Whenever a donor gives, your team needs the latest information on them- whether this is the first time the donor has given or the 100th time! When you call a donor's phone number or send a thank you letter to their home address, you want to make sure that information is correct. This is why it's incredibly important that your contact information (and any updates!) seamlessly syncs between both Legacy RaiseDonors and Virtuous CRM+. The Contact Sync allows for a change to be made to a contact record in either Legacy RaiseDonors or Virtuous CRM+ and have those changes synchronized to the other app!
Let's walk through what information syncs, how that information is captured in both Legacy RaiseDonors and Virtuous CRM+, and how to configure the sync.
How Does It Work?
Legacy RaiseDonors is already bundling donation and donor information and sending that to Virtuous CRM+ (if you have the integration enabled). And Legacy RaiseDonors is already sending any updates an Admin or a Donor makes to his/her contact information over to Virtuous CRM+ (via the Legacy RaiseDonors admin tool or via the Legacy RaiseDonors Donor Portal). This easily accounts for the majority of information staying in sync.
However this feature ensures updates from either system (Virtuous CRM+ or Legacy RaiseDonors) remain in sync.
Every time Legacy RaiseDonors sends information to Virtuous CRM+ (either a gift via the gift import tool - which includes contact information OR a contact update), a small yet critical data property is auto set. This data property is the "Contact Reference Source". You can see this field on every contact in Virtuous CRM+, the Reference Source is located on the bottom left hand side when viewing a contact.
This is critical because only Contacts/Individuals having a ReferenceSource = "Legacy RaiseDonors" will qualify to be sync'd to Legacy RaiseDonors. Imagine for a moment if you had 1,000,000 contacts in Virtuous CRM+. Only 200,000 are digital donors. You wouldn't want all of your contact records sync'ing with Legacy RaiseDonors. You only want those records which have
1) Gave online through Legacy RaiseDonors previously
2) Have expressed a digital giving channel propensity to your organization
Contact sync from Legacy RaiseDonors into Virtuous CRM+ does flow through the import tool within Virtuous CRM+ and will include a couple of key items:
-The reference source 'Legacy RaiseDonors'
-The reference ID which is the donor ID in Legacy RaiseDonors.
For contact sync from Virtuous CRM+ to Legacy RaiseDonors, the contact must have the reference source 'Legacy RaiseDonors' for it to sync over to Legacy RaiseDonors. This is important to know as Legacy RaiseDonors uses the reference ID to inform the system on which donors’ information to update.
Please note: The reference source is visible on the contact record in Virtuous CRM+ and provides a link to the donor profile in Legacy RaiseDonors. Additionally, Donor ID and Virtuous CRM+ contact ID are visible in Legacy RaiseDonors from the donors overview.
In summary, Legacy RaiseDonors is already sending gifts (with contact information) and individual contact updates to Virtuous CRM+ - with a Reference Source = "Legacy RaiseDonors".
Only contacts/individuals in Virtuous CRM+ with a ReferenceSource = "Legacy RaiseDonors" will qualify to sync back to Legacy RaiseDonors.
How Do I Configure the Contact Sync?
The configuration is setup in Legacy RaiseDonors Integrations under System Settings. Select the Virtuous CRM+ Sync icon.
If this is your first time to setup a "sync" between Virtuous CRM+ and Legacy RaiseDonors, you may be asked to authenticate with a username + password.
We recommend creating a new user account in Virtuous CRM+ that is dedicated for the sync, as opposed to using the credentials of an existing user. This way, the sync will not be interrupted if a user changes their password. You can follow the steps in this article to add a Virtuous CRM+ user. Click "Authorize" to save the credentials and continue with setup. Ensure the user does not have two factor authentication enabled.
NOTE: If you have WorkOS SSO configured in Virtuous CRM+, you may need to create a new user account in Virtuous CRM+ with a domain other than the domain configured for WorkOS in order to ensure the user account is not set up to use SSO
After you have authenticated, you'll see a new screen with a few options.
The first checkbox will sync projects to Virtuous CRM+. More information on that can be found here. The second checkbox "Sync Legacy RaiseDonors Contacts to Virtuous Donors" will need to be selected to begin the Contact Sync.
Once the "Sync Legacy RaiseDonors Contacts to Virtuous Donors" is checked and the green "Update Settings" button is clicked, any edits from this point forward will be sync'd between the systems. There is no backwards or sync-all feature to get started.
What Gets Synced?
The three main data points that sync bi-directionally in BOTH systems include:
- Name changes: Any changes to the first and last name of donors (individuals in Virtuous CRM+) will be synced across platforms. If the donor is an Organization or Foundation, the contact name will sync.
- Address changes: Any updates to primary address (including street, city, state, postal code) will be synced across platforms. This means NCOA updates can update thousands of addresses at once across platforms. If the individual has multiple, the primary will sync.
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Phone number changes: Any updates to primary phone number will be synced across platforms. If the individual has multiple, the primary will sync.
In addition to the data that syncs both ways, the Contact Sync also sends some information one way:
From Legacy RaiseDonors: If a Legacy RaiseDonors donor does not exist in Virtuous CRM+, it WILL be created in Virtuous CRM+ via import bundle (gift or contact). The Reference Source of "Legacy RaiseDonors" will be sent to Virtuous CRM+ along with the Legacy RaiseDonors donor ID and live on the contact record and can be seen on bottom left side of the contact record.
Email address changes are also sent from Legacy RaiseDonors to Virtuous CRM+. Note, changes to email addresses in Virtuous CRM+ are NOT sent back to Legacy RaiseDonors. This is for security purposes.
From Virtuous CRM+: Any edit to a contact/individual is sent to Legacy RaiseDonors so long as it has a Contact Reference Source = "Legacy RaiseDonors". This includes, Name (Personal or Business), Primary Email, Primary Phone, Primary Address, and Unique IDs.
Note, email changes received in Legacy RaiseDonors from Virtuous CRM+ are ignored. This is for security purposes.
When does data get Synced?
From Legacy RaiseDonors: All donors in Legacy RaiseDonors qualify to be sync'd to Virtuous CRM+. Only edits to donor information by an admin (through the admin portal) or by an admin/donor (through the donor portal) will be sent to Virtuous CRM+.
This means, edits to donor information via Legacy RaiseDonors API do not currently send data to Virtuous CRM+.
Data coming into Legacy RaiseDonors from Virtuous CRM+ should 99% of the time, have our unique ID (because we send all data to Virtuous CRM+ first). But in the event the incoming data doesn't include our unique IDs (ex: creating a new contact in Virtuous CRM+ via the Virtuous CRM+ API), the following logic is used to match or add to existing donors.
- Match by unique/primary keys
- Matching by email address (which is a unique value in Legacy RaiseDonors)
- If no matches, create a new donor record
From Virtuous CRM+: All Contacts/Individuals having a ReferenceSource = "Legacy RaiseDonors" qualify to be sync'd with Legacy RaiseDonors.
Any system or admin editing a Contact/Individual will sync to Legacy RaiseDonors. This includes
- Edits to a Contact/individual by an Admin
- By a donor in their Donor portal
- via the Virtuous CRM+ API
- via NOCAA updates
- Query Updates
- Import tool updates
How Can I See These Changes?
In Legacy RaiseDonors, you'll see the log of any of these changes from Virtuous CRM+ immediately. The Donor Information will be updated in real time, and the activity will be logged under recent activity. Also from the dashboard recent activity.
In Virtuous CRM+, once a day, these updates will be batched and sent to the Gift and Contact Import Tool. They must be imported, just like a gift import. Only after you've imported, will the changes show on the contact record audit log with the name of the user who imported the updates.
Troubleshooting
While the integration lives in Legacy RaiseDonors, you're able to see log of all events in Virtuous CRM+ under Settings > Connectivity > Webhooks. This will show you the configuration of the sync, though this does not need to be changed.
This page will also show you the line by line list of every single event, including delivered and failed event. Select the Failures tab to see any failed events and to retry.