The Contact Reports Page in GC GO School Settings

This guide walks through the settings on the Contact Reports page in the School Settings in GC GO. 

What this page is (and isn’t)

The Contact Reports page is a settings form, not a list of records. It controls three things about the contact report form your gift officers see:

1. A default contact method for general contact reports.
2. Whether Title is a required field.
3. An optional custom attribute dropdown (a dependent Category / Subcategory–style field).

A couple of nearby areas are easy to confuse with this one, so here’s the quick map:

• Contact Methods (its own School Settings page) — defines the list of methods (Phone, Email, etc.) and how each counts toward metrics. This page just picks which one is the default.
• Contact Report Templates — reusable content templates a gift officer applies to a report. Separate feature, separate page.

Where the page lives

From the GC GO menu, open School Settings and click Contact Reports. The page opens as Contact Report Settings, with three sections stacked top to bottom and a Save Settings button at the bottom. All three sections save together when you click it.

Section 1: New Contact Report Settings — default contact method

This section sets which contact method is pre-selected on a general contact report. The page explains it plainly: “Use this setting to default a Contact Method for general contact reports.”

To set it:

1. Check Set Default Contact Method. A row appears: “Set the default contact method to…” with a dropdown.
2. Pick a method from the dropdown (it lists your school’s contact methods).
3. Click Save Settings.

To remove the default later, uncheck the box and save.

Heads up — this is for general reports only. For outreach-channel-specific reports, the page points you elsewhere: “For outreach channel specific contact reports (e.g. email, texting, calling), use the settings under Contact Method.” Those channel defaults are the Default for Email / Calling / Texting / Visit flags on the Contact Methods page — this setting is just the fallback for a plain, general report.

Section 2: Required Fields — require a Title

By default, a contact report’s Title is optional. If you want to make sure every report is named, turn this on. The prompt reads: “Require the following fields on Contact Reports:”

1. Check Title.
2. Click Save Settings.

From then on, gift officers must enter a title before they can save a contact report. Uncheck it and save to make Title optional again.

Tip: Requiring a title pays off in search and reporting — a report called “Spring visit — capital ask” is far easier to find later than an untitled one.

Section 3: Custom Attributes — a dependent Category / Subcategory field

This is the most specialized setting, and it’s built for two specific needs: 

1. Configuring the "Action Type" field from NXT. You can enable that field here by clicking the checkbox, give it a title, and select which values should be selectable
2. Showing a dependent, two-level dropdown on the contact report form. In the page’s words:

“Enable a dependent custom attribute field on contact reports. This is used when you’ve imported two related columns (e.g. ‘Category’ and ‘Subcategory’) that combine into a single form input. Blackbaud schools commonly use this for their ‘Category / Subcategory’ interaction fields.”

Reach out to your GC Admin if you'd like to use the nested Category/Subcategory field and they can enable it for you. 

To set it up:

1. Check Enable Custom Attributes. More options appear.
2. Label — name the field as it should appear on the form. It defaults to “Custom Attribute”; change it to something meaningful like “Category / Subcategory.”
3. Required — check this if a gift officer must choose a value before saving.
4. Selectable Options — once attribute values have been imported, they appear here as a checklist. Check the values you want available on the form. The guidance: “Determine which custom attribute values are available for selection on contact reports. Values on existing records will persist and imported records may contain any value.”
5. Click Save Settings.

Important — import first. The custom attribute dropdown “will only appear on the contact report form after attribute values have been imported via the Data Importer.” If you’ve enabled it but don’t see it on the form yet, that’s almost always because the values haven’t been imported. That’s also why the Selectable Options checklist may be empty until an import runs.

Saving your settings

All three sections share one Save Settings button at the bottom of the page.

• On save, you’ll see: “Settings saved successfully.”
• If nothing changed, you’ll see: “There was nothing to save.”

There’s no per-section save — one click commits the whole page.

What changes for your gift officers

Your choices here shape the contact report form directly:

• Default contact method pre-selects on new general contact reports, so officers start from your preferred method.
• Require Title blocks saving a report until it’s named.
• Custom Attributes adds your labeled dependent dropdown to the form (once values are imported), optionally required, limited to the values you marked selectable.

Everything else about the form — the contact method list itself, its metrics behavior, and reusable content templates — is governed by the Contact Methods and Contact Report Templates areas, not here.