Sharing contact reports with the team?

Christine Del Favero

Our full advancement team wants to receive contact (visit/call) reports via email for their review and information. Is there a way to export/report Actions with the type ‘meeting’ or ‘call’ in a readable format so I can send them to the team on a regular (weekly) basis?

Right now, gift officers are entering their action reports into a Google form that mimics the ‘add action’ window in NXT (yes, I know, but we are where we are), the results of which get emailed to the whole team. This triggers the advancement services team to then re-enter all that data into RE as an Action.

I'd like gift officers to enter their contact reports directly into NXT, saving advancement services from having to duplicate that work without creating any more work for gift officers, and gift officers are amenable! But I need a way to cleanly share contact reports with the full team to make it happen.

We are so close to eliminating duplication and having gift officers enter reports directly into NXT - I just need a clean way to share contact reports with the team. Help!

Joe Moretti

@Christine Del Favero We do this type of thing, not exactly the call reports, but as long as you have that as an action type AND those responsible put that information in RE, not google forms, excel, a post-it note or the ether, you can run action reports out of RE NXT (one of the better things in RE NXT), export it and then send out to staff. BUT, you have to make those folks enter the info in RE. It still boggles the mind that people are still using such things as Google forms, excel sheets, etc, when you have a robust software called Raiser's Edge. I mean what is the purpose of having it if people are not going to use it or use it properly.

Dariel Dixon

Welcome to the community @Christine Del Favero. My organization uses the Action Detail Report and send it as an email link or attachment. We also have folks who are managing and editing the actions after entry to make sure any sensitive information may be edited or redacted.

Christine Del Favero

@Joe Moretti I don't know…I think post-its might be the way to go, right? We could even use different colors for different gift officers…..?
But I like your idea. I tried exporting the action report from NXT, but it's giving me links, rather than the actual narrative as a PDF- any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Christine Del Favero

Thanks so much, @Dariel Dixon! I'm a bit rusty on database, but when I run the Action Detail Report, it's just giving me a list of my actions, not the content of them (which lives in the action note). It looks like maybe the Tickler Report will give me the content? I need to keep playing with it, but any tips on how to get the content in the Action Detail Report, or get it in any other way, would be a big help. Thank you so much for any insight!

JoAnn Strommen

@Christine Del Favero in db view, I think you may just need to check this box:

Joe Moretti

@Christine Del Favero Unless that information in the PDF is in the notes of the action, no you cannot get that information in a report, because you have the notes in a PDF (a media tab). You will not get that info in a report from a PFD, not matter what you do.

Alex Wong

@Christine Del Favero
Adding actions into RE NXT is easy enough and a process issue to solve to.

Reporting isn't difficult as there are 2 ways you can do that now (both in webview): Action List or Action Query, and instead of running it for them and emailing it to them, you just setup the list or query and they can access the list directly in RE NXT webview. (if they need to, you can setup a recurring “meeting” that “pops” in their calendar with link to the List or Query directly too.

Dariel Dixon

@Christine Del Favero As usual, @JoAnn Strommen is right on it. With the Action Digest Report, we also set it up to run in Queue, as we can set the date as last week and have it export to the FTP site. From there, it's possible to use Power Automate to have the email send automatically to a distribution list every week.

Dan Snyder

@Christine Del Favero
I actually just set this up in Power Automate to email to our office all of the contact reports (meeting type) entered in the prior week (yes, some of the visits may have happened months ago, but hey they entered it).

It is an email every Monday and while not the prettiest (Gmail) it works for our needs. That is if you want to get into Power Automate.

If staying away from Power Automate, @JoAnn Strommen and @Dariel Dixon have you covered.

Christine Del Favero

Thanks so much, @JoAnn Strommen this was just the thing! May I ask a follow up question? There are distracting page breaks in the report- the first page is almost entirely blank- displaying just the names of the prospect and fundraiser, then the report starts on the next page, followed immediately by the names of the prospect and fundraiser for the next report- then a page break before that report starts. Any thoughts on how to get the names and report on the same page, then have a page break?

Dariel Dixon

@Christine Del Favero I think this is a bit of a common issue. We have some of those issues as well if we have a really detailed set of notes. Also, you might want to play with some of the options in the report. In particular, these figures as well.

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