I inherited a DB running under November 07.  This DB has a contact custom field named "State of Residence" and I want to do away with it and just use the existing "State/Province" field.  However there are 2 problems:  

1. many of the existing contacts do not have data in the "State/Province" field, it was not set up as a required field.

2. the existing rules use "State of Residence" to  route to one of my 4 national offices based on geographic location.

Is there an easy or even possible way to migrate the data from the "State of Residence" field to the "State/Province" field?  For example if the state of residence is Illinois, can I write a rule to map that to "IL" in the "state/province" field?  What is the best way to do this?  Rules, DB utility?  Anybody have a clue?  Thanks. 

Currently there is no utility to do this. One approach is to write your own utility with the RightNow connect api.

We had a similar problem that we solved using a combination of reports and multi edit workspaces.

For example: if you have the custom field "State of Residence" and you want to  move this info to State/Province, create a report with a State of Residence column and make sure that State/Province can be edited on the contact multi edit workspace.

Group the contacts by state, Highlight all in one state, open the contact multi edit workspace and set the State/Province field accordingly. 

There is also another way to populate that field all at once using a combination of excel spreadsheets,  the contact upload wizard to match your State of Residence field to the State/Province field. 

Thanks, thats a start and a big help!  

But how do I make the State/Province editable on the Contact Multi-Edit Workspace?  I can just get "address" to show up, which "State/Province" is a part of.  I can't figure out how to get the "contacts_prov_id" field to transfer over to the Contact Multi-Edit Workspace.

I just tried to add State/Prov to out multi-edit workspace and you're right. I don't see a value in the fields for it.

Okay, then I would suggest using the Contact Upload Wizard.

Modify your spreadsheet so you only have minimal identifying information in it (columns like First Name, Last Name, Email Address, State of Residence) 

The Contact Upload Wizard allows you to manuall match up fields.

Example: First Name column matches with First Name Field, Last Name column with Last Name field, etc....

When it comes time to match the State of Residence column to a field, match it to State/Prov 

 Your spreadsheet will need to be saved as a .csv file

Be certain you set the Duplicate Records value to Update Contact Data

The Create Transactions should be checked. Run External Events, and Run Workflow Rule boxes can remain unchecked.

You don't need to have a campaign and, unless you want to create a specific mailing list from these contacts, you don't need anything in the Import Into Contact List box either. 

Hope this helps!

J