Over your time on Action Network, it's possible that data may begin to get messy. You created a question for one action here, stored data in a different custom field there. When data is stored in different places, it can be difficult to report on it and make informed decisions about your program. Keep reading to learn how you can clean up your data in Action Network and consolidate it into one field.
First, go to the People menu and click Reports. Pull report targeting activists of all subscription statuses but ticking off the boxes in the Email (or Mobile) Subscription Status section and click Save and Next Step. On the Choose Data page that follows, include any custom fields you may have created to store a particular piece of data. For example, you may be using custom fields labeled volunteer, volunteering, and volunteer? to store the type of volunteering someone wants to do. You should make sure to include all of these fields in the report.
After your report has calculated you should click the green Generate button in the upper corner to have a CSV copy of the report sent to you via email. When you've received this file, open it on your desktop. Next, you should create a totally new column in this file that's named after the new custom field you want to consolidate all your data into. For example, I would create a new column with the heading Type of Volunteering. I will use this to consolidate all my data that is currently spread across different custom fields.
Once this is done, you can begin copy and pasting data from the old fields into the new one in your CSV file. Make sure you're matching the data point to the right activists as you do this.
After you've moved all your data into one field, save your file as a CSV and upload it into Action Network as you would any other upload. You'll see the option to create the new custom field you're using to store all your data. For more on uploading lists, you can click here.
The final step in this process is to hide the custom fields you no longer want used. Go to the Details menu and click Questions and Custom Fields. Under the Custom Fields section, look for the old fields you were using and click the eye icon to hide them. After you hide these fields, they will no longer appear in the Activist Record or as an option to include for reports or email targeting.
You can follow these steps to consolidate any piece of data that's currently being stored across multiple custom fields.