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      How do I run a report and automate birthday (or anniversary) cards, emails or texts?

      Use month and day filters with scheduled reports. Adapt this approach for anniversaries.

      Excerpted from this blog post.  For anniversaries use Anniversary dates (Filters > Members > Family / Household Attributes).

      Recognizing children and adults on their birthdays is a wonderful way to care for your people.  Everyone likes to be recognized on their big day whether by text, email or a personal note.  To do this, use the filter option for dates that allows you filter just by month or by month and day.

      MonthDay

      Filter by other factors like church member type, household role, or group involvement first.  Then, go to Birth Date.  If you wanted to run a report for everyone with a birthday in June, you would use just the the Month drop down.  If you want to run a report for everyone on a specific day, you would use both drop downs, i. e. June and 7.  

      When you save the report, you will have the option to save it for the current month or the current month and the current day.

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      These are the tools.  Here is the best way to use them to recognize birthdays in three ways.

      1. Hand-written note. 
        • Use either Reports > Members > Listing or Reports > Members > Export People info.
        • Choose the info you want to see (or mail merge) - name, address, birthdate. 
        • Use the filters above.
        • Save the report.  A member listing is generally sufficient if an admin is hand-writing envelopes.
      2. Personalized email. 
        • Go to Communicate > Email > Templates to create your custom birthday email using mtag2 to personalize by first name.  Use images, gifs or any of the other options to make the email special.
        • Save as a template.
        • Create a simple workflow that only sends this one email.  You do NOT need to associate a group with the workflow.
        •  Go to Reports > Communication > Add People to Workflow, select the Birthday workflow you just created.
        • Use the filters above.
        • Save the report.
      3. Personalized text.
        • Go to Communicate > Text > Templates to create your custom birthday text using to personalize.  Remember to keep the text under 159 characters for best delivery.
        • Save as a template.
        • Create a simple workflow that only sends this one text.
        • Go to Reports > Communication > Add People To Workflow, select the Birthday workflow you just created.
        • Use the filters above.
        • Save the report.

      Freedom.  Now that you've Saved the report of your choice, it's time to completely set yourself free.  Go to Reports > Scheduled Reports and click to schedule the report.  You can automate emails and texts to go out daily.  Schedule a list or an export to be emailed to you weekly or monthly for handwritten notes.

       

       

       

       

      To create a list of anniversaries or birthdays for a given month, select the report type you want like Member Listing. Then in the filters area select Members then Custom Attributes. Scroll down those attributes until you find anniversary or birthday and select the month you want. Then run the report, making sure that you save it.


      Then you can add this report to your ME card on your dashboard and quickly run it each day to see the current birthdays.  You can also click on the Birth Date column and it will sort by day of the month.