Why did someone think it was a good idea to disable document uploads in the Research tab? If it was, in fact, removed because of the Windows Operating System, why are we still able to attach documents in Plans? The operating system doesn't change from tab to tab. Having research documents in two different places on a constituent's record is cumbersome and not very efficient. This needs to change back.
Melanye Taylor said: This needs to change back.
I agree. The Documents tab should really have been modified to mimic the way files are attached to Plan steps when Plans appeared, but I believe the holdup is with the underlying data. In the case of this tab it contains OLE header/footer data, in addition to the binary file, that make extracting the files challenging in some cases. Hopefully someone from the network will chime in and update us about the status of this tab and its data.
The last update I recall about this was that it should be coming in V16. I think it originally was supposed to be part of V15 but analytics was such a large project they couldn't add that. I could be wrong about all this.
Yes, this is a big, unwanted change. And it was really thrown in at the last second of every training webinar I saw. Has anyone submitted an enhancement request for this? Too much clicking/digging around for some users who, for many years, have been accustomed to finding documents on the Research tab. Now, who knows what isn't being captured.
It has been a few years since we lost the ability to attach documents to Research and have now been using Plans for quite some time. What we did was create a Campaign named "Documents" with no end date and no fiscal year. All of the Plan field selections (Type, Status, Plan Source and Priority) in the Plan are also just named "Documents". We do not add any workers to the Document Plan and we also remove the Start Dt in the Plan so it shows up as the first Plan in the History/Plans screen. We then used Plans Maintenance to uploaded this plan to all of our current Donors so they would have the document plan already created. All documents are attached in that same Document plan in a Constituent's record. For each document a new step is created and of course the document is attached. This actually works better for us than Research did because we can give more detailed information about the document with the large note area.
This also keeps documents all in the same place just like they used to be under Research.
I agree. I was surprised more users didn't make a big deal out of this. I know when I was at 92Y, we used the Documents tab extensively. And now that I'm at Signature, I'm not looking forward to losing that capability. I thought it was going to be unlocked again in V.15. If that's not the case, that seems very problematic.
Beginning with v14 the Research Documents screen was changed to Read Only. Existing documents can be downloaded, but no new documents can be added to this area of the application. The technology used for this original screen worked well with the Windows infrastructure at the time this was originally created in the application. The technology used to manage file attachments on this screen can be problematic with certain file types as the Windows Operating System technology has changed, make documents become inaccessible. We have implemented new, more reliable technology to attach documents to Plan Steps and Bookings. When we implemented this option, it has always been our intention to use the same technology when we revamp the Constituent screens in the application, which is slated for Tessitura v16.
It is recommended to use Plan Steps to attach general documents to a constituent record. A migration utility will be provided when we implement the new Documents screen. Steps on how to attach a new file using Plan Steps can be found in the help system: www.tessituranetwork.com/.../Documents.htm
The original naming of the version was listed as v15, with the Analytics release happening between v14.0 and the Constituent revamp. Early stages of the Analytics release had been numbered 14.5 and it was changed to v15 since it was going to be a big release and not just a point release of the software, therefore bumping the Constituent work to v16 numbering.
Karen
You've built this as a Prospect Campaign? I like this work around, because I can foresee it being a problem in the case of constituents with multiple Plans per FYs in not being able to locate a document.
Thanks for the idea!
Terry,
What have you done with documents that predated Plans? Were you able to transfer them into the plans you created? If you did, how did you do it?
Thanks!
Matt
Matthew,
Unfortunately, we were unable to access them at all while on v12.5 because each time we would try to open them Tessitura would freeze. This was very bad for us at the time. We had access to only those documents someone happened to have a paper backup to refer to or a copy of a document was saved in a computer file somewhere. Now we are on V14.1 and are able to open most of the old Research/Documents if they were originally attached as a PDF. If they were attached as a Word document they still will not open but at least do not freeze up Tessitura. I have notified our Development team, now that we can access some of them, that they can move them to Plans if they want them all in one place. As far as I know though that can only be done one at a time by saving the doc to the computer and attaching to Plans.