Tagging Person Records in Gnosis

Overview

Sometimes you will want to tag person records to be able to set them up as a recipient group for email communication, or, report or track them for some other purpose.

Note: If you will be tagging person data that already resides in your Gnosis database, proceed directly to the section below on Tagging your Existing Data.

Tagging Import Data 

If you have your new records to import in a spreadsheet (presumably the standard Gnosis Import spreadsheet or some other format that is configured for your database), you will most likely want to add a tag to the data to be imported (see below) and then follow the instructions for importing from a spreadsheet to import the data complete with tag(s). To pre-tag your import data:

1. Enter a new attribute into your system that you will use to tag the data.
2. Note the Attribute ID of the new attribute that you entered.
3. In the import spreadsheet, add a column to the right of the data being imported add a label the top headings row of the column with a label to identify the attribute to be set.
   • If the attribute is for a person, add "ATT_XXXX" where XXXX is the Attribute ID noted earlier
   • If the attribute is for an ord=ganization, add "ATTO_XXXX" where XXXX is the Attribute ID
4. In each row containing data to be tagged, add a value in the new attribute column
   • When uploading to a 'Checkbox' or 'Yes/No' column, rows with an entry of any kind in the column will be set to 'Checked' or 'Yes'. Rows without an entry will be left as 'Unchecked' or 'No'.

   • When uploading other data types, you should verify that the data in the column always matches the type of data specified in the attribute. For example, if the attribute for a column is of type 'Date', all rows of data for that column that are not blank should contain a valid formatted date.

With this approach, your data will be tagged with the supplied attribute value as the data is uploaded.

NOTE: If a record is found to already exist in the database (based on a combination of name, address, and/or email address, the existing record will also be tagged as if it was newly uploaded with the other records.

Tagging Your Existing Data

If you do not already have an attribute in Gnosis that you want to set with a tag, you should go add it now using the Attribute Management option on the Gnosis Pro main menu at Settings | Administration | Attribute Management.  

From the Process Navigator screen, select the "Attribute Import" icon.  This will take you to the Attribute Bulk Update Manager form which allows you to set the value of an attribute for a list of persons in the Gnosis system.

The attribute that you want to set should already exist in the Gnosis system in order to set it using this function.

1. First, select the attribute that you wish to set or modify in the Attribute Selection Tree List
2. If you want to set the value of the attribute (normal case), check on the "New Attribute Value" checkbox to indicate that you want to set the attribute's value.
3. Lastly, check the checkbox, select the item in the drop-down list, or, set the text that you want to set (depending on the type of attribute that you are modifying) in the "New Attribute Value" field.

Now you will specify the persons for whom you want to make the attribute change.  

If you will be identifying the persons to be tagged by scanning PID barcodes off a Gnosis generated report with barcodes on it, or If you have a list of Person ID numbers (PID) numbers, you will press the "People" button in the "Scan & Manual Entry Input" area of the Bulk Update Input group and either scan the PID codes directly using a barcode reader, or, press the "Paste List" button and paste your list of PID numbers, one per row into the paste box.

If you have a data import log saved from a data import operation or some other file with PID numbers in the far left position of each row, you will press the "People" button in the "File Import" area of the Bulk Update Input group and choose the file that contains the PID numbers of the persons to be tagged.

Finally, once the "People" list box on the right of the form contains all of the PID's to be tagged, press the "Process List" button to actually tag those persons. 

with the tagging completed, you can now use the attribute that you tagged as a means of specifying members of a recipient group or filter criteria for a report or ad-hoc query in Gnosis Pro.