NCOA Processing

Hi all,

We at the Science Museum have indeed taken the leap! We pulled our first export on January 15.  Overall I'd say it went well; my IT colleagues tell me that the technical end (eg pulling the lists, exporting, and importing) all went very smoothly.  The more challenging pieces are 1) figuring out all the business rules you might want in place and 2) dealing with the inevitable odd situations. 

If anyone has questions about the process, we'd be happy to help out if we can.  But in the meantime, I thought I'd post the most recent odd situation we've found, both as a warning and a cry for help: we're finding some instances in which we have information in the "optional address" line that the NCOA process erases.

1) Patrons who give us both a street address and a PO Box or RR #.  Historically, these had been entered using both the "Street Address" and the "Optional address" fields. However, the NCOA process "erased" whatever was in the optional address in most of those cases, because the process doesn't consider this two-line address to be the standardized version.

2) Individual accounts for which the patron has a "care of" or "Attention" line.  Again, these had been put in the "Optional address" line, as they are, in effect, optional addresses...the trouble is, NCOA treats them as "un-standard" and erases them when it standardizes the address.

3) And thirdly, individuals who want to receive their mail at a business address.  They need to be individual constituent types, so we know they are working with us as an individual and not as a representative of the company.  But as an individual, the only data lines we have in the address itself are for name 1, name 2, and the main or optional street addresses.  Again, we used to list it in the optional line, but the NCOA wipes that line clean when it standardizes. 

Our workaround for these issues include various tricks...for business names/titles we're using salutations, and for the moment the PO Boxes are just being archived and we're trusting that the mail will reach them at the street address.  But this is not ideal; I think it's a little much to expect every frontline staffer to be fluent in the use of salutations and NCOA so they can fiddle with every "care of" or "send this to me at work" request.

I've submitted this on the Next Gen forum as well so they can tackle the issue there...but in the meantime, does anyone have any clever thoughts regarding how to deal with c/o, po boxes, etc.?

Hi all,

We at the Science Museum have indeed taken the leap! We pulled our first export on January 15.  Overall I'd say it went well; my IT colleagues tell me that the technical end (eg pulling the lists, exporting, and importing) all went very smoothly.  The more challenging pieces are 1) figuring out all the business rules you might want in place and 2) dealing with the inevitable odd situations. 

If anyone has questions about the process, we'd be happy to help out if we can.  But in the meantime, I thought I'd post the most recent odd situation we've found, both as a warning and a cry for help: we're finding some instances in which we have information in the "optional address" line that the NCOA process erases.

1) Patrons who give us both a street address and a PO Box or RR #.  Historically, these had been entered using both the "Street Address" and the "Optional address" fields. However, the NCOA process "erased" whatever was in the optional address in most of those cases, because the process doesn't consider this two-line address to be the standardized version.

2) Individual accounts for which the patron has a "care of" or "Attention" line.  Again, these had been put in the "Optional address" line, as they are, in effect, optional addresses...the trouble is, NCOA treats them as "un-standard" and erases them when it standardizes the address.

3) And thirdly, individuals who want to receive their mail at a business address.  They need to be individual constituent types, so we know they are working with us as an individual and not as a representative of the company.  But as an individual, the only data lines we have in the address itself are for name 1, name 2, and the main or optional street addresses.  Again, we used to list it in the optional line, but the NCOA wipes that line clean when it standardizes. 

Our workaround for these issues include various tricks...for business names/titles we're using salutations, and for the moment the PO Boxes are just being archived and we're trusting that the mail will reach them at the street address.  But this is not ideal; I think it's a little much to expect every frontline staffer to be fluent in the use of salutations and NCOA so they can fiddle with every "care of" or "send this to me at work" request.

I've submitted this on the Next Gen forum as well so they can tackle the issue there...but in the meantime, does anyone have any clever thoughts regarding how to deal with c/o, po boxes, etc.?