So we're starting to delve more into doing extractions and I just had a question from development about suppressing records with a deceased status. They were concerned that if one person on the account had the deceased status that it would completely suppress that account even though one person on it is still alive. I've done some testing and discovered that it will exclude them, but perhaps I'm just not building the suppression segment correctly. Any advice?
Thanks!
I think you just want to exclude if the entire record is inactive for reason = deceased and this would only be true if both were deceased.
For just name1 or name2 – we have the practice of the deceased name being moved to Name2 and the living constituent is in Name1.
Each name has status and your list/extraction can check that both are deceased before excluding/suppressing.
From: Tessitura Technical Forum [mailto:forums-technical@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Christina Bledsoe Sent: Thursday, October 14, 2010 5:44 PM To: McKinley, Leslie Subject: [Tessitura Technical Forum] Question about suppressions
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Hi Christina,
I think typically organizations have two ways of marking patrons as deceased.Via the name1/name2 statuses (system table tr_namestatus), which leaves the account active, and/or by an inactive type (tr_inactive_reason) which will inactive the account completely.We use an inactive type of deceased (as well as any other inactive reason) as a standard suppression but not typically the name status.
Hope that makes sense.
The two ways I think of are either having a practice where, if name2 is blank, change the name2 status to deceased as well as name1 when name1 dies, and then only suppress records where both names are deceased, or suppress only those accounts where both names are deceased (because they actually are) and then a second suppression for accounts where name1 is deceased and fname2 and lname2 are blank.
We do have an inactive type of deceased, but we don't always use it because we thought we shouldn't inactivate someone who is deceased if they have a current membership or subscription on their account. Although if they're deceased they're probably not going to be using that subscription! Is this true or should we just not worry about that and inactivate all accounts where no one on the account is still alive?
There are a lot of viewpoints about that conundrum. Some people set up the deceased account as a new constituent type, like Estate if there is planned giving etc. leaving it active. (suppressing non-individual accounts will keep these out of extractions if needed)Also there are a couple custom reports via TASK that will switch out name 1 and name 2 as well as the appropriate associations, constituencies etc. in the event that name 1 has been marked as deceased and not name 2. If this is something you maintained regularly you'd be able to simply say, if name 1 status is deceased, suppress it.Suggestions already brought up here are also good ones to consider, and there are at least a couple threads about this question or similar ones.Here is a link to one of them.I think this is something that a lot of us struggle with, and I know on my side there are improvements to be made.
Agree with Ryan - there are any number of reasons an account may be left active if one/both/all names are deceased. We have a standard suppression template that we copy when starting new extractions that includes this manual edit:
Select Distinct a.customer_no From t_customer a (NOLOCK) Where (1 = 1 AND ISNULL(a.name_status, 1) in (2) AND ISNULL(a.name2_status, 1) in (2))or (1 = 1 AND ISNULL(a.name_status, 1) in (2) AND a.fname2 is null)
The idea is, if there is a second name that is not deceased, don't suppress the account. So select for suppression if both are deceased, or if name1 is deceased and there is no name2.
Thanks Brian!This is going in my standard suppression list.
Cheers!