What business rules have you created?

JoAnn Strommen · February 2021

A year into my position here, I've realized we are missing some basic business rules regarding gifts. The relationship ones were plentiful.

So I've created gift rules I had at previous org. When I couldn't figure out what I was missing to recreate one I went to BB support. They tried but eventually told me it was not possible. I went back to previous org and asked for screen shot of the query for this rule. Got it and am good to go now as we have a pop-up when entering a gift on a record for someone who has a SC pledge with a balance.

That got me to thinking, "What other helpful rules have other users created?". "Does everyone know about business rules and how helpful they can be?" If you haven't gone through each of the programmed in options, I strongly suggest reviewing those and the options for when they appear. (I'm hoping to shut off some display options for those that appear when opening record and gift tab.)

Our user defined rules are:

Constituent

Inactive / Lost constituent record - Constituent marked as either inactive or no valid address - if adding gift please update data and uncheck...

Alum Married to Alum - this is an alum-alum couple

Proposal Pending - has a pending proposal consider reviewing it before contacting or receipting new gift

Gift

Constituent is deceased - Note: this person is deceased. Do not add gifts to this record. Consider spouse record or create new record.

SC for a pledge balance - Record has SC for another's pledge with balance. Apply to that pledge if appropriate.

So I'm anxiously waiting to hear your user defined rules.

Dariel Dixon · February 2021

JoAnn Strommen‍ I've completely gone away from business rules. Why you might ask? Because they aren't supported in NXT. I don't know if it's worth the effort anymore. *shrugs* Especially if the majority of my users almost never go in DB view.

Granted, when I was just using DB view, then sure, why not? But now, I don't know if they have much more functionality left.

Alan French · February 2021

I like the "proposal pending" idea - I might adapt that to prompt the fundraisers when it looks like there's something that needs updating on a proposal, so they can do their own data cleansing ?

We have business rules to alert users that a constituent is assigned to a fundraiser, and another one for constituents who were included in the most recent appeal.

Austen Brown · February 2021

We have the following business rules set up in DBV and are in the process of trying to figure out how we will translate these to NXT in a sustainable way that does not create too much additional work to maintain.

Constituent

Board Member (Current/Emeritus)
Founders
Camp Builder
Deceased
Inactive
Primary Solicitor on Record
Secondary Solicitor on Record
Recent Action on Record
Missing Contact Information
Minor
Camper Family
Family of Deceased Camper
Imported from Program's Database
Apart of a Restricted Communication Group

Gift Entry

Deceased/Inactive
Third Party Coordinator
Current Recurring Donor
Requested Consolidated Receipts
Requested to be Anonymous
Letter Code to Use (Dependent on Letter Code used on Last Gift)
Pending/Confirmed Open Proposal
Received a Recent Direct Mail Solicitation
Recent Solicitation Action

JoAnn Strommen · February 2021

Thanks Austen Brown‍. Am considering taking some from the list to our team and asking if they would be helpful.

Interesting perspective Dariel Dixon‍. I'm rarely in NXT and hadn't even realized those pesky pop-ups don't appear. ? Duh! Right now the rules are the most useful to those entering gift data. Trying to cut down on mistakes like gift not applied to pledge, gift going to wrong fund. IMO, NXT has a long way to go before it will be used by us for gift entry/batches. Current system records too much data in field that are not available on the gift record like gift code, gift attributes. I have one monthly recurring gift batch created by my predecessor and I have to go to db side and enter missing data each time after approving.

Keep sharing your business rules.

JoAnn Strommen · February 2021

Alan French‍, thanks for the reminder. I've previously used that query of who received an appeal to have a pop-up to that effect. Had forgotten about that one.

Christine Cooke · February 2021

Constituent:

This person is a current board member

This person is on our Founder's Friend List (founder is still living so this will go away at some point)

This person is Deceased

Spouse is Deceased

Invalid Address

Do Not Solicit

Do Not Mail

Do Not Email

Birthday is this Month

Leadership Level Gift this FY

Blankety Blank Society Level Giving (our lifetime cumulative giving above a certain $ amount) aka major donor

Gift:

Deceased Constituent

IS head of household (because we enter all gifts on HoH with a standard in place but this protects from entering on the exception to rules)

Single/Unmarried IS HoH

Disappointing to hear that Business Rules are non-existent in NXT. The ones I have in place mainly help the data person that is almost always doing their work in database and a couple help teammates.

Mark Guncheon · February 2021

Christine: I don't think I ever want to be a member of that Blankety Blank Society. ?

Mark Guncheon · February 2021

I added this idea to the Idea request bank:

Make Business rules in the dataview effective in NXT

RE7-I-6112

Add your vote to see if we can get business rules to start working in NXT.

Dariel Dixon · February 2021

It is disappointing that they don't support business rules in NXT. It's a great shortcoming. Hopefully they will resolve it soon, but I'm not terribly optimistic. We do all of our gift entry in DB view, so business rules still apply, but I don't know if I am going to create any new ones. Currently I'm the only one doing all of the entry, so there's not really a need yet. I think some of ours are terribly outdated and are from a bygone era.

Christine Cooke bCREPro‍ I'm curious about your Birthday is this month business rule? I am assuming that you have it running off a query of some sort? We pull birthdays as well, but there is a tag for upcoming birthdays that comes up automatically in NXT lists.

Mark Guncheon‍ Thanks for adding it to the idea bank. I would have thought it was already there, but I voted for it.

Christine Cooke · February 2021

LOL Mark Guncheon‍ You know it's just because I didn't wanna name names. I could have used John Doe but that's boring. ?

JoAnn Strommen · February 2021

Mark Guncheon‍ thank for the idea bank entry. Just FYI, if looking for it, it is in RE idea bank, not RE NXT idea bank.

Mark Guncheon · February 2021

Can someone post a link to the NXT Idea page? I can't seem to find it.

Jeannie Goings · February 2021

JoAnn Strommen‍ nice repository of business rules, thank you. And thank you Mark Guncheon for adding to the idea bank.‍ The one that we have that I did not see shared is has planned gift. We have been using RE less than a year and our planned giving team was super excited to have this business rule created only to discover it does not help them in NXT.

Jeannie Goings · February 2021

Mark Guncheon‍ I found the idea has been posted as NETCOM-I-348 and RE7-1-1612 and below is where I found your post:
https://community.blackbaud.com/products/raisersedge7/ideas?_ga=2.8995127.3209919.1614125687-1121252144.1611782609

Mark Guncheon · February 2021

There was an idea about this submitted in 2015!!! Everyone go and vote for it.

Jenny Marquardt · February 2021

There are several if you search business rules. I voted on all of them to be safe.

Amelia Ketzle · April 2021

Still not finding this idea! I ended up creating my own after spending half an hour looking for it. I find the Ideas/Community to be confusing to navigate...

Christine Cooke · April 2021

Dariel Dixon‍ we are not on NXT. So when anyone opens a record - it's oftentimes to make a call or email - they will know to pay attention to that little detail. Folks can get so focused on the task at hand (especially in an workspace that feels like you're sitting in the middle of a highway) and it's just a little warm and fuzzy reminder to look at their birthdate, which is right there under their nose. :-)

What business rules have you created?

Comments

Categories