It is important to have multiple ways to address your supporters based on their preferences and the types of communications you send. To align with this, there are several name-based fields available in Virtuous and options for configuring them.
In this article, we’ll cover:
- Different name types, where they live, and other details
- Rules set by default
- Rules available for customization
Keep in mind that any default and custom rules only apply to Contact records with a base type of Household.
Name Types
Contact Name
This is visible in the Contact page header and everywhere a Contact is displayed.
The Preferred Addressee field is set to Contact Name by default - you can manually override this when adding a new Contact.
Contact Informal Name
This is visible in the Overview on the Contact page on the left hand side.
The Preferred Salutation field is set to Contact Informal Name by default, but you can manually override this when adding a new Contact.
Contact Formal Name
This can be seen when adding/modifying a Contact record and can be particularly useful when a supporter has various ways of being addressed.
- For example: You may talk to Jonny Bees regularly, but you know his full name is Dr. Jonathan Bees. The latter is clearly more formal, and this field can store this separately for your own records.
Contact Alternate Name
This can be seen when adding/modifying a Contact record and can be particularly useful when a supporter has various ways of being addressed that may not necessarily translate to formal/informal.
Each of these names is:
- Able to be set manually and/or automatically.
- Able to be set in the Gift & Contact Import tool.
- Able to be set using Bulk Data Tools.
- Available to use as parameters when using a Filter or a Query.
- Available to export from a Filter or a Query.
Options for Preferred Addressee and Preferred Salutation are each pulled from the 4 different names above - this is particularly important when determining which merge fields to use when designing materials like receipts.
Default Rules
All names (Contact Name, Contact Informal Name, Contact Formal Name, and Contact Alternate Name) already have default rules set if you have not yet customized them. In other words, Virtuous will automatically generate these names based on the names of the Primary and Secondary Individuals on the record.
In the case that there is more than one Individual on a record and the Secondary Individual is not set, Virtuous will infer the Secondary Individual when applying Contact Name settings by using the oldest imported Individual that is not the Primary Individual.
Contact Name default logic:
One Individual:
{Primary Individual First Name} {Primary Individual Last Name}
At least two Individuals:
{Primary Individual First Name} and {Secondary Individual First Name} {Primary Individual Last Name}
Contact Informal Name default logic:
One Individual:
{Primary Individual First Name}
At least two Individuals:
{Primary Individual First Name} and {Secondary Individual First Name}
Creating Custom Rules
Users with Admin permissions can customize the rules used to generate these names. To do this, hover over the left sidebar, then select Settings. Under Settings, select Data Customization.
From the data customization screen, select the Contact Name Settings button.
This will open a form where, in each section, you can manage system rules and values for:
- Contact Name Formats
- Informal Name Formats
- Formal Name Formats
- Alternate Name Formats
- Default First and Last Name values
- How often names should be updated
- When these rules should be applied
For any name formatting section, you'll see the ability to define your own patterns for three different scenarios:
- Contacts with only one Individual
- Contacts with a Primary and Secondary Individual
- Contacts with a Primary and Secondary Individual with Different Last Names
Name Formats
You can use the "Available Merge Tags" drop-down to select values and insert them into the pattern on the right.
In addition to selecting merge values, you can also type in any text you'd like to include, to include terms like "and," which can be handy when customizing Contact names for Primary and Secondary Individuals.
In many sections, these first two options are required in order to set your own rules for name formatting. You may optionally choose to set your own business rules for handling scenarios where the Primary and Secondary Individuals in a Household have different last names.
Additionally, you’ll be able to select a Contact record to preview how these rules would look for that particular record as an example.
First and Last Name Defaults
In order to create a Contact in Virtuous, the minimum data necessary is a First Name and Last Name. But we know that there are times when you might not have this data at first:
- When you receive a new donation from an Organization or Foundation
- If you’re brand new to Virtuous - there are likely records that need to be migrated that do not have Individual names.
In these situations, and others like them, you'll want to decide on default values for First Name and Last Name.
- For example: In the initial data migration process, Virtuous automatically assigns "Default Contact" as the value for any name that is not present in Contact data. These values, specifically First Name "Default" and Last Name "Contact," are then excluded when sweeping your database for potential duplicates. This helps to eliminate any false positives caused by replacement values.
Use the First and Last Name Defaults to define custom values for your organization, such as:
First Name: Friend
Last name: of {your organization name}
These values will then be excluded from the duplicate search process.
To customize these names, just enter values in the two default name fields.
When Names Are Updated and Rules Are Applied
Because values for these different names can be applied automatically or manually, it will become important to determine when automatic rules override manually set values (and vice versa).
You can also choose if you would like to apply these rules to existing records now or only records created or modified in the future.
Once you have made all of your changes, press the ‘Save Formats’ button at the bottom of the screen.
You will receive an email once the reformatting process is complete. Please do not re-submit or change the formatting rules until the update is complete.
Locking in Contact Information
Now that you have your rules set up, let’s talk about when you want to lock in contact information. There may be times when you want to keep track of multiple individuals within a household contact but don’t want the contact name to change when those individuals are added or removed. In these cases, you can lock in the contact name on those contacts so that it doesn’t change based on the rules you set up for your organization.
First, navigate to the contact record and select edit.
Now, select the box beside “Lock Name Settings” to prevent Virtuous from changing the name of the contact.
You can also import this information through the bulk data tools either via the Contact Update or the Contact Imports. Note: If you go this route to update contacts in bulk with the update template, you need to add values for all fields that currently contain data. Otherwise, Virtuous will assume you’re updating those fields to blank values.
For the Lock Name Settings field, this will be a True/False value where Virtuous will assume it is False if it is left blank.