After a few years in Altru, the query list gets crowded. You’ll find three versions of “Members expiring next month,” a “TEST – do not use” from a staff member who left two years ago, and a donor query that turns out to drive the year-end appeal. Before you can clean any of that up, you need to see everything in one place.
The good news is that Altru already keeps your saved queries in a central list. The less good news is that this list isn’t quite an inventory: it doesn’t show you, in one view, who relies on each query or whether anything breaks if you delete it. This article covers how to get the full list and how to turn it into something you can actually manage.
Where saved queries live
Saved queries in Altru are kept in the Information Library, in the analysis area alongside reports and other analysis tools. That library is your starting point. From there you can usually:
- See queries grouped by category, if your team has been assigning them.
- Filter or sort by things like query type (constituent, membership, revenue, and so on), owner, or date modified.
- Search by name, which works well only if names are consistent.
If the library looks thin, check your filters first. It’s easy to have a category or “my queries only” style filter applied and assume that’s everything.
Why you might not be seeing every query
The list you see is shaped by permissions. A query can be saved as private to its owner, and your security role determines whether you can see other users’ queries. That means two staff members can open the Information Library and get different counts.
For a true inventory, do it from an account with full administrative rights. If you’re an admin and still suspect queries are hidden from you, confirm how private queries behave in your version by testing in a sandbox (have a second user save a private query and see whether it shows for you) or by asking Blackbaud support. Don’t assume your list is complete until you’ve checked this.
Turning the list into an inventory
A list of names isn’t enough to make decisions. What you really want is a spreadsheet with one row per query and a handful of columns you fill in once:
- Name and category as they appear in Altru.
- Owner, and whether that person still works there.
- Type (constituent, membership, revenue, sales, and so on).
- Last modified date, as a rough signal of whether anyone still touches it.
- Used by: any report, export, marketing effort, smart field, or outside tool that depends on it. This is the column that takes real work.
- Decision: keep, rename, merge, or retire.
Getting the first four columns into a spreadsheet may be as simple as exporting or copying the library grid. Whether your Altru instance offers a direct export from that screen depends on your version and permissions, so if you don’t see an option, a copy-and-paste from the grid or a screen-by-screen pass is the fallback. It’s tedious once, then easy to maintain.
Finding out what depends on a query
This is the part Altru won’t hand you in a single report. Some practical ways to fill in the “used by” column:
- Ask the obvious owners. Membership, development, and marketing staff usually know which queries power their monthly lists and appeals.
- Check selections. Queries saved as selections are often used in marketing efforts, exports, and other processes. Treat any query that’s also a selection as “in use” until proven otherwise.
- Look outside Altru. Exports that feed spreadsheets, email platforms, or board reports are easy to forget because nobody opens the query itself. They just run the export.
- Try before you delete. Altru may warn you or block deletion when a selection is referenced elsewhere, but don’t rely on that as your only safety net. Rename a suspect query with a prefix like “RETIRE” and wait a month. If no one complains, it’s safe to remove.
Keeping it from sprawling again
The inventory is only useful if the next person can read it. A few habits go a long way:
- A naming convention. Something like department, purpose, and frequency: “MEM – Expiring next 30 days – monthly.” Names that sort well make the library itself act as an index.
- Categories that match departments. Assign every new query to one, and fix uncategorized ones during cleanup.
- Use the description field. One sentence on what the query is for and who uses it saves a lot of guessing later.
- A shared owner for critical queries. Queries that feed appeals, renewals, or outside systems shouldn’t be private to one person’s login.
- An annual review. Re-sort by last modified once a year and work through anything stale.
When queries feed other tools
Queries that push data outside Altru deserve extra care in your inventory, since nobody sees them break until a list comes out wrong. If you send Altru query results to Google Sheets, Mailchimp, or ActiveCampaign, our Data Bridge syncs those queries automatically rather than relying on manual exports. Either way, mark those queries clearly in your inventory and in their Altru names so no one retires them by accident.
Quick answers
Is there a built-in report that lists every query and where it’s used?
Not that we’d count on. The Information Library gives you the list; dependencies usually have to be tracked by hand or confirmed with Blackbaud support for your version.
Can I see queries other staff saved as private?
That depends on security roles. Run your inventory from a full admin account and test private-query visibility in a sandbox to be sure.
