For years, the Age Bracket field has been a remnant of the way our software worked. However, it is no longer the best way to track someone's age. We have decided to remove it from the software in our next release on Wednesday evening, November 9.
Below is a brief walkthrough on the why behind this change and some guidelines on the adjustments that you may need to make.
The Age Bracket field is not connected to someone's actual date of birth and doesn't update automatically when someone moves from one range of ages to the next. This leaves you having to make manual updates anytime someone crosses from one age range to the next and severely jeopardizes the accuracy of your data. If you enter someone's date of birth into their profile, you don't have to update that information anymore and can still use it to generate searches and reports based off of ranges of ages.
While the Age Bracket field is available on the Individual Export report, it is not part of the available people search criteria or as a report column on custom reports. You may have data stored in people's profiles in the Age Bracket field, but you aren't actually able to do much with it. If you have been using the Age Bracket field to track how old people are, we recommend changing your process to make use of the Date of Birth field (on the Basic tab, when editing their profile). If you have been storing more general, "stage of life" information in the Age Bracket field, we recommend moving that information into one of your available custom pulldown menus. With the information in the Date of Birth field, or a custom field, you're able to use it in searches and reports in ways you've never been able to use Age Bracket information before.
In the past, if you wanted to protect someone's age as private information, the only way to do that was through adding an age range for them in the Age Bracket field. Now, the year of birth and consequently, their actual age, have been protected as administrator-level information- visible only to the Master Administrator, Full Read People Administrators, and Limited Read People Administrators. Thus no one can find out how old someone actually is, unless you've specifically decided to give them access to that level of information. Your leadership will see the birth year, but everyone else will only see month and day, and each user can choose to restrict access to even that information based on their individual privacy settings.
If you have any questions about this change, please send us a support ticket and we will gladly walk you through next steps.
For more detailed information about how to export your Age Bracket data, how to set up your custom field options, how to edit profiles, or how to search for people by Age, Birth Month, or Birthday, please read below.
Exporting Your Age Bracket Data
On the All Reports page (reports_main.php), under System Reports, on the People tab, click Export Individuals or Change Log and select the Export Individuals option.
The Age Bracket information will be one of the columns on the report, near the end. You can find more information about available People reports on the Help Desk.
Setting Up Your Customizable Fields
Click on the gear icon in the top right corner of your screen, then select Customizable Fields.
On the next page, select Add another pulldown menu..., enter a title, and decide whether or not to make it an administrative option (only admins can view and edit the info). Then, start entering in your options, one at a time.
You can find more information about Customizable Fields on the Help Desk.
Editing Profiles
On someone's profile, on the right side of the page, under the Actions menu, click Edit profile. On the next page, on the Basic tab, enter their birthday in the Date of Birth field.
You can find more information about editing people profiles Help Desk.
Searching for People by Age, Birth Month, or Birthday
On the People tab, click to search by Other search options and select Age, Birth Date, or Birth Month. Then you can create the search parameters you need to find the people you're looking for.
You can find more information about people searches on the Help Desk.
If you have any questions, please send us a support ticket and we will gladly walk you through next steps.