Tagging

Kathryn Roberts

Hi!

I am new to RE and we are trying to find out the best way to tag alumni who played a sport during their time here. Does anyone have any recommendations or a process they mind sharing?

Thanks!!

JoAnn Strommen

@Kathryn Roberts It could be done an number of ways using attributes/custom fields.

We have an attribute called ‘Campus Activities’ with a table for the description field that includes most of the campus organizations we have and the sports. To keep the sports together in the table our code is M-Football / M-Volleyball / M-Men's Basketball / etc. (all athletes are M-Club members - for “Mines." ) In the comment field there are some entries for how many years they played. That data was not consistently entered and the only drawback of having it entered this way that I've found. That parts manual.

You could have an attribute for each sport if you wanted. I personally like it all in one attribute. Yes, multi-sport athletes have Campus Activities attribute for each sport and may have Choir or other activities too.

Joe Moretti

@Kathryn Roberts I also recommend attributes. When I worked in higher ed, we had an attribute category called SPORTS and then the various drop down boxes of all the sports that were played. Just make sure when setting up the attribute in Config, you do not check the box “Allow only 1 per record” since someone can play more than 1 sport. I would stay away from making an attrbute for each sport. Keep the cateory to one (Sport) and the add the sports in the drop down for description.

Karen Diener

@Kathryn Roberts the only thing I will add is that you should consider where you want the attribute to “live”. It could be a constituent-level attribute but could also be an education relationship-level attribute.

I personally preferred putting the attribute on the education relationship because it provided more details about their education. If you have the Primary Alumni module, you'll need to think about what happens if someone leaves school before graduating, but hopefully you have guidelines about how to handle that already. It will only matter if you are trying to Query / Export that specific information - I don't think it would change how you code it.