Alert Or Summary Note: Which Is Which?

Steve Stegelin

**Based on recent discussions in the Community, giving this post from a few years back a bump.** Think of summary notes and alerts as Post-it® Notes to help cultivate and manage constituent relationships. You can use both to easily flag a constituent's record with pertinent information in a prominent location, but each serves a distinct purpose. To keep straight what's what, remember these uses of each.

Summary note. With a summary note, you can pin a quick synopsis about the constituent such as their important personal details and history with your organization. Summary notes appear in the profile information at the top of a constituent's record, so you can have a general understanding of your relationship at a glance, such as to prepare for a face-to-face meeting at Starbucks. Summary notes save you from having to scan over the entire record for a rundown of the constituent and provide a space for important color or personal information about them. In the database view, summary notes appears as constituent notes with a type of "RE NXT Summary.") In terms of Post-it Notes, summary notes are the quick little highlights you might jot down as you get to know the donor or supporter.

Alerts. With an alert, you can give a quick reminder or special instructions to anyone who opens the constituent's record. For example, you can set an alert as a reminder to not update the record without first contacting the assigned fundraiser, or as special instructions to handle a high-profile donor with care. Depending on the urgency of the alert, you can choose whether to have it automatically appear in the profile information everytime the record opens or just have an indicator appear when there's an alert. (In the database view, alerts appear as annotations.) In terms of Post-it Notes, alerts are the tasks you write down for a "HoneyDo" list or the label of which leftover takeout in the office fridge is yours.


For more details, check out the Summary Notes Help and Alerts Help.

Daniel Bayer

OMG this is so helpful. I sent this link around to all our NXT users and suddenly I'm noticing people actually using Summary Notes! THE WAY THEY SHOULD BE USED! THANK YOU!!!

Melonie Allyn-Schwerin

...and, bookmarked!