[Jo Ward]

Just spent over an hour on the phone with Blackbaud trying to solve a mystery gift query issue. The gift query was looking at gifts to two appeals over a particular time period. Pretty straight-forward, or so it seemed. I ran the query and got 109 records, set it up to feed a Gift Detail and Summary report so our Annual Fund director could run it at will. She ran it and got 46 records. The difference was that all of the gifts to one of the appeals showed up, but none of the gifts to the second appeal showed up. After trying the query on different work stations and with different users, I discovered that she got the same results on different work stations, and other users, with one exception, got all 109 records on various work stations.

I created a new user id for her, and still got 46 records. People with fewer security rights than she has got 109 records. It finally occurred to me when I created a new gift query and had to type in the appeal criteria, rather than selecting it as in constituent queries, that I was typing in the appeal description. When I changed it, and typed in the appeal id and ran it under my own user id, I got 45 records and when she ran it, she got 109 records. It seems the description id and description are the same for the first appeal and different for the second one. The gift query bases its results on the user option of appeal format, as defined by the user running the query!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Does that make any sense at all? For now, while Blackbaud is figuring out what to do, I am having her use the query that uses the appeal id, while I use the original one with the appeal description.

I know I could just as easily hav had her change her user options to use the description, but that defeats the purpose of having this as a user OPTION.

Has anyone else had this experience, or am I just living in the twilight zone?

Jo

[Melissa Siobhan]

I HATE that user option and it causes so many issues here. just the other day my VP ran a report that showed the appeals and packages as IDs and she wanted to see the full descriptions. I told her she had to change her user options to change it but she prefers to see IDs on the appeals tab on constituent records. It is so ridiculous that a report can work so differently depending on user options like this. You should be able to set your peference for that report so all users get the same report!

Jo, what field are you using in your gift query? Appeal list? or did you go down to Appeals and choose ID or Description? Try the other and see if you still have the same problem.

[Jo Ward]

Thanks, Melissa. I was using Appeal List, and making the change to Appeals seems to work for all. Why do they even have Appeal List in the gift information? GRRR!!!!!!!!!!