Hi all,
We are planning to do an NCOA update for the first time since recently moving to v.11, and I am trying to wrap my brain around how this works with household accounts and primary affiliates. This might be a silly question, but if I have Mr. and Mrs. John Doe Household and Mr. John Doe and Mrs. Jane Doe as primary affiliates, do I need to export all three accounts to be scrubbed individually in order to import the data back in through the Utility and get all three accounts updated?
Also, I am looking for advice on how most people handle the phone append. We are using the NCOA Processing Utility for the first time and I don't completely understand the documentation about what happens during processing. I don't understand what happens if a different phone number than what we have is returned. What is written does not make sense to me, so can someone please explain what happens if I send out the number in the Phone 1 field and MBS sends us a different number back? Is it as simple as the Utility puts the new number in Phone 1, replacing the old one? Because the description makes it seem much more complex. I would really like to understand this because I am worried about overwriting phone numbers that the patron gave to us that are perfectly good phone numbers, but may not be the number tied to the address that is being checked, like a cell phone. We keep all numbers tied to the primary address so that we can see them easily on the general tab, and unfortunately, we don't always know if the home number we have been given is a landline or a cell phone.
Any help, advice, etc. is appreciated - thank you!
Kathi
Hi Kathy,
I think the answer for the primary affiliates will be relative to what addresses are on each account and which address types you choose to update. If the affiliates are inheriting their primary address from the household then there won't be an address record for the affiliates. You would be sending the household primary address out for NCOA with the household customer_no attached. The returned data would be for that address and once you update it, the affiliates would be inheriting the cleaned address.
If the affiliates do not inherit the primary address from the household, their primary address would be included in the NCOA. Also if the individuals have additional address types on their account, you will need to decide whether or not to send those as well. At previous orgs, we generally only sent out primary addresses for NCOA updates.
Hope this helps.
- Levi