Manual Connect RE

I know there are lots of changes coming with the one day one record but for now it would be great to have the option to sync records manually or automatically so you can go thru and decide which records you may want to update

  • Julie Baker
  • Jul 18 2019
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  • Graham Getty commented
    19 Jul, 2019 07:29pm

    For what it's worth, I think "one record" "Master Constituent Record" and other terms flying around may be a bit of a misnomer. I imagine what's far more likely than Project UNICORN (unifying nearly infinite constituents on resilient networks) is really a SKY-powered master data view where you can see data from any Blackbaud capability (giving, grades, wealth ratings) in one central place thanks to SKY API and SKY UX. Even for that though I think everyone is going to need to do some mapping of the unique ids from your main Blackbaud solutions to one another. We take the User ID (immutable, system-generated id) from Education Management and import it in as the Constituent ID in Raiser's Edge. We then take the Constituent Import ID (immutable, system-generated [unless you configure it during import] id from Raiser's Edge and import it into Education Management as the Host ID. Once that's done, you know who's who in each system, you can setup data quality assurance checks to compare names, addresses, emails, and you can decide what you want to keep in sync and not. You can also build some pretty incredible dashboards in Power BI that actually let you filter records from one capability to the other because you've mapped your own data records of who's who so you can do thing like compare wealth ratings to financial aid awards and overlay it all on a map powered by US Census data (for $2/user/month for Power BI Pro for Faculty). To make a long answer longer, I wouldn't wait on Blackbaud for this or think they are somehow going to be able to mash together records without some kind of mapping. Getting the IDs in each system isn't that hard - start with current parents, students, faculty/staff, major donors. Also Notepad++ and its Compare Plugin is pretty darn fantastic to let you see what differences if any exists among all your data systems.