I have recently shifted my membership from from a Bundled level to an Individual level.  I have no members left in the bundled level and I'd like to delete the level but cannot do so - I think because there are some old lapsed members from the bundled level in the archive.  I'd love to be able to set the Archive column to "delete" and re-import and have them go away.

 Also, I need to send a blast email to 2,500 non-members to notify them of an upcoming event.  I would love to be able to import the list, send them a blast email and then delete them.  But without a delete tool I have to :

Export the archive to my computer for safe keeping.
Import the Blast Email list
Send the Blast Email
Re-import the blast email list with archive set to "yes"
delete the archive
Re-import the archive from my home computer. 

Any way to delete more that one record at a time would be appreciated.

As an administrator I would find it really helpful to be able to make bulk changes online.  Two reasons:

1. Import/export is clumsy, and foces me to use Excel's interface, which I find quite awkward.

2. There is no "lock" on the data while I am changing it. Members can change data while I am making changes to the exported file.

To give an idea of the sort of problems #2 generates: if I do an export and a member comes along and changes his/her data while I am playing with the exported file, then there's a problem.  The way that WA seems to handle this is by generating an error on reimport.  I now have to download the error file to see what the error is (since of course I don't know what caused the error -- as a separate request, I'd really like it if these errors were shown live on the webpage), make the fix or export yet another file, make my changes all over again, and re-import -- hoping that no *further* changes were made so that I don't have to go through the process yet again!

As a side note, the advanced search feature is fantastic!  If bulk changes could be incorporated into that, I'd be very, very happy.

Understood - and in-system bulk changes is one of the things in our plans. Though we have to design it very carefully as it has huge potential for accidental screw-ups. (and 'Undo' is not an easy option when we are talking about hundreds or thousands of records updated)

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

I've seen software that popped up a message that says, "Warning: this change is not undoable."  You could supplement that with "We strongly recommend that you download a backup copy of your database.  Click here to download" (or something like that). 

Of course, undo would be great.  But I'd rather have the bulk changes first if undo is the holdup.  I would never have even expected an undo.

Whatever warnings we give, If somebody ends up erasing important member data, they will beg us to restore their data from backup - which is a very time-consuming operation (our backups are for server failures so easy to restore all data but not just member records just for one organization). So we currently think that the only way to go about this is if we implement full undo - which is not easy.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

You're coddling us.  A lot of places would just say "you're responsible for your own backups and your own mistakes."

 It's nice that you're coddling us, though.  :-)

Anyone else needs this? Please comment here.

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

I would still like to see it!

 Gordon

It would be really, really nice to be able to do the same thing to multiple contacts. For example, deleting/archiving multiple contacts, changing renewal dates, adding group participation, etc. It's actually quite silly we can't do this already. Anytime I have to change a lot of people's information, I have to repeat the task 50-100+ times because I have to do it individually.

We had a request about bulk-delete members - see http://www.wildapricot.com/forums/thread/10653.aspx. I will merge your post into that thread as it makes more sense from a broader perspective.

You have listed the following possible bulk operations:

- deleting contacts

- archiving contacts

- changing renewal dates

- changing group participation

I would appreciate ideas from others as well. 

BTW, for now one way to do this is via export/import (except for deleting)

 

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

Other ideas:

- Bulk change of membership level

- Bulk change of e-mail subscriptions

 

I would give my left pinky for some batch processing capabilities....I've got 32 new requests for memberships and have to do it one by one is crazy.  or some self enrollment would be cool too and I could go back in and confirm they were real by the answers they left etc.

 

I'll post my concerns in an independent thread as I did not find one when I searched.

I would give my left pinky for some batch processing capabilities....I've got 32 new requests for memberships and having to do it one by one is crazy.  or some self enrollment would be cool tool where they verify their own email and I could go back in and confirm they were real by the answers they left etc.

 I'd rather to be able to change the membership level and approve membership applications for when things get lumpy.

I usually export to Excel to make my bulk changes then import.   That would also work for batches of new members.

I would love to bulk edit members. The biggest things I'd want to do:

 Delete/Archive

Approve Membership

Approve Payment

Change group participation

We would also very much like to be able to perform bulk operations such as delete

Regards,
Ian Tilley
worthing and adur chamber of commerce

 

We would love to have a function that allows us to be able to perform a bulk delete of a select group of member or non-member contacts. 

Over time, our contact list becomes very large.  Many of the contacts are simply from event registrations and not members.  Many of these contacts are repeat users of our events and we would like to keep as non members. 

But, many are not. They registered once and have not returned.  We would like to be able to filter out these contacts and delete the records.

Current state is to do a filtered sort and delete ONE at a Time.  I counted 3 steps to delete a single record. Imagine this repeated 100 times....   ( sort, select, delete, return to sort, select, delete, return to sort... ) get the point.

We envision a simple check box beside the contact record that is to be deleted.  Once all the contact records have been checked, simply HIT the delete button and ALL the selected records would be deleted.  There could also be a fail safe message - " Are you sure you want to delete these records?"

This would be significant time saver in managing large contact lists.. Any chance of this becoming a reality???

 

I will join your post to a related thread - which is on our roadmap. 

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Dmitry Buterin, Chief Apricot

We also need to delete large groups of contacts.

An alternative method to Strikers' would be a "Delete contacts" button, similar to the "E-mail contacts" button, where all contacts in your search results are emailed/deleted.

Chief --  This is another reason wny we need a member database backup function..

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-michellebw