By Bethany Avery, Amanda Cose, and Sara Swiatlowski
For those not familiar with the BrightVine Data Link (BVDL), it's a powerful data integration engine specifically designed for nonprofit organizations using Blackbaud CRM™ and, soon, for nonprofits using The Raiser's Edge. The BrightVine Data Link facilitates efficient and automated data management by integrating various data sources like flat files, APIs, and more. BVDL helps organizations streamline their processes by eliminating the need for manual data entry, improving data quality, and offering robust error handling.
In the BrightVine Data Link for Blackbaud CRM, these are some of our favorite features:
Enhanced Match Score - The Enhanced Match Score is a must-have dynamic operation for every import, in our humble opinion. The number one use case we see is to control for incoming records that match existing records by email address. The out-of-the-box Blackbaud CRM™ matching algorithm heavily depends on mailing address, and a matched email address alone will not register a match score high enough to bypass the threshold. While every import can be tailored, the most common setting is adding somewhere between 10 and 15 points to the match score where an exact match on the email address is found. This can be paired with subtraction of some of those points where the first name is not the same to better control for situations of shared email addresses that may be shared across spouses, group members, etc. (see example below)
Conditional Default - The Conditional Default Operation is arguably the most useful tool in the BVDL arsenal. It is simple in that it allows you to handle several if/then scenarios where if one condition is met then set a specified value for the same data field or a completely different one. It is a flexible operation that allows you to do so many things when staging your data. These are some of the examples that we often use it for.
Quick translations
Ignore blank contact information - A lot of times when you set up a mapping, you want to default the type for incoming addresses and phone numbers. This is great but can cause an exception when the incoming data is missing key information because BVDL expects an address/phone number to be entered when the Type field is set to something. Instead of having to ignore the rows when the exception pops up manually, you can use Conditional Default to ignore the row with missing data automatically, and you’ll never see the exception. To do this you would set your operation up like the screenshot below, what this is saying is that if the address block or the phone number is blank then set the row action to 3 which tells BVDL to set the row to ignore.
Constituent Rollup - this dynamic operation helps identify potential duplicates and matching rows in your source data by rolling them up into a single staged record. This operation allows you to select from a variety of data combinations that the operation is then performed against to identify potential matches or duplicates among rows in the source data. For example, you can roll up constituents by lookup ID, name, address, phone, email, alternate ID, or a combination of multiple. If more than one row in your source data has the same lookup ID, the BVDL will combine the duplicative rows into one staged record. This helps eliminate duplicate record creation.
Concatenate Field Values: You may often have multiple address lines in a data source that you wish to concatenate into the singular address block (rather than mapping to the separate Address Line 2, also available). This consolidation can be accomplished easily via the orchestration of Concatenate Field Values. Map your first address column to Address Block, your second address column to an address placeholder (second field), and then designate the output field as the Address Block (the newly consolidated address block). The result of this configuration will be A + B = New A (composed of A + B)
Execute Data Form - One of the newest BVDL dynamic operations is quickly becoming a favorite because it allows you to process data to any Add or Edit data forms in your Blackbaud CRM™ environment, including out-of-the-box forms that the BVDL does not currently support as well as custom forms. While many use cases we have seen involve custom forms, we have also seen this dynamic operation used to update recurring gift statuses, add interaction responses, and add prospect team members.
Execute a Stored Procedure - When none of the front-end operations will provide what you need, the trusty fallback of “Execute a Stored Procedure” allows developers to write a few lines of code to address whatever the need may be.
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