Hello! Our organization is planning a large-scale data hygiene project. The goal is to update salutations in our database so they're a little more modern (e.g. replacing "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith" with a form of address that relies less on outdated gender norms). I'm wondering if anyone has any advice about how to go about mass-updating this information, or would be willing to share their experience with similar data hygiene projects? I'm an apprentice and still learning about Tessitura, so if the language I'm using is confusing or incorrect please let me know and I'll clarify. Thanks!
I will say that it was impossible for us to update all of our salutations in one go: I broke up our customers into about 8 or 9 sets and then created SQL Server Agent jobs to run over one of those sets each night, rather than trying to do it through the client utility.
Hi Anne! There is a utility in the Data Management category called Rebuild Salutations that can help you with this task. It's intended to be run after you make changes to the salutation format table and are ready to push the edits to groups of constituents. Like all utilities that change system data, we highly recommend you run it in your Test system first and verify the results before you proceed in Live. This utility does not have a preview mode like some utilities have.
This utility can take a while to execute. To limit its scope and decrease the run time, there is an optional list parameter that can help limit the action to certain constituents (like accounts with activity in the last X years). Scheduling the utility to run in the background will also help mitigate any system performance issues.
You can also use lists and the Salutation Type parameter to exclude sensitive data that is carefully managed and shouldn't be affected, like VIPs and their fundraising salutations.
Thank you, that is helpful!
Thanks so much! I'll discuss this with my team and see if that's doable for us!