Speed the entering of record and value types when creating profiles
Selecting record and value types when creating a profile can be quite time consuming. I have four ideas that could potentially speed this up:
1) Have a button which attempts to guess record and value types based on field names. For instance, if I have a column headed "Gift Amount", it is highly likely that I'll want it to be stored as a "Amount" value within a "Gift" record.
2) Select multiple rows and set them all to one record type. Often data files will naturally be arranged with similar fields adjacent to one another. It would be really useful to be able to select, say, 6 rows and set them all to a constituent field. (Of course, this is less likely to work for value types.)
3) When I move from one row to another, set the selected items in the drop-downs on new row to match the selections from the previous row. Again, this is based on the principal that data files are often arranged so that clusters tend to emerge for each record type. It is likely, for example, that if I have just selected address line 1, I may want address line 2 next.
4) Finally, there ought to be a really quick way to revert a row to "Ignore". I suggest that the delete key should do this. Really useful if (during the development of a profile) it becomes apparent that a standard row needs to be replaced by a virtual field. Also useful if you're starting with a copy of a similar profile.
These ideas are not mutually exclusive and may complement each other. Each of them ought to reduce the time needed to create a new profile.
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Sophia Turner commented
Likewise, you can do the same for ignore (select all relevant rows and right-click, set record type to Ignore). Pretty cool! :-)
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Hi Tom. You can currently do #2 in ImportOmatic. Click and drag your mouse down the Record Type column and then right click. You'll see the option "Set record type". This will give you an option of the major record types, such as Constituent Field, Constituent Address, Gift, etc.