[dyednwool]

I just completed our internal training documentation around Addresses in RE and wanted to solicit the group's input on how you view RE's functionality in the area of addresses.

I ran into some real issues with lack of functionality here --

• Address linking works fairly well until you need to change something.
• If you make a straightforward address change (using Copy Preferred Address to Alternate) then the address change updates to linked addreses but ONLY the address lines, not the associated address information (like info source, Send Mail, valid from/to dates, etc.)
• This is also the case when you make a "manual" address change.

Basically I found that it doesn't take long for addresses that you truly want linked to get "out of sync". I think RE needs more sophistication in this area and some system aids to ask you more about what you want linked, exactly how it should be linked, and update options.

Can anyone comment on their experiences with addresses, any tips/hints for keeping address information better aligned, and hopes for the future (v. 8?)

[dyednwool]

Just noticed that there are 43 reads and no replies to my posting!!

Am I the only one out there that has an issue with address functionality in RE? Please just reply to let me know I'm not crazy!!! Or was it a dumb question??

[Melissa Siobhan]

I'm not sure that I want the functionality that you seem to think is lacking. Just because one constituent using that address wants their mail sent there does not mean that other constituents using that address want send mail there - likely the same for attributes which are often used for designation of how to use the address - likely different for different constituents.

I guess it would be nice to have the ability to update that info on all addresses if you wanted to but I would not want them to automatically change it on all addresses like they do for address lines, etc.

[Kate Schandler]

Gina,

You are not crazy, and I firmly believe there are no dumb questions. That being said, added to the guilt that I believe I was one of the 43 reads earlier- I suppose I will wade in. (Sorry, Gina, for not replying sooner- it took a bit to know what to say. And Melissa, thanks for jumping in.)

While I have not had the address linking issues in RE, I have seen them in EE. (The functionality, as you might imagine, is very simillar.) In EE we have all sorts of strangely linked addresses and linked addresses that are changed in one spot and then change addresses across something like 300 records, in one case, etc. From what I know of the software, I understand what they were trying to do; it is almost like making an address its own one-to-many record, which, I understand, they finally have managed to do in v.8. (In v.8 they are called "households.") It sounds like you are trying to make this work; more power to you.

I have yet to make address linking seamless, and yes, Gina, you are right, the slightest change (like the moon in the seventh house...) will throw off the linking. The only way we have managed to get around it, and for current students and their families only, is to re-visit the linking when we do our giant records update in the late spring, preparing for next school year. So we litterally "touch" every record and, in the process, check the address linking for each record.

I guess the best answer I can give is to hope for v.8- and to send as much encouragement towards you as possible- although I hear that you finally got rid of the snow, so, perhaps, things are looking up.

Thanks,
-Kate