Keeping data clean is critical. Here are some popular searches and data tools to identify potential issues in individual data. For organization data, see the related article.
Duplicate or Missing Email Addresses
Staff should make it a recurring task to periodically check the duplicate email report:
Contacts -> Reports -> ‘Individuals with the same Email Address’
In addition, depending on how much emailing you are doing, you should check periodically for individuals — particularly members — missing emails. You can do this using Individual Query builder to find individuals with blank email fields:
Reports -> Individual Query Builder -> Individual Fields -> email -> is Blank
[then you can AND in other criteria to narrow the results]
Committee Roles and/or Memberships with Future End dates
Some associations have committees with set, specific terms. Others have no end dates on the committee memberships; members may serve on the committees until they decide to leave. Others have a mix of both types. MatrixMaxx handles all of these cases.
However, because of this flexibility, there is also the chance for mistakes to occur. e.g., for an end date or term to be added to a committee role that shouldn’t have one.
Here is a quick search to help identify most of these mistakes using Individual Query Builder …
Reports -> Individual Query Builder …
Committee Membership -> Committee Role -> Role End Date -> After -> Date -> [current date]
OR
Committee Membership -> Committee Membership -> Membership End Date -> After -> Date -> [current date]
NOTE: Using the advanced committee searches and tools – particularly Query Builder – requires some understanding of the tables powering committees. The Committee ROLE holds the startdate, enddate, and role itself. Each distinct Role creates a Committee Membership, which holds a connection to the committee itself as well as startterm, endterm and leave date. This table structure was created based on a certain concept of appropriately tracking continuous committee membership, even if an edit occurs in the role (for example, if an inaccurate role was entered and then changed)
Individuals with no Organization affiliation
For trade associations, in particular, you may want to occasionally check the individuals not connected to a company that are in your database
Reports -> Individual Query Builder -> Organizations -> Not connected to an organization
[then you can AND in other criteria to narrow the results, like cutting out certain statuses like deceased, hidden, and maybe retired]