Alumni Duplicate Emails

Chris Zello

I am wondering how others are dealing with Alumni who have different class years, BUT share an email address?

How do you reach out to each person independently in a reunion year when Luminate doesn't allow records to share the same email address?

Will Hull

Hey there, @Chris Zello

In the Lumiante Online database, there are fields for first through sixth post-secondary education. The fields available have information that you can add such as the year a degree was conferred, degree name, class, major, minor, concentration, etc. These fields typically aren't enabled when an instance is first spun up as a new instance of Luminate Online, but they can be enabled and data can be imported into those fields either manually through a Custom Constituent Import under Data Management > Import/Export, or through a data sync like the one Omatic Software offers through their product Omatic Cloud. So, this way, you can track an undergraduate degree as well as a Masters, Doctorate or several Masters or Doctorate degrees on a single constituent record in Luminate Online. This might help you keep track of multiple degrees on a single constituent record.

Another method might be to add custom number or date fields (date fields require a month/day/year format but not everyone remembers the exact year they graduated, so that is why I recommend a number field). There are up to 10 custom profile fields available that can be used as a number field and 10 fields available that can be used as a date field. Blackbaud Support can enable these fields or the education fields above if you request it.

Also, under Setup > Standard Page Center, that is where you would add these fields to your view on the Profile tab of a constituent record once they are enabled if you customize the "Constituent Profile (Admin-Side User Update)" page to allow those fields to show on the admin side of things when editing constituent records.

If you use the number fields, you can then set up a query to look for a range, e.g. greater than or equal to 1999 AND less than or equal to 2005 and that might work for a reunion of those years between 1999-2005 who have those values in their field for say, undergraduate graduation date or Masters graduation date or Doctorate graduation date. That would be how I might structure that data using custom profile fields under Setup > Database Configuration (please note that not all administrators have access to this area unless they are an Advanced Site Administrator, a consultant at Blackbaud, like me, or Blackbaud Support), so if you don't see that location, please reach out for assistance with Blackbaud Support and they can help get those fields enabled for you.

Please @ tag me with any reply you might have with feedback/comments/questions at any time.

Thanks,
Will