After dispelling the myth that you do not need to buy the Blackbaud API module for The Raiser’s Edge in order to work with customisations (you can run a plug-in), I usually get asked well what are the disadvantages of using a plug-in? I normally say that one of problems with a plug-in is that somebody has to press the “start” button. I recently found a solution to this. Continue reading Scheduling a plug-in
All posts by David Zeidman
Crash when Filtering on Missing Constituent Codes
I wrote some code for a client a while back and tested it thoroughly and everything worked fine. There was somewhat of a delay before the client was due to implement it and when they ran the application it crashed at the beginning. After some investigation we worked out what was going on. The code gathered together a collection of constituents that had two constituent codes. Only now one of them was no longer in The Raiser’s Edge. Continue reading Crash when Filtering on Missing Constituent Codes
When Loading All Does not Load a Constituent
I wrote a recent customisation where I needed to start with an empty database with no constituents and put in a subset of records from my client’s database. I took the sample database and globally deleted all records. So far so good.
Some code that I had written ages ago was going to be a part of this customisation and I ran it as part of a larger piece. The code would load all constituents (OK I forgot that I did not have any) and select the first one. This is a really simple task but I got some strange results.
Continue reading When Loading All Does not Load a Constituent
A First Customisation For Blackbaud Enterprise CRM (BBEC) on the Infinity Platform
Zeidman Development are proud to release the first customisation for Blackbaud Enterprise CRM on the Infinity Platform. Google Calendar Integration for BBEC allows users to save events and have them published to their Google calendar. This first release is relatively simple as it only allows for new events to be published. The source code for this can be found on Zeidman.info. If you don’t feel inclined to compile and install the source code then check out the screen cast below for more information.
For those of you still on Raiser’s Edge 7 (don’t worry you are in the vast majority at the time of writing) Zeidman Development is also pleased to release a Google Calendar Integration plug-in for The Raiser’s Edge. See here to download and look at the screencast below for an overview.
Coming soon the Google Calendar Integration Pro which will include the integration of participants from your calendar to The Raiser’s Edge event and vice versa.
Filling a .NET dropdown with static code table entries
In a previous post (Filling a .NET dropdown with code table entries) I described how it was possible to fill a .NET dropdown with dynamic code table entries such as title or address types, etc. When I tried to do the same thing with static table entries (e.g. gift types, payment types, etc) it proved a lot harder and a lot less intuitive.
Continue reading Filling a .NET dropdown with static code table entries
Integrating Raiser’s Edge with non-Blackbaud Products
A lot of the work that I do involves the integration of third party products with The Raiser’s Edge. It is not always right to develop a custom application to perform this integration. There are many factors including the volume of data transfer, the complexity of data, how quickly the data needs to be integrated and of course what budget is available. This article attempts to outline the options available to Raiser’s Edge managers who need to integrate with non-Blackbaud products.
Continue reading Integrating Raiser’s Edge with non-Blackbaud Products
Screencast of IDLookup for looking up online donations
This screencast of IDLookup shows you how perform a lookup based on data coming in from an online donation page. The data is downloaded from the website without constituent ids. We run IDLookup and find several matches. We are now able to import the data into The Raiser’s Edge with existing constituent information being updated and new constituents being created.
For more information about IDLookup or to download a fully working version (tied to the sample database) visit the IDLookup download page.
Opening a link from a Constituent
There was a question recently on Blackbus asking how to open a link from a constituent record. For example if you had an external system that uses constituent ids to find individuals it would be very useful to be able to open a web page from the constituent window by pressing the macro button and going to the web page that is specific for the constituent. This requires the VBA module. Here is how it is done:
Latest IDLookup Release
Zeidman Development are excited to announce the release of IDLookup 2.0.
It has been totally rewritten to give it a new look and feel but that is the least of it. The new version includes:
- Instead of just one set of criteria you can have many. The plug-in will try to match against each criteria set until it finds either a unique match or the match with the fewest multiples. Save your criteria sets for later use.
- Review multiple matches more easily. The multiples are now cross referenced to another worksheet in Excel so you can see the values from Raiser’s Edge and compare them to values in the file
- Match last or organisation name on aliases
- Match on date of birth.
- Address equivalents are now customizable from within IDLookup in a new easier to use interface
- User interface is localized for UK, US and for Canadian English language
And what is more Zeidman Development is keeping its pledge and making this latest upgrade to our existing users absolutely free.
Read more here
Plug-in order
This question has been eating away at me for ages. When you go to the Plug-ins module in The Raiser’s Edge and see the various plug-ins installed I often wonder is there any kind of order to them. Some of them appear to be in alphabetical order but then one will sneak up on you and mess up the theory. They are not in date installed order as you often get the Blackbaud plug-ins coming in the middle. The only one common theme is that the .NET plug-ins appear to come last. Come on Blackbaud what’s the deal here? I need to know!