Batch Addr Hygiene
About Address Correction
Address correction software can be used to “cleanse” your addresses (verifying that the address line, city, state, and Zip code are correct) as well as standardize the entire address line, city and state (based on your country’s postal data and rules).
Some of the benefits provided by address correction are listed below:
Corrects and standardizes address, city and state data.
Assigns Zip/Postal codes (Zip code, Zip+4, carrier route) that can provide additional pre-sort discounts for mailing.
Allows you to comply with the new, stricter rules on OCR (optical character recognition) readability.
Allows your customer service operators to verify address information on-line when entering a new start.
Makes addresses more deliverable.
Creates a higher percentage of address “matches” when you use List MatchPlus software.
For US addresses, Quadient populates eLot (Enhanced Line of Travel), DPV (Delivery Point Validation), and LACS (Locatable Address Conversion System) codes used by the USPS. Quadient will also return the DPV NO STATS setting (used for dwellings for which there is no DPV information, such as those that are vacant or being built), if the Business Rule— For US addresses, should the DPV NO STATS directory be used? is set to “Yes”.
For US addresses, Quadient uses SuiteLink to fill in the suite number for incomplete business addresses (see SuiteLink).
Different address correction software products that have been integrated with Circulation. Quadient utilizes US Postal Service (USPS) directories to cleanse and standardize US addresses in the Circulation database. Another vendor, QAS, is generally used for Australian and Canadian addresses. Two older products, Address Correction and Encoding (ACE) and CACE, the Canadian counterpart to ACE, are no longer supported. Business Rules determine the address correction software used and configuration parameters for each software product. See Address Cleansing in the Setup manual for more information.
Note: Address correction is an optional costed feature offered in Circulation.
There are two ways in which address correction software can be used for address hygiene. Batch Address Hygiene, documented below, enables you to cleanse and standardize all addresses in one or more Zip codes at one time.
The other way to perform address hygiene is when a single address is added or modified in Customer Service or iServices Subscriber. If the new or modified address does not exactly match the address in the USPS or Canada Post directories, and Business Rules are set to allow cleansing, a window will open asking you which address to keep. This is known as online address hygiene, and is described in the Customer Service chapter (see Adding an Address).
In addition, Circulation has a batch hygiene utility for the Circulation router, which will cleanse addresses used to define the router address ranges (see Router Addr Hygiene).
Running Batch Address Hygiene
If your addresses are mostly in the US and you use Quadient for address correction, Batch Address Hygiene can be run to cleanse all addresses in one or more Zip codes. This option might be used when an updated directory is available, or when a group of addresses is added to Circulation (through List MatchPlus). It is a good idea to run Batch Address Hygiene at least once without updating the address database; the reports can then be studied and action taken on individual addresses you would rather not cleanse.
Note:
If your addresses are mostly in Canada or Australia and you use QAS for address correction, you cannot cleanse addresses via Batch Address Hygiene. Instead you can export addresses for cleansing outside of Circulation, and then import them. See FAQ #111 for more information.
Batch Address Hygiene has no effect on router addresses, which are stored elsewhere in the database. User Router Addr Hygiene to cleanse router address ranges.
The process of cleansing and standardizing a batch of addresses is automatic—all addresses that have the Cleanse Address field checked (flagged when adding the address) will be included. Addresses with Cleanse Address unchecked will not be processed in Batch Address Hygiene. It is therefore possible to separate out irregular addresses that you do not wish to process.
Note:
The cleansing process may take a considerable amount of time if an entire address database is being cleansed.
After the processing is completed several reports are created to document the hygiene process. Some of these reports can also be generated without updating the Circulation address database.
To run Batch Address Hygiene:
Select Batch Addr Hygiene from the
Utilities | Subscription/Addressmenu to display the Address Hygiene Batch Processing Report screen. When using Quadient, the screen lists the Quadient directory date. This is the date of the postal directories being used by Quadient. You can check this date periodically and, when a directory update occurs, run Batch Address Hygiene for your addresses.Select Add and enter information in the fields described in the table below.
Field Type What to enter ALL ZIPS
yes/no
Indicate whether addresses in all Zip codes should be processed.
ZIP CODE
setup
If you entered “n” in the previous field, enter the ZIP Code that should be cleansed, or enter “*” to multi-select ZIPs (see Entering Multiple Zip Codes).
UPDATE
yes/no
Indicate whether the Circulation address database should be updated. Enter “n” here if you are just running the utility for the reports.
REROUTE ADDRESSES
yes/no
If you are using Quadient and the addresses will be updated, indicate whether Batch Address Hygiene should automatically reroute addresses for home delivery routes. If you choose to reroute, the subscription will remain on its current route, but the route assigned to the address itself may change. Note that both addresses and subscriptions are assigned routes. The subscription route is used for delivering publications. The address route is used for Targeted Marketing delivery and defaults as the subscription route when there is a new subscription.
CREATE FORM 3553
yes/no
If the address will be updated, indicate whether a PS Form 3553 should be generated for all addresses being cleansed. This form is submitted to the post office to establish the number of your addresses with Zip+4, carrier route information, etc.
LIST NAME
open (19)
If you are generating a form 3553, enter a list name. This name appears on the form and is for reference.
CREATE AAS REPORT LIST NAME
yes/no open (19)
These fields are for CACE, which is no longer supported. The fields will be skipped.
DATE RANGE
yes/no
Indicate whether batch address hygiene should cleanse only addresses entered within a certain date range.
PERIOD START DATE, PERIOD END DATE
date
If DATE RANGE is set to “y”, enter the date range for address cleansing. Only addresses entered within this date range will be cleansed.
REPORT ALL DETAIL
yes/no
Indicate whether every address should be listed in the Assigned Addresses Report (one of the reports created by Batch Address Hygiene).
NTH’ING FACTOR
integer (4)
If you entered “n” in the previous field, indicate the nth’ing factor to use for displaying addresses in the Assigned Addresses Report. For instance, if you want every tenth address to be displayed, enter “10”; if you want every hundredth address to be displayed, enter “100”.
Select Continue to begin cleansing addresses. When using Quadient, during processing the screen will display the number of addresses that have been uploaded for cleansing. In addition, an e-mail is sent by Quadient to the e-mail address specified in the Business Rules when the address cleansing process starts and completes.
After processing is complete, the Summary Statistics Report will appear. The standard viewing and printing options are available for this report. The other reports are saved to spool and can be viewed via the View/Print Utility (see View/Print). These reports are described below.
Important:
If you do update the Circulation database, be sure to save the reports (set Save to “Y” in the View/Print window). Otherwi1se, the Update Audit report will not be saved, and you will have no record of which addresses were changed.
Entering Multiple Zip Codes
If you want to process addresses for only one ZIP Code, you can enter that ZIP in the ZIP Code field described in the table above. If you want to process multiple ZIPs, enter a “*” in the ZIP Code field, and the ZIP Code Selection screen will appear.
Note:
Although Batch Address Hygiene can be run for specific ZIP+4s, we recommend that you run it only for 5-digit ZIP Codes, as ZIP+4s frequently change. If you do enter full ZIPs+4s, formatting is important; be sure a dash is included in the ZIP (e.g., 55119-9911) and a space for Canadian Postal Codes (e.g., A0A 0A0).
Select Add and enter each Zip code that should be included, one at a time. As a shortcut, you can enter incomplete Zip codes; all Zip codes beginning with those numbers will be included. For example, in the screen below “55” is entered—all Zip codes that begin with “55” will be processed.
When all Zip codes have been entered, press F4 and then Exit to return to the Address Hygiene Batch Processing Report.
Batch Address Hygiene Reports
Up to five reports are created during Batch Address Hygiene processing, as listed below. When addresses are not updated, only the Assigned Address Report, the Unassigned Address Report, and the Summary Statistics report are created.
The Assigned Address Report lists addresses that were changed in address hygiene; both the new and old form of the address appear. A status code is also listed which tells which elements of the address were standardized (see Quadient status codes). Addresses where the core address elements remained unchanged will not be listed on this report, and if an nth’ing factor was used, only a fraction of the changed addresses will be listed. The core elements of an address are: the house number, house number modifier, prefix, street name, street type, suffix, unit type, unit, city, state, and Zip code.
The Unassigned Addresses Report lists addresses that address correction was not able to confidently match to any address in the postal directories. An error code is listed with each address, explaining why the address could not be assigned (ssee Quadient status codes). Note that the report contains an LAC (Locatable Address Correction) setting, under the STREET NAME column. A “Y” in LACS CODE indicates that the US address (usually a rural route) needs to be converted to a standard street address (also referred to as “911 conversion”). Address correction does not have the capacity to make the change.
The Update Audit Report is created only if the Circulation database was updated by Batch Address Hygiene. This report lists updated addresses that contained missing or incorrect elements, such as a missing Town of 25. An “FYI” column provides information about possible inconsistencies with the address.
The Summary Statistics Report summarizes the Batch Address Hygiene process, listing the total addresses read, assigned and unassigned, among other things. This is the only report that is displayed after Batch Address Hygiene processing; the other reports are saved in files and must be viewed with the View/Print utility.
The PS form 3553 can be submitted to the USPS as proof that addresses have been cleansed using CASS-certified software (necessary for automated discounts). The form 3553 may be recreated bi-monthly, after new postal directories are installed. Any time large numbers of addresses are added or modified within the database (for example, via List MatchPlus), Batch Address Hygiene should again be run on all addresses and a new form 3553 (or AAS report) created. When using Quadient, the report under the normal directory will just contain text indicating the name and location of the pdf version of the report downloaded from Quadient, which will be saved under the pdf directory. When running batch address hygiene and creating the form 3553, addresses in the database meeting the following conditions will show up in the “total addresses” count, but not in the “coded addresses” count on the 3553 (i.e., your percentages will be lowered):
Address is locked by another user.
The address does not have “US” or “CA” as the country name.
The address country is blank and publication country in Business Rules is not “US” or “CA”.
The address “cleanse” flag is set to “no”.
The address is a special address (military or foreign).
Note:
According to the USPS, submitting the form 3553 (run against the entire database) with each mailing will be sufficient to qualify for automation discounts. For example, if you created a form 3553 for your entire database of 10,000 addresses, you could use this form with a partial mailing of 4,000 addresses.
The table below shows the default file names used to save the reports.
| Report | File Name |
|---|---|
Assigned Addresses Report | ADDRHYB1 |
Unassigned Addresses Report | ADDRHYB2 |
Update Audit Report | ADDRHYB3 |
Summary Statistics Report | ADDRHYB4 |
PS Form 3553 | ADDRHYB5 |
Every time you run Batch Address Hygiene and use the default settings, the new reports will replace the reports previously saved. If you wish to keep a particular report saved with the default name, change its file name by selecting Utilities | System | View/Print.
An example of each of the reports can be found below.
Example—Assigned Address Report
Example—Unassigned Addresses Report
Example—Update Audit Report
Example—Summary Statistics Report
Example—USPS Form 3553
Quadient Error Codes
Change codes returned by Quadient appear on the Assigned Addresses report in the STATUS field, with an “S” prefix. Likewise, error codes returned by Quadient appear in the ERROR column on the Unassigned Addresses report, with an “E” prefix. These codes can be looked up from Quadient’s website, using this URL:
Click the link labeled "known values" to view the codes.
SuiteLink
SuiteLink is a USPS database of business addresses that is utilized by Quadient during address cleansing. The purpose of SuiteLink is to append suite information to, or correct invalid suite information for, business addresses, based on the ZIP+4.
The SuiteLink codes returned by Quadient on the Batch Address Hygiene report include:
A—SuiteLink match - secondary information exists and was assigned to this record as a result of SuiteLink processing.
00—SuiteLink no match - lookup was attempted but no matching record could be found.
blank—A SuiteLink lookup was not attempted because either (1) the address was not a high-rise default according to CASS, or (2) the address did not contain a firm.
In order to use SuiteLink, the name of the business must be in the Last Name field in the Occupant record, or else in the Other Name field when the Other Name Usage field is set to “Firm”. If the firm name passed to Quadient is blank or the address does not DPV-confirm, SuiteLink will not be called.
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