Hi:
Here at the Museum we have noticed an issue when attempting to send solicitation emails using WordFly. My criteria pulls in anyone in a given solicitation group who has a valid email address on either their household or individual record. Unfortunately, we’re having an issue with outputting that information to WordFly.
In order to get the correct information, we have the salutation and email of the record selected pulling into the output, but also the solicitation ask amount. The issue arises when the email is on a different record from the solicitation ask amount. I cannot simply check the “Include Primary Household” check box on the solicitation ask amount element because then WordFly will not accept the output set since it could conceivably produce multiple values. Unfortunately, without checking that box, I am unable to get the solicitation ask amount from a household record to populate in the output when the individual record is the one with the email. This means that the output (as is) produces ask amounts of $0 which is clearly not what we want for a solicitation email!
Currently, I am manually checking my lists and moving emails from the individual records to the household records in order to ensure that the correct data gets outputted for our emails, but I’m wondering if anyone else has come across this issue before and has a work-around that doesn’t involve manually checking my selected lists every time.
I’d appreciate it if anyone has any insight.
Thanks,
Laine
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Laine Kyllonen
Database Application Specialist
Science Museum of Minnesota
(651) 221-2515
This is an extremely good question. At City Center we do not move e-mails from the Individual record to the Household. Doing so eliminates any individualization in contacting donors—it's one of the only benefits of version 11!
We also don't use WordFly for our renewals; we do these particular e-mails in-house, so we do two passes: first with the Membership Renewal Notices utility and then the User Defined Format From A List report, putting them together manually to create an Excel sheet to merge to our template. You should be able to upload this Excel file to WordFly, but you're correct that this isn't a simple solution.
Hi Laine,
When I need information that is on an Individual account that is part of a household where the transactions live, I use the Relationship Analysis report. I run it off of a list, just on constituent of Households and select the Adult Member Affiliation. Then I save it out as a CSV file to put into Access (that is after I delete the parameter rows and re save it as a csv, because even though it says it’s a CSV, the SSRS report saves it as an unusable Unicode). Once in Access I use this table as a link to the table with Household information and the table with Individual information. Perhaps this would help in your situation. It’s not as good as pulling all from Tess, but when you absolutely need to have the Household and its Individual information in one record, it’s the only way I’ve found to make it work.
Hope that helps.
T.C. Brown
Database Administrator
412.392.4834
From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Laine Kyllonen Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2013 3:11 PM To: TC Brown Subject: [Tessitura Development Forum] Output Elements and WordFly
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Hi Laine -
When I've needed things like this for WordFly I've added my own custom elements that will return only one row. I've got bunches of custom elements that I use 'Include Primary Household' - you just have to make sure that it is a one row return. I often do this by including an element parameter (like campaign of solicitation) or by doing some sort of sum if needs be.
Hope I'm not being too vague and that makes sense!
- Heather
When I’m sending e-blasts based on tickets or donations, which we keep on the household, I first make a list of all accounts with the appropriate tickets or gifts, making sure to add individuals with a household affiliation to that list. I then build the extraction segment choosing the type of e-mail I am searching for, such as primary flag set to Yes, marketing flag set to Yes, with the mail purpose(s) I want, where the patron is on my list that includes the households and affiliated individuals I want.
Lucie
______________________________Lucie SpielerIT Development and Training Manager
Editor, Season Program BookFLORIDA GRAND opera
Hi, Heather!
My IT people were wondering if you'd be able to supply the query in your custom element for Solicitation Ask Amount (or another similar element) as we're having difficulty since WordFly won't recognize output sets with an asterisk in them.
I really appreciate your help!
The biggest "trick" is to pull off a view that is going to return one row per person (or will when you add a parameter) and then make sure that in the TR_QUERY_ELEMENT table make sure that 'Single Row' is checked. That is what WordFly checks against when allowing an upload.
Feel free to contact me offline if they need more than that - I can pull together some screen shots or something. :)