Constituent Name Formats Summary updates

Kevin Hardy

Is there a better way to grab ALL constituent name summaries that have had a change in their Constituent Names in the past 7 days?

Right now I'm just pulling all all constituents with a modified date within the past 7 days and then using those constituent_ids to call: https://api.sky.blackbaud.com/constituent/v1/constituents/{constituent_id}/nameformats/summary

…which is a bit of a cumbersome process - and I'm not even sure that a change / addition in the constituent name changes the modified date on the main constituent record.

Anyone have a better way? We've got some donors who tend to change what they like to be listed as frequently and I'm trying to figure out what's the best way to grab these changes without making too many API calls.

Thanks!

Alex Wong

@Kevin Hardy
The API as it is now, there isn't reallly a better way. I was doing what you are doing but had to stop.

The reason I stop was b/c whenever we need to do some global change to constituent record, the automation will kick off to get name summary for each constituent, we have over 450K constituent records, you can see how this can quickly exhaust the 25K API call limits per 24hr set by Blackbaud.

Instead, for now until BB comes out with the new List v2 on constituent, I am using RE:Queue to scheduled every 4 hours export of a Individual query that has constituent system id, primary addressee, and primary salutation. Automation to be triggered by the new csv file on sFTP Hosting and use it to update my data warehouse.

Szymon Zaleski

@Alex Wong
Wouldn't it be great to have some API endpoints for global changes? In the past I submitted a number of ideas for global adds (same action added to multiple constituent records, same constituent appeal, same attachment, same rating) but it never got any traction. Even with a limit of max say 1000 records, it would solve a lot of throttling problems.

Alex Wong

@Szymon Zaleski
Yup, I hear you. This is something that BB needs to work on if they are ever going to “sunset” RE database view. You cannot work with making multiple API endpoint call to add something to multiple records.

This shouldn't be hard neither, to accept as an array all the constituent system id that should be “worked on".