This month's tip is from Susan Kimball, Group Sales Administrator with the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau. Susan has been one of our most active forum users, but is leaving the CVB and moving to Colorado Springs. We'll miss her!

"We've all had to clean up data from time to time, right?  I've found that saved searches makes this very easy. Simply build a search that finds data that is wrong or incomplete. The results will be all the records that need updates, and once fixed, each record disappears from the list. Here are some saved searches I've used:

Records with Blank Fields

When I added a custom field for hotel amenities, I built a search to show all lodging accounts where the new UDF was blank. As filled in, they disappeared from the list.

Zapping Weird Zips

Several of our Tour & Travel and Meeting Sales accounts once had weird or incorrect zip codes. I built a search to show zip does not equal %[0-9], which is a wildcard search to pull up all records with letters (including "XXXXX") and other mistakes.

Blocked Rooms for Definite Leads

When you mark a Tour & Travel lead definite, the Blocked Rooms field has a zero, meaning you don't get a reminder to enter blocked rooms on save. But since Blocked Rooms are tracked on the Booking Production Report, it's important to find and fix these before running a report. I built a search for overnight leads in definite status where Blocked Rooms = zero.  

Get Help When You Need It

Of course, if you end up with a LOT of records to "fix" (like in the hundreds), keep in mind that Simpleview can help.

Rather than fix one by one in CRM, use a search to pull all the records you need to alter, export to Excel or .csv, fix the data, then upload the file in a ticket so that your project manager can have the data "pushed in."  Be sure to include the appropriate ID# field and user group.

I did this successfully with hundreds of records that didn't have any Market Segment or Category upon initial import when we transitioned from our old system."