lately it will say InfoSnap which we haven't used in at least as long. Also, certain changes won't even show up so what the profile update indicates should be in a field and what's actually in that field are not the same. I have screen shots of updates I took on May 8th where an address had been changed but the update only showed the previous update from 2018. Today, I re-checked and the "new" address that was added in Oct. 2019 is finally showing up in the profile update.

Lauren Marcus Eisenberg

This is a huge pain point for us as well. To add further insult, I cannot rely on the change log in a record to understand how/when data changes. Former colleagues' names show up; a BB employee (Karen Tupper) who I don't recall ever working with - makes me very skeptical as to the accuracy of the log. From an audit point of view, this is very troubling.

Bryan Lorenzo

Lauren Marcus Eisenberg‍ - Karen Tupper was a former Blackbaud employee. We worked with her and she was really a "Data Guru". She completed or initial imports when we moved to the "ON Products". 

Lauren Marcus Eisenberg

Bryan Lorenzo‍ Wish we had worked with her! Our experience through the data import into Core was atrocious (and that's being gentle!).