Phone Format and Duplicate Management

Lee Grisham

Data Note:

Phone numbers in NXT autoformat to an easy to read (XXX) XXX-XXXX for US. That is not necessarily how they appear in the raw data. They could be in any of the below options:

• (XXX) XXX-XXXX
• XXX-XXX-XXXX
• +1 XXX-XXX-XXXX
• 1XXXXXXXXXX
• XXXXXXXXXX

The differences will cause Duplicate Management not to identify them as the SAME NUMBER.

Even when copying and pasting the number out of the Contact Information tile on their record, this will not be apparent. Please make a note to your teams to try to standardize the format when adding to a record. Not always an option upon importing records depending on the source and how the import goes into NXT.

I'll try to update this once I receive a note from engineering that they have addressed this. Add another thing that has been overlooked on the move to "Unified View."

Carlene Johnson

@Chris Ager bringing this to your attention and wondering if you have any input in relation to Duplicate Management?

Lindsey Bryant

From a data governance perspective, the country code should be stored in a completely different field than the phone number. Similar to an address, we don't store the city and country in the same field. This is important or organizations that don't use just one solution. Even within the Blackbaud umbrella of systems, it's not consistent and make it extremely difficult to manage the data.

Elizabeth Johnson

Thank you @Lee Grisham! — I’m in full agreement here, and I appreciate this being raised (and @Carlene Johnson looping in the right folkx).

When I first started working with RE at The Putney School, we had to review phone bills and attribute long-distance calls to the correct records. That made consistent phone formatting essential, and that mindset has carried forward into how we manage data today.

We intentionally use a standard xxx-xxx-xxxx format for U.S. phone numbers, and we do not apply a system-defined phone format to our phone types—we rely on internal consistency and training instead. The ability to keep the format set to “none” is important for us.

Where this becomes challenging is that web view appears to override that choice, which introduces inconsistency that we cannot control.

This has a few downstream impacts:

Matching and lookup issues, where inconsistent formats make it harder to reliably find or match records
Data consistency concerns, which are critical in any database and especially in a system like RE
Reporting limitations, where introducing additional phone types (like international variants) fragments what should be straightforward outputs (e.g., home and cell)

As an international school with constituents from 170+ countries, we intentionally avoid creating separate “international” phone types. Instead, we aim for a consistent, internally managed format across all phone data, regardless of origin.

What would help:

The ability to fully control and enforce our chosen phone format (including “none”) without it being overridden in web view
Flexibility to apply formatting standards independent of phone type
Confidence that formatting choices will support, not disrupt, matching, lookup, and reporting

This is one of those areas where consistency directly impacts data quality, and having control at the organizational level would make a meaningful difference.

Elizabeth Johnson

Here are some idea bank items that go with this thread:

Allow full control of phone number formatting (prevent Web View override)

Ability to not require a Primary Phone Number

Telephone exports are inconsistent

Default format for the phone number field

While not what I was pitching for - this would be more desirable that forcing us to have ( ):

Phone formats in NXT should use a format type table to include parens, dashes or No formats. when using integrations, it is easier to get data out without any symbols/formatting. Allowing the user to select a type will allow for all clients to have their desired format. this would include no formatting

Not exactly to do with this thread but goodness we want this and it pertains to phones.

Add the ability to leave comments (manual or automatic “signature”) on phone numbers, emails, and other fields in Raiser's Edge NXT.

Lee Grisham

@Elizabeth Johnson I didn't even know there was a phone format option! Maybe I used it a looong time ago and forgot, but I do see that it doesn't change how NXT decides to format the phone.

Thanks for that insight!

Elizabeth Johnson

Yes, this is my struggle - it appears we have control and we don't.