Hello fellow Unity Members, I would like to get some feedback on this idea that is receiving attention and is currently the 2nd highest idea on Unity. There were three ideas that were similar so we merged them into a single idea. Is this feature just a matter of letting the member select to use their personal or professional address? The other ideas mentioned that we would only show the preferred address fields to the member when editing their profile. I assume this would also need to be a setting on the member type so admininistrators could enable this or not depending on their needs. FOR A FIRST ROUND SOLUTION - is it sufficient to let the member select which address section is their 'preferred' address? I would like to establish this is NOT a feature that will act as an address manager where the member can enter several addresses and then select the one to use at this time. We will merely allow the current two address sections to be selected as the preferred giving the admin has allowed this member type override. Thoughts.

My opinions:

This would be a fantastic feature. Even as a trade association, we have members that request to receive information at home rather than at the office. I think both addresses should be editable regardless of the setting, but have an indicator of which the member has selected as his preferred address. Yes, please make it an option for admins to turn this feature off or on.

Another thought is from an export & reporting standpoint....pull a report presenting the data from the preferred mailing field. So, for instance, I want to send a renewal invoice to all members at their preferred addresses. I pull the list from either D&CRM or E&R and specify that I want preferred addresses. The Export presents with the preferred address information instead of indicating which address is preferred. Does that make sense? Bonus----also an OPPOSITE of preferred option.

Great idea!

Good call on the Exporting and Reporting aspect, Liz. I sent an email to those who voted for this idea to drive traffic to this post and also to Social Link.

I agree with Liz. Our biggest need is to be able to run a query that will give us the preferred address fields without any need to manually work with excel to create a usable mailing list.

Would it be possible for the preferred address to default to the one that has data. We often have members who do not have a professional address (especially our students).

I agree about the reporting function. I don't know about everyone else, but the absence of a true preferred address field or button isn't the real problem for us. Right now we're using a custom field to allow people to specify which address they prefer, so we're getting the data we need. It's the inability of reporting functions to provide one address that's the real issue for us. Like Laura, we're having to manually scrub each list in excel for sending out a mailing.

I agree with Liz as well. Main reason for needing is for the exporting aspect. We currently have a custom preferred address field but it requires manipulation for every export. I would be nice to be able to just export the preferred address.

We are also interested in the query/reporting functionality. It would make our work easier if we could pull mailing lists with the preferred address without having to do additional processing in Excel.

However, what inspired me to submit this idea is the fact that YM pre-populates donation forms (and I think event forms) with the preferred address. Right now, we, as site administrators, must select either personal or professional as the preferred address for all members. So if we chose professional for everyone, then those who only filled in their personal address (their actually preferred address), then these fields would all be blank for those members. We received quite a few complaints about this, and annoying members when they're trying to donate to us is counterproductive at best. If members could choose their preferred address, then donation and event forms would presumably pre-populate with the right address.

I agree with the reporting functionality. Like K Koch we are using a custom field and then sorting manually.

An interesting issue we ran into is the same as M Morris, regarding the address set-up in YM is related to the overall system identification at the 'Member Type' level settings. You have to set the "primary contact type" to professional if you have any internal or external search directories that shows their information. That settings determines what shows for their search results (including front public facing searches). However making this setting "professional" also means that admins see that information first rather than their personal ones and this can be a little wonky when looking up details quickly or looking to call them. Not a huge deal but adds and extra step. This also bleeds into pre-populated form fields. The system automatically pulls their "primary contact type" details.

It would be useful to be able to more easily set YM fields to be protected from appearing in search results (specifically personal address and phone number information). Right now I have to every now and then go in and blanket change everyone settings for those fields, rather than clicking a setting similar to the one in custom fields to protect that information to the member and admins only.

We also use the custom fields and sort manually. It's a pain.

Giving the member the ability to set their preferred address and then having the ability to report what that address is will be a major time saver.