Web Form Enhancement Ideas to better control duplicate records
A few ideas that would greatly improve the current duplicate process for our organization:
1. Provide the ability to exclude households from running in the duplicate process. I have several duplicate records (mostly by name) that I need to run through a 70% or less duplicate process. But I know that the majority of the results that will pull will be households. A lot of time can be saved if these can be excluded so that the focus could be solely on the true duplicates.
2. There needs to some kind of address identification or even membership ID identification on the web forms, when users create an account. The membership ID would be ideal, as it is a unique number for the most part. The elements being used now are creating the potential for several duplicates to be created.
3. Add a relationship type field to the web forms page so that users must provide this information when adding another individual. If the individual added is in the same household (address) it would be nice for there to be functionality added that would systematically tie these records together. Right now this is an extremely manual process for us and it provides a lot of room for error and confusion.
I understand that maintaining the duplicate process is just apart of Altru, and I have blocked out a chunk of time each week to review these - but, I am hoping to see some enhancements down the road with this process to cut-down the duplicates all together. By doing this we all can be more efficient in our roles. Thank you.
Definitely, I have to go through manually and put husbands and wives or adults and chlidren in the same household if they register for new memberships/programs online. Or if they type the address differently, 1234 n sample AVE, instead of 1234 North Sample Avenue, it adds the first one as a new address, and often as a brand new account.
As for #3, I have added a disclaimer to each of my class registrations to tell them that they need to change the name of the registrant to that of the child. Then I have an information field for the name of the child. If the two do not match, then I have to go back to the payment and see what name is on the credit/debit transaction. If the payment is under the child's account, I have to change the payment to the adult account and add the adult name to thre registration. If the registered name is the adult name, I have to change the registered name to the name in the child information box. Right now I am checking every single registration that comes in, which takes a lot of my time.
All are great suggestions but we really need #3 ASAP. We just went live with registering for art classes through Altru. It is very common for a parent to register a child, or a husband to register a wife, etc.
Our children's museum is new to Altru (just went live yesterday!), but we've already identified #3, especially, as a functionality we would love to see added for membership web forms and would be a crucial tool in helping us define relationships at the point of online sale. We're a small staff, so any functionality that helps us be more efficient is welcome!
Sure would be great to have. One issue we have is summer camp registrations. We can't tell if it's the child with their own credit card or the parent who is attending the camp! Lots of scrambling prior to camp to call everyone, which defeats the pre-registration concept.
I vote specifically for #2. I would really love to have memberhsip ID field provided in web forms. This is what our members expect. I talk to members at least once a week about this. They go to our website and they don't understand or trust that it is renewing their membership. Without the specific field, they are under the impresstion that they are purchasing a brand new membership.