Merging Databases / Dataloss?

Nicole Barton

Hello,

I am the new database manager for our school. We started using RE/Blackbaud two years ago, but the connection between CORE and RE NXT was never set up. Now, we would like to connect the two databases, but we have heard from other schools that doing so may erase the data in our RE NXT system.

Has anyone had this issue and how did you resolve it?

Thanks.

Lauren Henderson

@Nicole Barton
ConnectRE is a good tool, but can wreak havoc if not implemented correctly. I would definitely evaluate whether or not it will save your school time and energy to get it up and going, and maintain. Do you have a set admissions season or rolling admissions? Do you track Alum data in Education Management, or only in RE? Are you recording relationship information (grandparents, etc.) in Education Management, and would like to pull that into RE? Is your address data formatting standardized between Education Management and RE, or not? Your school's answers to these questions will help determine if ConnectRE would be worthwhile for your situation. It's also possible that something much better will be coming along within the next year, so it might be worth waiting it out instead of investing the time and resources in ConnectRE.

Nicole Barton

@Lauren Henderson
Thank you for your response.

Crystal Bruce

@Nicole Barton Hello! I moved this discussion to the Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT forum. Thanks!

Petra Hall

@Nicole Barton Hello Nicole. I'd check with @Crystal Bruce, but I believe Blackbaud will be releasing a Much Better connector between RE NXT and the Education software soon. If I understand correctly, the new “connector” will actually merge the RE NXT and Education records. You know how there are different views of a user: Core, Academics, &etc? This would add RE NXT as a different view of your user records (but you'd have to log in through RE NXT to see it). Updating a user in either RE NXT or your Education database would be editing the same user record - no need to run a “connector”.

If the new process will be up in less than a year, I would suggest waiting.

Connect RE is strictly one-way. Updates in your Education database will overwrite data in RE NXT. The updates are snapshots (not automatically done whenever changes are made), and Connect RE is buggy. For example, every time we run it (a manual process) we have to remove end dates from the constituent codes of the constituents it updated.

I am very much looking forward to improvements on the current process.

Pat Phillips

@Crystal Bruce
How do you find the discussion in the new location?

Lauren Marcus Eisenberg

@Nicole Barton I've been working with our data for more than a decade… and we have not historically used ConnectRE. I am in the midst of linking our data through ConnectRE. My understanding is that doing this work now will lay the groundwork for next. I'm slogging through the last 5-10% of the records. Because my colleague on the RE side and I are both fasidious about the data, the project hasn't been awful, but it is tedious. I believe we will benefit in the long run. As for “losing" info, Core overwrites RE, but the data can be accessed. I review each record manually when addresses, living status, and emails don't match.

Ashley Foltiny

@Lauren Henderson Hi Lauren, came across this post and thought id ask if you've recently had issues with connect RE importing duplicate relationships? For example, students are listed twice on a parent's record - once as a son or daughter, and once as a child. It's not an actual duplicate record (thankfully) it's just that the relationship is being put on twice.