Difference between revisions of "Global Update Prospective Student Data"

Revision as of 17:15, 26 October 2010

Global Update of Prospective Student Data

Global updates are the changing of the contents of a field for a series of records selected based on a criteria. You may also delete a series of records. Before attempting this, you should have a thorough understanding of the section Export Merge Data and have tested your selection criteria by using the Filtering function for Prospective Students.

To select the Global Update, choose the Prospective Students | Global Update menu item pictured here

Once you choose that you will see the following dialog:

This is the same dialog that appears when selecting a criteria for displaying filtered records. From this window you should select the desired filter criteria. Clicking OK will move to the next step in the process.

The drop down list will show all of the fields in the prospective student table. Any field may be chose from this list, but it is unwise to choose propsid, entcode, idcent, or studid as those fields are used to link to other sections of CrossRoad. The Delete Record check box may be chosen if what is desired is to delete rather than modify matching records. It is wise to have a known good backup of CrossRoad data prior to proceeding with deletions. If a field is chosen, then another dialog will appear.

This is very similar to the editing box for creating Filter and Export criteria. The words "Prospective Students" are entered into the editing area of this window simply as a placeholder; the value you type, or calculation you enter, should replace that test.

The objective here is to create an appropriate value to which to update the selected field. You will notice in the title of this dialog that it tells you what character type you are trying to achieve. You could type an absolute value into the main editing box, you could perform a calculation on the field you are altering or another field in the table, you can use a function to calculate the appropriate value.

To enter, for instance, the absolute value of the letter A (replacing the selected field with A for each matching record) you would type "A" (note the quotation marks). You could also replace an existing letter in a longer string by using the a function: strtran(liaison.MAILINGS,"A","Z"). Note that if you are adding a character to the end of a field (a common operation in updating the mailings field) you must first trim out the spaces using the trim() function, e.g. trim(liaison.MAILINGS)+"Z"

If the field is numeric, you could type the numbers. No quotation marks are necessary for those. Or you could enter a calculation: 10+2

If you are dealing with a date field, you may assign a specific date. However, that requires the use of a function to convert characters to a date, e.g. ctod("21/09/2009"). You may also do date calculations by adding or subtracting from the existing date, e.g. liaison.entdate + 14.

If a logical value is needed, then a logical expression is required. You can directly enter true by typing .t. (note the required . on each side of the letter t). You can enter false by typing .f. (again, note the .s). Or you can use an expression that results in a true or false value, e.g. liaison.studid > 0.

The Test button on this window will check whether what you have typed is the correct data type (that is, that it is character, date, numeric, or logical when the field is character, date, numeric or logical.

Clicking OK will execute the expression test once more, and then the replacement will occur. While replacements are taking place a dialog box showing the progress through the file.

Once complete, a dialog will appear indicating the number of records changed.

Special Case: Updating Mailings

Updating Mailings is very similar to the process above. However, once the field liaison.mailings is chosen, the criteria window does not appear. Instead a dialog with a drop list of the available mailings will appear.

[[Image::Prospective_Global_Mailings.jpg]]

From that choose the mailing you would like to add to the prospective student records. Then the update will proceed as described above.

Special Case: Updating Activity Dates

Special Case: Global Communication Log Update