Someone leaves, and six months later you open the membership lapse query everyone relies on, try to add one field, and Altru won’t let you save it. Or you’re cleaning up the query list and can’t delete a pile of half-finished queries named “test2” and “Sarah DO NOT USE.” Either way the cause is the same: the query still belongs to a person who isn’t there anymore.
This is fixable, but the right fix depends on how that person saved the query and what else depends on it. Below is how to sort it out, and how to keep it from happening with the next departure.
Why you’re locked out
When someone saves an ad-hoc query in Altru, they choose who else can use it. Queries can be shared so other users can run them, run and edit them, or run, edit, and delete them, or they can be kept private to the creator. Many people never touch those options, or they lock queries down on purpose so nobody breaks their work. That’s sensible while they’re employed. Once their user account is deactivated, nobody is left who can change the setting.
Deactivating the user doesn’t delete their queries, and it doesn’t transfer them to anyone. They just sit there with the old permissions.
Start with what you can do yourself
1. Check whether it’s really locked
Open the query and look at its save options. If it was shared with edit or delete rights for other users, you can work on it normally, and the problem may be your own security role instead. Ask whoever manages Altru users whether your role includes query permissions.
2. Ask your Altru administrator to try
Users with system administrator rights often have broader access to queries than regular users. Whether that’s enough to edit or delete another user’s private query can depend on your setup, so don’t assume either way. Have an administrator open the query and try. If it works, have them change the sharing options so other staff can edit it going forward.
3. Make a copy you own
If you can run or open the query but not save changes, the quickest workaround is usually to save a copy under your own name with the edit you need. That gets you working today. The catch is that anything pointing at the original query still points at the original. More on that below.
4. Contact Blackbaud support
If no one in-house can edit or delete it, open a case with Blackbaud support and ask whether they can change the owner or the permissions on the query. Have the query names ready and the name of the former employee. If they can’t, they can at least tell you the supported option for your database.
One thing to avoid: reactivating the former employee’s login and having someone sign in as them. It muddies your audit trail and is usually against your own account and security policies. Go through an administrator or support instead.
Before you delete or replace anything, check what depends on it
Old queries are rarely as unused as they look. A query that seems abandoned can still be feeding:
- Selections used by other queries. If another query filters on “in selection,” deleting or replacing the source query breaks it.
- Exports and mailings. Renewal letters, appeal lists, and recurring exports are often built on a saved query.
- Reports and dashboards that staff open every week without knowing what’s underneath.
- Outside tools. Anything that pulls Altru query results on a schedule, such as an email platform sync or a spreadsheet, is tied to that specific query.
If you made a copy in step 3, you’ll need to repoint each of these to your new version, then retire the old one. If you’re not sure whether Altru will warn you about a dependency before a delete goes through, test the delete in a sandbox or ask support. Don’t find out on the live database.
Cleaning up after the fact
When a departure leaves a lot of queries behind, do it in one pass instead of query by query:
- List every query the former employee created. Sorting the query list by creator usually gets you there.
- Mark each one: keep and take over, replace with a copy, or delete.
- For keepers, have an administrator open up the sharing options, or copy and repoint them.
- Rename what you keep so the name says what it does, not who made it.
- Delete the rest once you’ve confirmed nothing depends on them.
Stop it from happening again
- Set a sharing default. Any query used by more than one person, or by an export, mailing, or integration, gets saved so other users can edit it. Private queries are fine for personal scratch work only.
- Use folders and naming conventions. A shared folder for “production” queries makes it obvious which ones matter.
- Add query review to offboarding. Before someone’s last day, have them go through their queries with a colleague and reassign or reshare anything others need. It takes an hour and saves a support case.
- Keep a short list of critical queries with what each one feeds. That list is what you’ll wish you had when someone leaves.
A note for queries that feed other tools
Ownership matters most for queries that drive something outside Altru. If you use Social Good’s Data Bridge to sync Altru queries to Google Sheets, Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, or similar tools, treat those source queries as shared infrastructure: save them so your team can edit them, name them clearly, and include them on your critical-queries list. That way one person leaving doesn’t freeze a sync nobody can adjust.
