What is a slug?

We’re not talking about your garden variety pest. In Good Grants, a slug looks like this: QrXJzmNX

The name “slug” comes from web publishing and refers usually to a part of a URL which identifies a page or resource. The name is based on the use of the word 'slug' in the news media to indicate a short name given to an article for internal use.

In Good Grants, a slug is a short and unique reference to a resource such as an application, a category, a field, etc. Good Grants slugs are always exactly eight characters long with a random mix of upper and lower case letters. There are many reasons for using a randomised code to reference specific pieces of information, but mostly it is to have a short and absolutely unique identifier or pseudonym.

So, what are they for?

Knowing how you can use slugs to reference and find specific data within Good Grants is powerful, and can make life easy. Let's look at some examples of different slugs and where they can be found.

Field slug

Each field has a slug associated with it. To locate this slug, follow the steps below:

1. In the Manage workspace, navigate to Applications
2. Click Edit form and select your desired form from the drop-down
3. Hover your cursor over the field and click its settings icon
4. In the configuration tray on the right side of the page, open the 'Advanced' section
5. Copy your slug

Application slug

This is a slug that references an entire application.

You can find the slug by going to an application and checking the URL for the eight-character code. In the image below, we can see the slugs for (1) the 'application' and (2) the selected 'tab' in the application.

As a grant manager, you can also find the application slug by showing the 'slug column' in the list view in Applications. To do this:

1. Open the Manage workspace and go to Applications
2. Click the cog icon at the top left of the list and tick the box next to 'Slug'
   
3. Choose Save when finished

Examples of using slugs

Notifications

You can use slugs to include application or user information in notifications.

There is a great article on creating a notification here. Using slugs in notifications can help you to:

• Uniquely reference the application a notification relates to with the {application_slug} merge tag. This is included by default in the Application submitted email notification
• Include application information from an application field, with the {application_field:abcd1234} merge tag, using the slug of the field you want to include, in the merge tag
• Include user information from a user field, with the {user_field:abcd1234} merge tag

Search

Need to find a specific application? Search using the slug of the application to get right to what you are looking for. This can be useful in instances where an applicant has entered the same application in multiple categories, with the same application name.

It’s also really useful when you troubleshoot an application, just ask the applicant what their unique eight-character code is at the end of the URL. Application slugs are included in the body of application submission confirmation emails by default, for exactly this purpose.

Application slugs are also included:

• On every PDF downloaded from Good Grants (below the QR code at the top right of the first page)
• Every line item on an application payment invoice
• On packing slips (below the QR code)

Head over to Applications in the Manage workspace and insert the application slug in the search box to find the application you’re looking for.

Export

When you export anything from Good Grants, be sure to include the slug column in the export as a unique identifier.

For example, exporting users, the user slug is the best unique identifier to help find an individual at a later stage if: there are two users with the same name; a user updated their email address; a user registers twice with different email addresses.

If you need to anonymise users or applications in your exports for some reason, slugs are a perfect anonymous pseudonym.

Analysis

When exporting data from Good Grants to do any form of analysis— if you need to combine data sets using a VLOOKUP function perhaps, slugs are the best identifier to match on. If your analysis is quantitative and needs to be anonymised, slugs serve as good pseudonyms for unique users or applications.

API

If using our powerful API, the slug is the perfect identifier to uniquely identify a user or application when pulling data down to your CRM or updating user details and applications in your Good Grants platform.

Are slugs helpful for you?

We may not have thought of all the ways slugs can help you. If you would like to see slugs included somewhere else in Good Grants, or if you have found an interesting or useful way to use slugs, we would love to hear about it. Send us a message!