Hello Everyone,
At the start of the pandemic nearly all of our staff was laid off and as a result many non-critical tasks like reviewing new records and merging constituents fell by the way side. So... two years later we have around 60,000-120,000 new records and over 3,000 merges to complete. In the past we delegated data clean up and merging to the box office, but due to continuing staffing shortages we'll need to find another way.
Does anyone have experience using automated procedures to clean up data and schedule merges. Is this possible? We'd like to add CSIs to new records with invalid or missing addresses. I vaguely remember reading a forum post a while back about some tessitura organizations who outsourced data clean up and merges. I can't seem to find that post again. Has anybody tried this? Anyways, I'd love to hear what you all do and discuss the best ways to insure clean consistent data.
Thank you,
Joseph
I personally wouldn't trust automation to schedule merges, because the identified potential duplicates aren't always duplicates. I personally go through merges weekly as part of my tasks as database manager. I used to go through new records but haven't had the time in many years. I saw another post recently where Heath Wilder shared some SQL that will clean up case issues. Curious why you're wanting to add CSIs to new records with invalid or missing addresses. What do you plan to do with them?
Adding CSIs was something we started long before I joined the team. I think the idea was that if a patron with a bad address were to call or come into the box office, the box office staff would be able to update the patron's record. It may be a bit over kill though.