Alida will be populating the FirstName and LastName system variables in Community for upgraded customers. The following document explains which communities will be affected and how the variables will be updated.
Why is Alida doing this?
- Search for members in the member directory.
- Pipe a member's name into emails and surveys.
The PanelistName is the most accurate source for a member's name in Sparq 1; however, the variable stores the first and last name as a single value. As the member data is mapped to Community, the application will base the value for the FirstName and LastName variables on the number of words and spaces in the stored value, as well as traditional name format conventions. When the system is unable to determine the first and last name, the member is skipped and the variables are left empty.
Which communities will be affected?
- Been upgraded to Community
- Empty FirstName and LastName variables
- PanelistName data
- Chinese (Simplified)
- Chinese (Traditional)
- Japanese
- Korean
- Vietnamese
Will all the empty name variables get updated?
- One space
- Two words
For example: Tom Jones.
- Multiple spaces and words (Daniel Day Lewis)
- No spaces and one word (Bob)
Skipped variables will remain empty to help identify which members require updating.
How will I know if a name was skipped?
-
Member directory
- The Name column displays a value of Unknown when you search for a member.
- The firstname and lastname fields are empty in the member record.
-
Emails and surveys
- A blank space appears when you use a system variable to pipe the member's name into an email or survey.
How do I update the system variables that were skipped?
After the PanelistName values are mapped to the corresponding system variables in Community, you can contact your Customer Success Manager for assistance with updating the members that were skipped. Your account representative can only provide assistance with members that were created in Spraq 1 before your Community was upgraded.
If you have created a profile variable to store the names of members that joined your Community after it was upgraded, we recommend performing a system upload to populate the empty system variables to avoid confusion going forward. For more information, see Export members or profile variables and Perform a system upload.