We get NCOA update information from our mail house and would love to be able to use that to update addresses in Tessitura rather than paying for the service. Unfortunately I can't find any information about the formatting/configuration required by the NCOA Processing Utility. Has anyone had any experience with this?
Thanks in advance!
Allegra -
One thing you can do to get some knowledge about the required import format is to perform an NCOA export. This will produce the file that would typically go to your NCOA provider. Once they perform the COA process on the file, they would return it with the appropriate NCOA codes and any updates in the various columns of the file the codes relate to. The details of the import file are found in the Tessitura documentation (v15 - https://www.tessituranetwork.com/Help_System_v151h/Tessitura.htm#NCOA_Processing/Import%20Mode.htm).
Another suggestion I have is to review the NCOA system tables to understand the codes that the USPS uses to identify the type of COA that occurred for the patron. Those translate to one of four codes the NCOA stored procedure uses to update (or in some cases only standardize) the address - found in the TX_NCOALINK_RESULT_ACTION system table. You may find that the codes in TX_NCOALINK_ACTION table need to be adjusted based on your interpretation of the data from the mail house.
Once you understand the codes and the file structure, you should be able to build your own application to compare the information from the mail house to the information in the export file. The output from the application you build will need to follow the column structure in the above referenced link. This will give you what you need to import into Tessitura and process the COA.
With some work and a little research, you might be able to pull it off! Good luck.