Tuesday, April 27, 2010

"We don't play that anymore, so why did it reconcile back into the logs?" Reconciliation Tip

MusicMaster has a fantastic feature called Automatic Reconciliation.  Once we set it up for you - it will look at your Automation System logs and reconcile that information back into your MusicMaster logs.  This is an especially helpful feature if your announcers have the freedom to drop, juggle or change out the songs they play - or if you over schedule your hours in MusicMaster.  Occasionally, I'll get a call from a client who says - "We don't play this song anymore, but after we run reconciliation - it adds it to the log".  The first thing you should do is look at the Automation number and run a Query for that number in MusicMaster.  In every instance - there is a duplicate number.  So if you have a habit of re-using automation numbers, you should clear the number from that field in the original song. 
 
Let me explain further: when MusicMaster goes to reconcile and see's 2 of the same automation numbers, it will ALWAYS default to the first song card created with that automation number.  Essentially, the internal field "Song ID" in MusicMaster - populates itself with a unique number every single time you add a song.  If you delete a song, that Song ID number goes away forever.  Song Histories are gathered based on the Song ID field, so you may not want to overwrite a song card's information with another song title - because the song history would be false.
 
Good rule of thumb when re-using Automation numbers: Just clear the field on the first song card using that number.  Problem solved. Song histories will remain intact and you won't see reconciliation issues.
~Marianne Burkett
 
 

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