Road to CA

We've been very busy since our last few posts. Here's some of what we've been up to:

• Conferences and Training
Todd, Matt and I - along with 8 others from Allegheny - attended DUG 2009 in the DC area earlier this month. Just ahead of that, Todd and I took the Advanced Computed Columns class at Datatel. Both were well worth the time and effort. We got to trade war stories with other converting clients, and picked up a computed column trick or two that could come in handy. A high point of DUG was finally meeting Rachna, our conversion consultant!

• More Training and Consulting
Last week we had two full days of Communications Management on campus, with Amy Houy from Datatel. It was a very productive session, though Amy left us with lots of homework - computed columns and hard copy documents to create. She gave us a spreadsheet with all the details of what we need for each document, which is very helpful. Two days after that we had our Acitivies and Events webinar. Todd was pleased to see that it's very similar to what she's been using in Benefactor, only better.

• Data Cleanup
While we didn't encounter many errors to be fixed in the second conversion, we did find a need for some data cleanup, especially addresses. Our computed columns for fixing address ambiguities worked to get our records converted, but didn't always give us the end results we wanted. We identified some records that could be easily cleaned up and have been working on that for a while.

• Testing the Second Conversion
Todd has been simultaneously working on reports for CA and testing the second conversion by comparing report results from CA to those from Benefactor. She's been very happy to see the financial reports matching to the penny in most cases! In the few instances where they don't match she can trace the issue to a handful of transactions that didn't convert - but will convert next time around.

With data cleanup progressing nicely, we've picked a date to begin our third conversion test. We will start on May 6 and hope to be finished in a week or so.

Our number one goal for conversion 3 is to bring every bit of Benefactor data over. "No record left behind" is our new motto! This means that any errors encountered will need to be fixed in bentest as well as in benlive, and possibly also in production and the conversion environment. We don't expect to receive many errors, but if we do this could slow us down some.

Our second goal is to bring the demographic data over properly. Some of the addresses - particularly the N1 (Other Addresses) - came over in conversion 2, but not the way we had planned. This was due to our solution for address ambiguities. We've been studying the converted data and re-evaluating our method of dealing with address ambiguities at L1, N1, and N2. Combined with this work and the data cleanup we've been doing we expect both fewer address ambiguities and better results from our computed columns in the third conversion.

And our final goal is to develop a plan for running the live conversion. We won't run it as a mimic of the live conversion - that is, we won't be doing it over a weekend on a quiet system, working through nights - but we will try to determine the best way to split up the conversions for maximum efficiency.