What is your FAVORITE clean up task, project, or product?

Rhiannon Ashmore · April 9

@Carlene Johnson
Cleaning up duplicate records: It's nice to purge the system and merge what we need to keep into single coherent records. While this is great for database health, it's also beneficial for our fundraisers. Our fundraisers don't have to worry about entering important donor information in the wrong records. Of course, new records for the same constituents will always appear, but when I have what I need to clean them up, it makes it easier (and satisfying) to maintain our database health.

Susan Fountain · April 9

@Carlene Johnson
I love most data cleanup projects, but a big one was creating tables for constituent attributes and replacing old text (write-in) attributes with descriptions. Now, so much easier to create a query based on table descriptions. No more random typos!

Ann Fleming · April 9

@Carlene Johnson Thank you! I will do that!

Zach Brown · April 9

@Carlene Johnson
Data cleanup projects are so satisfying! I just did a big one today with org contacts, where the many of the “From Date” fields were blank, so I was able to create a large export file of the 15,000 contact relationships and the date they were created, and import them back into the “from date” field. Super simple and helpful

Rachel Graan · April 9

@Carlene Johnson, I've always loved database maintenance projects, from address/salutation clean-up after a busy season to appeal updating and merging. We have a small team for a fairly large number of records, and this year, I am developing a maintenance schedule that lays out time and frequency for each of our necessary maintenance tasks. I have been using the NXT query links so the team can access and record when something was done, all in one place.

Jeanette Rodriguez · April 9

@Carlene Johnson Merging duplicates!! So satisfying!! Yes, Address Accelerator is great! We've used it for years now.

Kelly CampionSocol · April 9

@Carlene Johnson merging duplicates. When I started at my current organization it had not been done with regularity. What was once in the 1,000s is down to under 10 per month! So proud of our team and their dedication to entering accurate data.

Steve Townsend · April 10

@Carlene Johnson cleaning up queries - I do this annually, deleting any that haven't been used for over a year. There are usually several hundred - it's very satisfying!

Jack Briggs · April 10

@Carlene Johnson
Standardising our subjects for alumni degrees and/or adding info from Reg Title to Subject, so no one slides through the gap. Took ages but was very satisfying!

Carlene Johnson · April 10

@Jack Briggs:
@Carlene Johnson
Standardising our subjects for alumni degrees and/or adding info from Reg Title to Subject, so no one slides through the gap. Took ages but was very satisfying!

Good one!!!!

Carlene Johnson · April 10

@Steve Townsend:
@Carlene Johnson cleaning up queries - I do this annually, deleting any that haven't been used for over a year. There are usually several hundred - it's very satisfying!

Yes! I just took on a client who has 10k queries in their system going back well over a decade. I can't wait to clean those up!

Carlene Johnson · April 10

@Kelly CampionSocol:
@Carlene Johnson merging duplicates. When I started at my current organization it had not been done with regularity. What was once in the 1,000s is down to under 10 per month! So proud of our team and their dedication to entering accurate data.

I'm impressed! That's a big accomplishment. Kudos to your team for keeping it so low.

Carlene Johnson · April 10

@Jeanette Rodriguez:
@Carlene Johnson Merging duplicates!! So satisfying!! Yes, Address Accelerator is great! We've used it for years now.

I'm really hoping BB brings Address Accelerator over to webview at some point. So important to know about the deliverability of addresses!

Suzan Swartzentrover · April 10

@Carlene Johnson
I really like cleaning up/merging the duplicate records.

Irene Hui · April 11

@Carlene Johnson I find going through the results of our quarterly Address Finder run satisfying. We also use Address Accelerator, and Deceased Record Finder. When I first joined my organization, many records were inadvertently set to inactive status so correcting that was really satisfying, too.

Melissa Rabinow · April 16

@Carlene Johnson @Steve Townsend Query cleanup is always on my mind as we are a school with MANY MANY. But the process is so tedious and slow that I don't have time to do more than a couple at a time and that doesn't even make a dent. Any recommendations for a quicker cleanup?

Angela Finley Hunter · April 21

@Carlene Johnson
That's really cool! Thanks for sharing, I had no idea about Address Accelerator. I get excited about cleaning up duplicate profiles. A clear database makes everyone's life easier!

Adrienne Baumann · April 21

@Carlene Johnson I like cleaning up those mailing addresses! We have data going back almost 30 years and it can get quite hairy in the deep dives. Yikes! Some days I just want to delete everything and start fresh! ?

Adrienne Baumann · April 21

@Irene Hui Oooh, I've never used deceased record finder! That would be so helpful!

Adrienne Baumann · April 21

@Zach Brown Brilliant! Thanks for sharing this great task idea! I'm going to do that, too!

Steve Townsend · April 22

@Melissa Rabinow we made query cleanup easier by organising our queries into categories and making a rule that the query name has to begin with the category, e.g. Event, Geographic, Letter etc. We have a category Current that is used for any queries that don't need to be permanently saved to use again in the future and for queries in this category the name must end with the month and date of creation e.g. 0325. This means I can use Delete Multiple Queries to find all the Current queries that are over a year old and delete them at once. But it's easy for us to keep to the rules because there are only 5 people creating queries, I imagine with a bigger team it would get more difficult.

Danielle Lifshitz · April 22

@Carlene Johnson I enjoy thinking about the reporting that will need to be done in the future, and coding the gifts in such a way that the later reporting is easy and functional.

Dariel Dixon · April 22

@Carlene Johnson I think it's duplicate clean-up. I'd like to do some non-constituent clean-up, but there aren't great tools for that.

Karla Rivera-Torres · April 22

@Carlene Johnson, like many on this thread, I enjoy duplicate management and address accelerator!

I also would like to drop everything I am doing and work on clean-up projects! It would be so calming and peaceful to complete all my clean-up projects ?

JoAnn Strommen · April 22

I think I may have posted previously, but am really liking the view uses of table entries for clean up. Just wish I could find all the ‘blank ID’ ones.

Anna McGee Hanson · April 24

Emptying memberships of it's info and confirming the info is located where it belongs in education. The joys of cleaning up a database you inherited.

Maureen O'Malley-Kirschner · April 24

When I can do de-duping records, it's great downtime project to clean up database and it's also a great way to learn a new database system.

Cathy Spencer · April 28

@Carlene Johnson I agree on this one - I enjoy the ease of cleaning up table entries in the webview!

Brittany Czekaj · April 29

@Carlene Johnson I also love Address Accelerator! I have to admit, one of my favorite cleanup options at our organization is the Unassigned Solicitor tab in the Work Center! This helps us to stay on top of those accounts (we mainly work with companies) who are not yet assigned.

Candy Beckwith · May 3

@Carlene Johnson
I got great satisfaction at standardizing all addresses and updating addressees and salutations!

What is your FAVORITE clean up task, project, or product?

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