v.5 Data Management: Use Database Audit to Regain Control of your Database Presented by: Bill Ballou, Training Manager (Shelby v.5 & Shelby Financials Online) 2013 Shelby Systems, Inc. Other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of the respective holders.
Objective It is common for normal entry to cause your data to lose integrity and consistency. It is wise to have an established process to reassess your practices and evaluate your data. What You Will Learn in This Session How to establish clear goals and data entry standards How to ensure consistent data entry How to evaluate data on a regular schedule by using reports and other means How to correct inconsistencies and errors as they are located How to develop a strategy for removing inactive records when is it time to purge? 2
Begin with Initial Data Entry What triggers a name entry into Shelby? What is the minimum amount of information required? Name Name, address Name, address, phone Name, email address What pieces of information need to be entered? Will family members be entered as individual records? Why? Why not? Who can enter records into Shelby? 3
Helpful Tools for Maintaining Data Integrity Control Tables (vary by module). The various tables are built as data is entered. Looking at the Title table we can: Add entries Edit Entries Delete Entries (maybe) Combine entries 4
Profile Configuration Opening the Profile Type table and clicking the Print button will give a list with the configuration of each profile. A good recommendation is for ALL profiles that are manually entered to be set up with Has Start Date checked (shown in the control table grid as Allows Begin Date ) with a Beginning Date entered on the actual Profile connected to the individual record. This will help you to better keep track of how old this Profile is and possibly see which Profiles are out of date. 5
GlobaFILE Utilities Remove Unreferenced Names Affects only those names in the GlobaFILE that do not have a Profile or are not attached by an Other Relationship. 6
Combine Names clean up duplicate records Update Postal information if Mail Room is not used 7
Profiles Change all Occurrences Delete all Occurrences removes from individuals without deleting the profile. Update Local Phone Exchange Numbers when new area codes are added or changed 8
Globafile Preferences GlobaFILE Preferences There is a wealth of tools in GlobaFILE Preferences that affect your data on one way or another. Address Preferences Address Preferences help donors who have alternate addresses receive mail or college students who move around. 9
Use the Address Preference in many different reports. Use address dates. Customize Field Names Choose names that match your purposes for Area, Region, and District. 10
Secure Profiles when necessary Name different Profile Security Options. Assign Rights for Secured Comments in Security Settings. 11
GlobaFILE Reports Duplicate Records Use the Possible Duplicate Name List to find duplicates so that you can clean up data. 12
Profile Analysis Find profiles that are unused or underused by using this report. 13
Making Adjustments to Your Data Update Selected Fields GlobaFILE > Utility > Update Selected Fields Move information or add information in bulk to specific records. Add Profile Security to Existing Profile Utilities module > Shelby Tools > Profile Security Update Here you can take Profiles already applied to several records and secure those so that only certain users can have access to them. Select the Profile, then select the Security option. Choose whether you want to Only update profiles where the comment is not blank. Click to Run. Now, all those Profiles are secured. 14
Transfer Giving Donors and Gifts > Utilities > Maintenance > Transfer When someone dies or you want to remove them from your Donor list (or from the database altogether), you will first need to transfer the giving to some other record in the database. Go to Utilities > Maintenance in the dropdown menu and choose Transfer. Fill in the deceased person as the Transfer From record and list the Starting Date to determine how much of the giving to transfer to the other record. Add the spouse or another record as the Transfer To record and click OK. You will be asked to confirm that you want to transfer gifts from the Transfer From record to the Transfer To record. In the next screen you will confirm that you want to transfer envelope number. (If you click No then you will not transfer the envelope number to the second record.) Finally you will confirm whether you do or do not want to remove this record from the GF (Donors and Gifts) module. NOTE: This record will still be in GlobaFILE, so if this is the only use of this record, you will need to Remove Unreferenced Names to completely remove this record. 15
Helpful Reports Single Spouses o Family Position Spouse o Marital Status Single o Formatted Report output (although report is optional if you just want to fix these records) Children older than 18 Individuals not born yet (birth dates in the future) 16
Records that have not been updated in XX years No Address Listed Improperly formatted phone numbers Run this query in ShelbyQUERY to find any telephone numbers missing the opening parentheses. Select * from NAPhones where LEFT(PhoneNu,1) <> '(' and len(phonenu) > 8 NOTE: This query will find all phone numbers with more than 8 digits (including the dash) that do not begin with an open parenthesis. 17
To Think About When is it appropriate to delete a record from the database? o What are the criteria to consider? o Who makes that call? o What do you keep when deleting a record? Who can update information; how restrictive should it be? o Do you have someone controlling the formatting of your information or can anyone add a record? o What guidelines have you created for what is added to a new record or how information is formatted on any record? Who can view information? o Is certain information restricted to specific staff members? o Have you properly set up security to control this? Who creates reports? o Do certain non-financial reports belong to specific users? o Do you secure any Selections and Listings reports or Special Reports in GL? Maintaining your data integrity is an ongoing task. You will never be done. o Run audits of your records on a regular basis. o Clean out old Profiles and Control Table items at least annually. Who can create profiles? Do you have a profile Czar? Is there a Profile template to follow? o For example: First two letters = main area, Second two letters = sub-grouping, and so forth. 18
When was the last time the Custom Tabs were reviewed? o Do you need to secure some Custom Tabs? When should a child be put into his/her own family unit? How should churches with the same name be handled? o Do you use the Name ID or Alternate ID to find or indentify records? Are there any MY Status queries which might be helpful? How is updated information obtained? You can add your own questions to this list, but it would be wise to consider these and other questions to help you to create a Policy and Procedure manual to establish correct policy and entry practices. 19
Bill Ballou Training Manager (v.5 & SFO) bill.ballou@shelbyinc.com Bill has been a part of the Shelby Systems training department for almost 14 years and has been the Training Manager for the last seven years. He has great enjoyment working with the gifted trainers on his team. Bill brings a vitality and life to training software (no small feat) and uses humor to help attendees feel at ease with new and intimidating ideas. He has helped dozens of churches find solutions to tracking financial and member information so that they can do ministry more effectively. Bill worked for almost twenty years on staff at different churches, so he has an appreciation for the questions and challenges of many of our users. Training is a passion for Bill, and he loves that moment where he can see knowledge and ideas transfer to another person