So I need to see essentially take a smaller database from another department and see which of them are on our Tessitura. Any tips on how to do this without having to search one-by-one? My best idea so far is to make an import file and run Constituent Import in "Review Mode", then look for duplicates. Has anyone got a better way? We're not necessarily going to import those we don't have - the other department just want to see the crossover.
Cheers,Rog
I'm right now researching and developing a pretty heavyweight solution to this problem and am very curious what kinds of custom solutions people have come up with already.
My approach thus far has been problematic, but better than the alternative of manually searching each constituent. In our environment, we use a Tessitura attribute to match up records from the foreign database. The procedure I have now involves loading the foreign dataset into a local table in tessitura, then running a series of scripts to identify matches that already exist on the attribute value, or matches that DID exist but have been broken by merges in one or both systems (aargh), and finally potential matches on email, address/name, etc. What I don't yet have is an interface to easily approve or refuse those potential matches—basically what I am looking to develop.
I think you can do a lot of this with the constituent import utility as you suggest, but I want more control over finding duplicates (searching multiple addresses on each side of the import, for example).
Anyone else have a novel approach to dealing with the problem of overlap/matchup between a foreign database and Tessi?