Mass Update Guide

A Guide for setting a specific field to a specific value over multiple records.

Vaughn avatar
Written by Vaughn
Updated over a week ago

Introduction

Mass Update is a great way to quickly change the value of one or more fields that all need to be set to the same thing. This is most commonly used for mass assigning Tasks from one User to another or changing the Responsible Attorney from one to another on specific Matters, but you can be as creative as you like.

Mastering the Mass Update can save you double-digit minutes on the day, hours on the week and days on the year, so let’s get started (and then make a plan with what we’ll do with all of our new free time!)

Mass Updates from an Existing View

The magic happens from a View or from a Report built in the Advanced Find. We’ll start with a basic example and then move on to something a bit more robust. Head to your list of open Matters by first clicking the Matters Entity on the left.

Note the two Checking options here – you can either click the Checkmark in the Header Bar, thereby selecting everything in the list (up to 250 results, which we’ll discuss soon),

Or you can click Individual Checkboxes. Whatever is selected when you click Edit at the top is what will be affected by whatever change you make.

Once you’ve made your selection, click Edit at the top of the screen. Note that Edit Button will NOT show unless you’ve selected at least one Record.

Now here, you can scroll through and find the Field or Fields that you want to change, set the value that you want to change it to, and then click Change at the bottom of the screen to set the Changes. See the Video above for a good talk through what the Field-Changing looks like.

***THE MOST IMPORTANT NOTE OF ALL TIME***

Once you click Change, the system will begin Changing whatever was specified. It will give you NO WARNING (like, ‘are you sure you want to change’) and NO CONFIRMATION OPTION (like, ‘Click OK to Confirm Change’). Once you click Change, the manipulated fields will be Changed on EVERY RECORD that you selected.

THIS IS IRREVERSIBLE. I don’t want to discourage you from using this tool, as it’s extremely powerful and very convenient, but ‘with great Power comes great Responsibility’. Treat it like a car and drive carefully. Treat it like a gun and watch your trigger finger. Treat it like a newborn and support the neck.

Now that you’re fully apprised of all the ways that this could go wrong, let’s look at one more awesome way to utilize the Mass Update!

Mass Update from Advanced Find

In this Guide, we can also use the Advanced Find tool in order to make highly specific changes to a Field or Groups of Fields across multiple Records. In a previous Guide, I’ve shown you how to create and use the Advanced Find, so click here for information on that tool. Assuming, however, that you already know how to use the Advanced Find, let’s look at an example.

Let’s say that Partner X leaves the firm, and we need to assign their Matters to a new Responsible Attorney. But we don’t want to transfer *all* of their Matters to a new Responsible Attorney. Instead, we want to only transfer the Matters that are still considered Active, and leave all previous, Inactive or otherwise Closed Matters assigned to old Attorney so that we can track them later.

We can use the Advanced Find to quickly create a custom view of all Matters that are Active and have Leaving-Partner X as the Responsible Attorney. Now that we’ve created our specified list, we can Select some or all results and use the Edit button to do just as we did before.

Once again, be very careful on when you hit the Change button, as it is irreversible.

To the Limit

One more thing to note: most Lists, Views or Grids in Dynamics/Curo365 will only display a Max of 250 Records, shown in the picture below. This means that if you have more than 250 Records that you need to change, you’ll have to do them in batches of 250. Once changed, you can use the arrows (also shown below) to go to the next Group, select them all and change that Group as well.

It’s a little more tedious, but it beats having to do 500 individual records!

And that’s it! I hope you’re able to use this fantastic tool, and reach out in the chat if you have any questions!

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