Heads up! This is a guide for admin users as it involves creating new fields.
Specially constructed mailing names, like a "salutation" or an "envelope name" are useful for addressing letters or creating mailing labels.
They could appear in a variety of different formats, including:
Mr David Simpson
Mr C Houghton
Dr Ben Cook OBE
Beacon does not have an out-of-the-box salutation or envelope name field, as using the full name (e.g. Mr Chris John Houghton) or first name + last name (Chris Houghton) is often enough.
However, the full name might not be appropriate in some situations:
You only want to use the first letter of the first name (e.g. Mr C Houghton)
You don't want to include middle names (e.g. Mr Chris Houghton)
Some of your supporters have a "suffix" on their name (e.g. OBE, Jr.)
You sometimes want a custom salutation or envelope name for a person but want to keep their name as-is
If you're working with any of the above scenarios, read on!
Using smart fields to auto-set mailing names
Smart fields in Beacon are like Excel formulas. They automatically calculate when you change a record in Beacon. You can use smart fields to automatically calculate a salutation for your supporters, in the format that you prefer.
Below, we've listed formulas for each of the most common salutation formats. Each of these use the TEXTJOIN function, a useful formula for joining text together that will automatically ignore any blank fields.
Mr D Simpson
=TEXTJOIN(" ", TRUE, {{{name.prefix}}}, LEFT({{{name.first}}}, 1), {{{name.last}}})
Mr David Simpson
=TEXTJOIN(" ", TRUE, {{{name.prefix}}}, {{{name.first}}}, {{{name.last}}})
Mr David Simpson MSc
Beacon does not have a name "suffix" field out of the box, but you can create a custom short text field for storing this. Once you've done this, you can add it to the end of the formula:
=TEXTJOIN(" ", TRUE, {{{name.prefix}}}, {{{name.first}}}, {{{name.last}}}, {{{c_suffix}}})
Allowing custom mailing names
You can have both an automatic salutation as above, but also include the option to change it for individual people as needed.
Create a new, normal, short text field called something like "Salutation (Custom)"
Add this new field into your smart field formula. For example:
=IF({{{c_salutation_custom}}}="", TEXTJOIN(" ", TRUE, {{{name.prefix}}}, LEFT({{{name.first}}}, 1), {{{name.last}}}), {{{c_salutation_custom}}})This will then display your automatic salutation unless there is a custom one entered, where it will display that instead.
