Batch update of contacts or members
As an administrator I would find it really helpful to be able to make bulk changes online. Two reasons:
Import/export is clumsy, and foces me to use Excel's interface, which I find quite awkward.
There is no "lock" on the data while I am changing it. Members can change data while I am making changes to the exported file.
To give an idea of the sort of problems #2 generates: if I do an export and a member comes along and changes his/her data while I am playing with the exported file, then there's a problem. The way that WA seems to handle this is by generating an error on reimport. I now have to download the error file to see what the error is (since of course I don't know what caused the error -- as a separate request, I'd really like it if these errors were shown live on the webpage), make the fix or export yet another file, make my changes all over again, and re-import -- hoping that no further changes were made so that I don't have to go through the process yet again!
As a side note, the advanced search feature is fantastic! If bulk changes could be incorporated into that, I'd be very, very happy.
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Patricia Milian commented
I would love an editable table view for contacts. This seems reasonably simple. Even better would be the ability to filter a list of contact and then change a field value universally across all of those contacts.
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Annabel Chan commented
Is there a way for me to select multiple contacts to edit them at the same time? For example, I would like to add multiple contacts to a group rather than having to edit them one by one.
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Randall (Randy) Rensch commented
We've been putting off Archiving hundreds of non-Member contacts who have opted out of both email types, or not attended an event in many years, or both.
We can generate that list. Now, how do we archive them all?
Apparently I have to export to spreadsheet, change the archive flag and re-import? Talk about make-work! Not to mention opportunity for grievous error. (Okay, I've mentioned it.) And some people, believe it or not, are not handy with spreadsheets. (I've pretty much forgotten what little I knew.) In fact, some people shudder at seeing one. I don't blame them. If you don't use Excel regularly, even a simple chore like this is scary and involves a hugely disproportionate learning curve (plus the program).I'm not quite so cynical as to think WA is makes this a chore just to get us up to the next billing tier, but I can't imagine any other reason why this was not a top-ten capability on WA's Advanced Search specification document when you built it.
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Anonymous commented
I wish the Member GUI could be redone. Any time you want to do a mass change, it can be difficult. One example: let's say you have many members that you want to delete. So you first need to archive them individually. Then you need to delete and confirm (2 clicks) that you want the member deleted. The archive/delete function should be collapsed into a single operation/command. In addition, you should be able to select many members at one time (add a check box for selecting any member) and then perform a 'group wide' operation on all selected. If deleting a selected group, you get one pop up confirmation that applies to all selected members for deletion.
Unfortunately, how this was architected was looking at only modifying a single contact, not if you needed to work on a large group of members.
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Thanks Walt, this is exactly the workaround I wanted to share, but you were first. Thank you for watching by back!
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Walt Bilofsky commented
You may want to vote for this item:
In the meantime I think you can do this by exporting the results of the advanced search in Excel, putting in the group membership desired, and re-importing the records. It's clumsy but easier than going through 4000 names.
You may be able to compute all your group assignments in one Excel export of your full membership rather than using advanced search.
Before re-importing, it might be safer to delete all the columns except for the User ID and the Group participation column.
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ashishdaga commented
we have around 4000 members of various types. We want to add them to the certain group(s). How to add multiple members of various types to selected group.
FYI - I do know on group page you have button call Manage Participants but it gives me the list of all of my 4000 members and I can't go through each of them to add to that group.
When I do advance search and get my list of members - I want to add them to the group.Wild Apricot ticket # 76023
I agree editing records in bulk is a nice feature to have. Due to our limited resources we have to prioritize this with all the other hundred of requests we have at any given time, so there is no timeline when exactly we will be able to add this feature. In the meantime we would appreciate it if you could add this request in our wishlist forum so we can gauge the need
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Is it similar to batch updating records? See https://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/8825719-batch-update-of-contacts-or-members
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tlcorr03 commented
An editable table view would be awesome! For example, if I do a search for members to find a handful I want, then be able to see them (and edit) a table of the selected records. That would make it so much easier to make a small edit to each one of the records (like checking a checkbox that they are an incoming board member). This would be similar functionality to the dataset (is that the right term?) view in SharePoint.
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Trenton, currently you can use export/import process a a workaround. Basically, you export all Lapsed contacts, then import this file and only use Email and Status fields from the source file.
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Trent Colbert commented
Bulk change "lapsed" to "active" would help me after mistakenly archiving everyone and then have to go back and restore each one separately only to find that then all the memberships were lapsed. If I can bulk/batch archive, I want to be able to bulk/batch unarchive.
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Adam Ryba commented
The ability to update common fields for all contacts at one time. For example, when you add a new field and select it for default, all contacts should have that defaulted to their information.
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NCAFC commented
I wish we could select and take action on multiple member records at once without having to key it on each individual record (i.e. manual renewals, suspensions, etc.)
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Evgeny Zaritovskiy commented
Split into dedicated thread.
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Evgeny Zaritovskiy commented
This is kind of different from original comment - but I like idea of tagging member for group actions. I think we need to consider this as a separate change.
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Brandon Longley commented
Bulk changes would be great, it would be nice to be able to make bulk membership approvals possible. So as to not do them individually.
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Cathy D commented
The ability to manage event registrations through bulk updates would be great - specifically recording offline (in person) payments for an event.
Cathy
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Dmitry Buterin commented
Hi Nancy, a feature that's already included in version 5 is bulk-archiving current selection. So the big question is - can you run an advanced search of some kind that would you give you a list of all people to be archived? Sounds like this should be possible - then your work will be much simplified when we release 5.0
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Nancy Scanlan commented
I will be a little more specific about our request to bulk update membership levels.
We have some (not many) student members. They have to pay a little bit, not much, and will usually continue as student members until they graduate.
First year graduate membership is free, and we include all graduates from the 10 veterinary schools which work with us (by promoting holistic veterinary medicine in some way, such as having an acupuncturist on staff). So every year we add 800 new members who are first year graduates. About 2 request to be taken off the list, and the rest are happy to have a free membership.
The following year they are second year graduates, which is a different membership level. Second year graduates pay half the full membership fee. About 750 do not want to pay for items they almost never use (such as a database of research on supplements and herbs), but about 50 or less want to stay on.It does not make sense to snail mail dues letter to 800 people.if only 50 or less wish to stay on as members.We delete them as we get time, but it is really, really slow. We KNOW that we do not want these 750 back.We transfer them in bulk to the archives, by exporting, changing the archived column, then importing. Since dues time is a very busy time it takes even longer than you would think to have enough staff time to eventually delete them.
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Becky Parsons commented
Here is an example of a need for a bulk change online:
I want to archive, and perhaps delete, all contacts who have not opened an email since a specific date. There needs to be a search criteria to identify those contacts, and then a bulk archive - and perhaps a bulk delete - function for that search result.
Today I submitted a Wishlist item to add these search features:
“last email open date” with selection options of “on or before” and “on or after”, and
“number of emails opened” with selection options of “greater than” and “less than”.
But even when you add these search features, I will still be required to manually archive (and then manually delete) all those contacts. So, please add these search functions and also add the bulk change function.
Those of us who have been on your software awhile need this clean-up ability.
Thank you!