This week I setup a new IOM profile to import new students and their parents. The problem I ran into, and I would assume it's a fairly common one with schools, is that sometimes the parents already existed as constituents because of older children at the school and the parents had a non-constit relationship record to the new student as one of the other children the Advancement Department was tracking. This school wants all students to be constituents, especially because the same student can be linked to multiple sets of parents because of divorces, etc. So I had to add duplicate relationships to the parents in order to both link the student to the parents and make the student a constituent, even though I could see the existing student relationship, because IOM only allowed me to promote *spouse* non-constit relationships, not all relationships. So we sat there with the Duplicate Search results, saw the existing student relationship, but had to write it down, click Add New, and then go back after the import and delete the non-constit relationships. Certainly there is a better way (these is, add the option to promote any type of non-constit relationship which I know is not an impossibility since I'm told it's an easy customization).

Yes, I would like the option to promote matched non-constituent relationships.

Hi Shalena,

Thank you for the additional information. It appears that you would like there to be an option to automatically promote matched non-constituent relationships (similar to what we added for non-constituent spouses). So no matter how the match is made - either manually in the duplicate search screen or using a unique identifier such as alias - that record should be promoted.

This is separate from the side by side comparison screen too. You would see that either way, if you have the option selected to view that screen.

Thank you,
Omatic Software

Also, when using alias match-add and a match is found on a non-constituent relationship, I am forced to manually process the record because of the side by side comparison. However, even after I approve of the updates shown in the side by side bio comparison screen, a new constituent is not created. It's only updating the relationship. The idea is to find the matched alias in the database and then promote this to a constituent. The only work around we found was to use the alias add, but then this created dup records in the database because it didn't search for a potential duplicate.

That's part of the problem. If I match-add based on alias, I am matching to non-constituent relationships as well as non-constituent participants in an event. This is great that it's finding the relationships but I need to be able to skip the side by side comparison and proceed to creating a constituent record. The change in the alias matching has increased our manual touches greatly.

Hi Shalena,

I looked at your support case and found that you're seeing the side-by-side comparison screen when the non-constituents are matched by alias, and then trying to change some of their biographical data (adding a middle name where there wasn't one previously, for example).
It appears that the issue is with the bio comparison screen popping when the data is blank in RE, is that correct? If so, I can update the title of this suggestion to say that there should be an option not to see the side-by-side when the field is blank in RE.

Thank you,
Omatic Software