We need a way of addressing people by their nickname, if one is present, otherwise by their first name. When configuring an Additional Addressee/Salutation there is no way to make First Name a conditional field which only appears if Nickname is blank.

At least the mail function will allow you to select one salutation, and default to another if that salutation isn't present. But to use that as a work-around you'd have to have a nickname salutation added to every constituent who has a nickname, and then continue to add it to all applicable new records. The whole point of the Addressee/Salutations is to have a smart configuration that figures it out automatically.

And with Online Express emails there doesn't appear to be a way to do this at all.

Another way to make it work is just to add every constituent's first name to the nickname field if it is blank, and then continue doing that for every constituent going forward. Which, again, defeats the purpose of having configurable addressee/salutations. And is impractical when you have 200,000+ constituents, with hundreds more added automatically each week.