The Deceased field is a standard system field that can be manually selected or cleared on a person record's Profile tab.

The Deceased field can be exported and filtered on and there are several best practices for using this field to ensure that deceased persons are excluded from future interactions.

Setting the Deceased Field

The standard fields for Deceased and Deceased Date can be set manually on a person record, through a form submission, or through an import. To manually mark a record as deceased, take the following steps:

1. Go to the record in Slate.

2. Select the Profile tab, then select the Biographical link in the right-side pane.

3. Under the Biographical section header, select Deceased if this record should be marked as deceased.

4. Once this box is checked, a date field appears. Enter the deceased date (entering the date is optional).

5. Select Save.

Querying the Deceased Field

Standard exports and filters related to the Deceased field are available for use in the Query tool.

Best Practices

If your process requires records marked as deceased to be excluded from future interactions, consider implementing the following best practices:

Set the Opt Out Tag

This can always be done manually on a record, but this step should be automated through a rule. Note that this rule should filter for records with the Deceased field saved as "Deceased."

Use the Deceased Filter in Queries

For any query, especially those used for communications, use the person-scoped filter called Deceased to only pull records that are not marked as deceased. This filter may be used for any query base with access to person-scoped filters (such as Prospects/Records, Applications, or Relationships).

Set the Person Active Staus to Inactive

The record's person status should be set to Inactive by a rule.

Set All Devices to Inactive

Go to the record's Profile tab, and select Contact/Address from the right-side menu. Mark each device and address as Inactive so that these devices and addresses may be filtered out in queries.

Avoid Contacting Relationship Records

If relationship records of deceased person records should not be contacted, perform the following steps if the relationship record does not have its own linked person record:

1. Inactivate the relationship record's mailing address.

   • Select any addresses under the Contact/Address section of the Profile tab.

   • Mark these address as Inactive.

2. Relationship email addresses cannot be inactivated. If a relationship-scoped query is created for a communication, use the person-scoped Deceased filter to ensure that only relationship records tied to person records not marked as deceased will appear in the query.

Set a Decision on any Active Applications

If a deceased person record has an active application, add a decision to the application that will keep the record from getting future emails and will remove them from the review process. For many partners this may be the "Withdrawn" decision code.

Cancel Any Future Event Registrations

To avoid a record marked as deceased from receiving future communications related to an event registration, administratively cancel any future events where the record is registered. Note that this may still trigger any automated upon cancellation emails created for the event.

Marking Relationships as Deceased

If a relationship record should be marked as deceased, perform the following steps:

1. Go to the relationship record.

2. Select the Profile tab, then select the Edit Relationship link in the right-side pane.

3. If the relationship does not have its own person record, set the Deceased field to Yes.

4. If the relationship is a linked record, meaning they have their own person record, select Lookup Record. Under this person record's Profile tab, clear the Deceased field on the Biographical view of this tab.

If deceased relationship records should be excluded from queries, use the Relationship Deceased filter when building a relationship-scoped query.