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Power Automate - Search for a Constituent action

Matt Thacker

Running into an issue with using the Search for a Constituent action. I'm pulling data in from a third-party source so it sometimes includes spouses that are not full constituent records. When I use their name in the Search action, it always returns 0 results. But, it I use their NXT environment ID in the Get a Constituent action, it will return their record.

Anyone else run into this?

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Comments

Ben Lambert

@Matt Thacker can you provide more details on this (specifically, I'm not following what you mean by "use their NXT environment ID in the Get a Constituent action")?

Matt Thacker

Hey @Ben Lambert,

If I use the Get a Constituent action and use this ID, I get the following response:

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But if I use the Search for a Constituent action for the same person, but using their name, it always returns an empty array

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Ben Lambert

@Matt Thacker thanks, that helps! The ID you have circled is the “system record ID” which under the hood is the system-defined primary key on the relational database table that stores constituent records. My confusion was how you used the phrase “environment ID” which has a different meaning - that ID is essentially a tenant identifier that separates Blackbaud customer “database” A from Blackbaud customer “database” B - I'm simplifying a bit but hopefully you get the idea,

I believe what you are seeing is the nuance around “non-constituent” records (a very old and often-debated concept within RE). In order to support records with many of the same fields and related data in other tables as a constituent, the constituent data structures were re-used and a flag was introduced to designate whether the record was a full-constituent or (for example) just a relationship or (another example) an event participant guest.

The “Get a constituent” action (and the underlying GetContituent endpoint in the SKY API) can be used to get details for both constituent and non-constituent records. But the “Search for a constituent” action (and the underlying SearchConstituent endpoint in the SKY API) only returns constituents - it doesn't (currently, afaik) return non-constituent records.

In your screen shot, notice the is_constituent: false property on the response which designates that Cindy is a non-constituent, so that record won't be returned by the search action.