Pulling Primary/Salutation Addressee fields in NXT Lists for Mailing Lists

Sarah Kane
Sarah Kane
Second Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussions

Hello! I am a new user to the database and NXT, and I wanted to try and streamline a process that was taught to me for Mailing Lists. I have been taught to pull mailing lists using Queries from the Database version of RE and export final results to Excel. The process is quite cumbersome as it involves merging multiple queries into a final mailing list. However, the database exports Primary Addressee and Salutation Addressee which is great for the mailing envelopes as our printer can print that data from Excel.

I have played around with Lists in NXT, but I cannot seem to pull primary & salutation addressee fields. It looks like I can only pull donor names, but I'd really like to pull mailing data.

Is this possible to do in NXT or should I stick with the database process?

Comments

  • Austen Brown
    Austen Brown Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 PowerUp Challenge: Product Update Briefing Feedback Task 3 bbcon 2025 Attendee Badge

    @Sarah Williams - Welcome to BB Community! You should stick with the database process. Web View lists are not built out enough to support pulling mailing lists, yet.

  • Sarah Kane
    Sarah Kane
    Second Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Austen Brown
    Thank you, that is good to know!

  • Faith Murray
    Faith Murray
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Sarah Williams, what @Joe Moretti suggested is your best bet, as long as you don't need more complex export fields (like alumni graduation year, previous appeal giving summaries, society memberships, etc. We ourselves, do use a lot of customized fields in our mailings beyond addressee formats, and so alas, Mail is not adequate for us.)

    To be perfectly honest though, you don't really need a ton of queries merged all together. You can usually accomplish the same result with one query, using carefully tiered parentheses in your criteria. However, I have learned from experience that this is too complicated for most new users. I have had to break down my parenthetical queries into multiple merged queries when I wanted to pass the process on to other people. I mention this to give you another perspective, that the merged query process you find cumbersome may itself have been simplified to make it more digestible. As you grow in experience with query grouping, you may be able to combine them into a single query down the road.

  • Karen Diener
    Karen Diener Community All-Star
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 First Reply Name Dropper

    @Faith Murray:

    @Sarah Williams, what @Joe Moretti suggested is your best bet, as long as you don't need more complex export fields (like alumni graduation year, previous appeal giving summaries, society memberships, etc. We ourselves, do use a lot of customized fields in our mailings beyond addressee formats, and so alas, Mail is not adequate for us.)

    To be perfectly honest though, you don't really need a ton of queries merged all together. You can usually accomplish the same result with one query, using carefully tiered parentheses in your criteria. However, I have learned from experience that this is too complicated for most new users. I have had to break down my parenthetical queries into multiple merged queries when I wanted to pass the process on to other people. I mention this to give you another perspective, that the merged query process you find cumbersome may itself have been simplified to make it more digestible. As you grow in experience with query grouping, you may be able to combine them into a single query down the road.

    Thank you Faith - This is exactly what I was going to say!

    I have worked in a lot of databases that have multiple queries merged together that are SO easy to compile into a single query. I wonder if this was a method that was taught to users a long time ago? I've been using RE since 1997 and I don't recall learning to do queries this way, even in the admin training from Blackbaud.

    That being said, I've had occasion to use merges. But they are always done as a last resort, and for very complex situations.

    Karen

  • Sarah Kane
    Sarah Kane
    Second Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Karen Diener
    Thank you!

  • Robyn Swiderski
    Robyn Swiderski
    Tenth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant Facilitator 1

    @Austen Brown in August 2023 you said "Web View lists are not built out enough to support pulling mailing lists, yet." Do you know if or when this will happen? I'm working on creating emails in WV and need to pull this information rather than an individual donor name, especially when there is a spouse on the record who is not his/her own constituent.
    How many issues am I running into here? Will I need to make each spouse their own constituent in order to get every name in an email list? (Compared to Online Express where even non-constituents are in the Primary Addressee name field).

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