Query Your Supporter List

From Support - DLCC Web

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Supporters: Querying Your List

To query your list, so that you can group/ungroup, delete, update or export sections of your supporter list based on certain charateristics, you'll use the Query Builder. To reach the Query Builder, click the Supporter Management tab, then the "Query/Export" item in the sub-navigation menu:

Building a New Query

When you use the Query Builder for the first time, there will not be any pre-built queries available. Initially, you should see one query box, which will say "Supporters who match:." On the right side of that box, plus and minus buttons will appear which allow you to add conditions to your query. Below the box is a link, in blue, that says "add an OR condition," which allows you to add a second (or more) condition box.

Before getting to more complicated queries that combine AND and OR functionality, try a simple query within a single condition box. The first thing to choose is the "Condition type," which you can use by clicking on the drop-down box labeled "Select a category." You'll be selecting a type of information on which to query. In this case, we'll be picking Supporter Fields, to do a query on information contained in the supporter record, but there are a number of choices available:

Once you choose your condition type, options relevant to that type of information will appear to the right of the condition type drop down menu. In the case of the Supporter fields category, the available fields appear as the second drop down, and conditional operators appear as the third drop down:

From the "Select a field" drop-down box, we'll choose 'Zip,' so that we can query on supporter zip codes:

As our "Condition," we'll choose 'equals,' so that when we enter a value in the final column, the full query will be "Supporters whose Zip field equals" the entered value:

Finally, we enter the zip code we're interested in, in the Value column:

After the query condition that we want is displayed, clicking the Run Query button will produce the Query Results page:

Query Results

Once you've run your query, you should receive a results page that looks like the following:

There are a number of operations that can be performed on query results:

Add to a group From the drop-down, you can choose a group name. Then, clicking the Add to Group button will add the selected supporters to that group all at once. If you haven't created any groups yet learn how to Create and Manage Groups

Delete from a group From the drop-down, you can choose a group name. Then, clicking the Remove from Group button will remove the selected supporters from that group all at once.

Delete Supporters Clicking the Delete button in the "Bulk Delete" section of the query results page will remove the supporters from your supporter list entirely. This is very useful in situations where you have, for instance, misconfigured an upload, and need to clear the bad rows before moving on. However, please make sure that your query selects the correct data, and consider exporting your list before using the delete function--supporter record deletion cannot be undone, and requesting a restore from backup is very expensive.

Update Supporters This option allows you to make changes to your supporter records in batches. This is an extremely powerful operation, so take care--the same cautions apply as when performing deletions. To update records, choose a standard or custom field to update from the drop down list. Then, if you're updating the records to a single, static value, enter it into the "New Value" field, and click the Update Information button. If you're using the update tool to transfer data from one field to another, choose the field which will receive the data from the first drop down, then the field which contains the values the first field should be updated to contain, and click the Update Information button.

Export To export your data for use offline, choose a format from the drop down menu, then (if you want to export all supporter fields and all custom fields) click the Export Information button. If you want to export particular fields, choose them from the multiple select box, by Ctrl-clicking (PC) or Cmd-clicking (Mac) on the fields you want to add to your export, and then clicking the Export Information button. Please note that large exports may have detrimental effects on your web browser, depending on the amount of memory your computer has. If you find that this is the case, consider splitting your query into multiple segments.

Complex Queries: AND/OR

ALERT: Complex Queries are by their nature complex. Please use these carefully

With the Salsa query builder, we've included the ability to create complex queries, using not only AND statements like

(Last Name = Smith AND Zip = 20009)

but OR statements as well, like

(Last Name = Smith AND Zip = 20009) OR (Group = High Donors)

Using complex queries effectively can be daunting for users unfamiliar with the terminology, so we've tried to build our interface to make the process a bit simpler. We've found that the easiest way to think of OR queries is as a series of distinct individuals that you're trying to find. Each type of supporter you want to find represents a separate OR block, shown in the interface as a distinct, colored block with AND conditions inside it.

In this example, we want to find two types of people: supporters who live within ten miles of zip code 20009 AND who have made donations in excess of or equal to $100.00, OR supporters who are in the group "High Donors." The first step in the query process is building the first supporter type, using AND conditions:

In addition to the first kind of person, we want the query to return supporters who are in the group "High Donors," completely independent of whether they are represented by the first supporter type. This is a core concept of OR queries--the first supporter type and the second supporter type are not related in any way (in fact that's the point of OR type queries). Each additional OR group will represent a separate type of person, though each supporter can only be returned once per query (if they match more than one OR group, they're only included in the query results once).

By clicking the "add an OR condition" link, we can add a second supporter type to the query:

Once the second supporter type is present, we can add an appropriate AND condition, and run the query:

As an extended example, if we wanted to build a query which found supporters living in any of the following cities: Burbank OR Los Angeles OR Seattle OR Chicago OR Miami OR San Francisco OR New York, this is what the query would look like:

While complex queries may take some getting used to, they're an extremely powerful way to work with your supporter list.

Using Existing Queries

It's helpful to save your queries for later use, particularly if they're complicated to recreate. To do so, make sure you name your query when you create it, by entering a descriptive name into the Query Name field:

Once you've create named queries, they'll be available within the drop down box labeled "Past Queries":

To retrieve a list of your saved queries, click the "run an existing query" link at the top of the query builder page:

The list of queries each has a details link, which you can click to be taken to the editing page for that query:

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