I was just helping out one of our classmates. I logged in to her account and wanted to see what she had entered for contact information. I clicked on Edit Contact Info. To my surprise none of her contact info was there. I know that her street address, city state zip are there because when I'm logged into my admin account I can see them.

Is this an error? If not, please help me understand the logic behind not displaying her contact information. It seems that sometimes all you'd want to do is make a small correction and not seeing what you had there is not helpful.

Thanks

Joe,

The database stores TWO SETS of address information. There is the address that the admin puts in and the address that the classmate puts in. The reasoning for this is that sometimes what the admin puts in for a classmate is purchased and so if the classmate goes in and deleted what was there, the admin would lose important data that could have cost him/her some money. So if the classmate puts in some information for the address field, that is used, but if they blank out the field, then their blanked out field is shown. For the ADMIN, the blanked out field is not shown, but the address information that was there before the field was blanked out.

Hope that explains it.

Wow, Kyle!

That is very interesting -- and very clever of CC. I take it when we download the class records, we're getting what the member put in -- if they put something in that is different from the admin-entered info.

If this is indeed the case, why don't I see the phone number I loaded for her from my original load files? Apparently she blanked that out, too and I don't see it when I'm logged into my admin account. I just checked my original load files and I did load a phone number for her originally.

I'm sure I've run into a few other situations where I have loaded an address and other items and once they authenticated themselves, I no longer see that information I loaded. I can come up with an example or two if I get a chance to review what I did today.

I've attached 3 files - what she sees, what I see, and what I loaded. Thanks

I'll have to check with Mike tomorrow to see if Phone Number is part of the address preservation system or not. I'm assuming it is but I can't recall so I'll need to find out for sure.

As Kyle said, what often happens is an Admin pays for address information and enters it into the system. Then a Classmate joins the site who is concerned about privacy and chooses to blank out the information the Admin had input. In the past that meant the information was really gone (not good). A year or so back we put in something we call the "Address Preservation System". What happens is when a Classmate blanks out his or her address, they continue to see it blank because after all, that's what they did. But the Admin continues to see the original address information they entered.

Note that if the Classmate CHANGES the address information then this new address becomes the address of record and is seen by both the Classmate and the Admin. The only time the Address Preservation System engages is when both of the following criteria are met:

1) The Admin has pre-populated address information for the Classmate prior the Classmate joining the site
2) The Classmate deliberately blanks out that information at the time of joining

When both of these are true, the Address Preservation System goes into effect and you won't lose anything.

Joe, if you think you lost something that you had input, it's possible you input it prior to the launch of the Address Preservation System. The good news is, it hasn't happened in the last year or so and will never happen again.

Thank you (both you and Kyle) for clear explanations. Actually I entered the original 20,000+ names in July. I think (as I believe you do) that the phone numbers should be part of that Address Preservation System. As it turns out, I'm still maintainingg my old database, so I make changes on both. I maintain them because for a large number of years the school had two graduation classes for each year - one in January and one in June. For some years, there was great competitiveness, so I've maintained those records at least for awhile. Also we have some information on a lot of the grads that you don't collect in the same way. That's a long way of saying that I still have those phone numbers that may have been lost. Thanks again.
Joe

A situation came up today where I received information on some alumni from a reunion coordinator. I pulled up the record of one individual who had activated her account and the address fields were blank. I assume that even though I loaded them as blank (I didn't have them at the time) that she wants it that way. However, I would like to be able to load her address "for the record". Will my entering her address override her choice to leave the address blank or will her address continue to be blank as she and the rest of the classmates see it. From my understanding, it seems that I'm always entering into my version of the fields and I would never override her field if it was blank to start with. I know that has happened before to me, too. Thanks

Joe, if you are talking about a specific individual, please give their name (Initial and Last Name would be fine) so we can do more research. THanks

For example in the record for Sandra Rabinoff Aronin, she has her address and phone number fields blanked out. She activated her username so apparently she wanted it this way. Also these were blank when I loaded them from my original database. I now have her address and phone number so if I enter it, will she see that I've entered it or will that entry be strictly for my admin records? Thanks

If the classmate left it blank at the time of joining they will not see it if you add it via Manage Classmates > Enter/Edit Classmates and the Details link next to their name.

Jessica
Class Creator Support

I am not convinced that the editing is working as you believe it is. For example, I received a mailed survey and entered it as if I were the person so that we record that they're interested and we can contact them later. In any case, as the person, I entered all relevant information at step 1 except the phone number (just before I checked and the phone number had been loaded). Now when I logged in as administrator I was not able to see the phone number that I had pre-loaded (this is a problem with lost data that was originally entered by me). Then I entered the phone number, logged out of my admin account, logged into this person's account which I had just entered and the phone number now appears. It almost seems to work the opposite of what you and Brad suggest. All of our information was pre-loaded in late July before we went live, so it was after the Address Preservation system went into affect - now maybe this doesn't affect phone numbers, but really it should affect everything that is loaded, I think.

Phone numbers weren't initially included in the preservation system but we're adding it.

OK - thanks for that confirmation - I did determine that your system is working for the addresses, so I'm ok with everything now that I understand. Thanks
PS - it might help to add this kind of information (I mean the Address Preservation system and how it works) to the FAQ or at least maybe a "geekier" version of the FAQ since this is getting pretty specific. Thanks for your efforts to answer my questions.

We have a system coming up to show this, stay tuned.