One issue I had when I first started was how do I remove a child object from a collection. For example if I want to remove one constituent code from a constituent I need to loop through them, find the one I want to remove and remove it. My fear though was that if I simply remove it whilst looping won’t I mess up the collection? This can happen in some classes.
Tag Archives: Constituent
Filtering Individual Relationships
In my endeavour of documenting the undocumented I would like to present this little nugget of an unwritten feature. I wanted to filter a constituent’s individual relationship based on a reciprocal type and on the to date not being populated i.e. the relationship was still valid. I’ll use the filter object I thought. Continue reading Filtering Individual Relationships
The Case of the Missing Tabs
Here is a strange problem that I encountered. I wanted to show the constituent form with constituent data. I also wanted to know if the user had saved and closed or just closed the form afterwards. If I had not been interested in knowing this information then I would have simply done the following: Continue reading The Case of the Missing Tabs
VBA User Fields in Export
In export for a recurring gift it is not possible to pull out the bank details specific to that gift. You can only pull the name of the bank or all the banks on the constituent’s record. It is not possible to pull the account number and sort code. This is really important when there are bank issues with recurring gifts that need to be sorted out.
Using the Batch API with Notepads or Attributes
I have started to use the Batch API in earnest now. I have said previously that it is a great long overdue piece of functionality but I am beginning to understand why it was never included earlier. As with much of the API the newly added Batch API is not well documented. A good example of how to use it was given and can be found on Blackbaud’s knowledgbase (BB418575) but it is somewhat limited. It does not explain for example how to add an attribute or a notepad to a gift batch. This was discussed on a Blackbus thread. Adding the items to the batch header was quite straight forward but adding the actual values proved more difficult. Here I try to shed some light on the process.
Continue reading Using the Batch API with Notepads or Attributes
Latest version of IDLookup
Zeidman Development is pleased to announce the latest release of IDLookup. With this latest release (version 1.1.4) we bring you some exciting additions:
- Use your search criteria against a spouse record.
- Previously we introduced address equivalents (a match against “1 High Street” would also match “1 High St”, or “1 High St.”). In this latest release we allow you to customize the address equivalents list so that you can add new equivalents and change existing ones.
- A user guide. (a long sought after addition)
If you have not checked out IDLookup for a while then there are many new features including:
- Matching on the first few characters of fields
- Making your search accent insensitive (e.g. côté matches against côte, coté and cote)
- Matching on maiden name
- Filtering the results on specific constituent codes or constituent attributes.
If you already own a full license of IDLookup then download this latest version now for free. Otherwise download a full working version of IDLookup (restricted to the sample database)
If you need any help installing IDLookup, wish to purchase it or have any feedback then please do not hesitate to contact us
David
The Full Address
I wanted to be able to get a constituent’s address from their record. Sounds simple enough. You just take the address block, the city, the state and zip. Although what happens if they are not in the States or Canada. When you change the country for example, to United Kingdom, the state field disappears and a county field appears in its place. Pulling the state field would just be a blank value.
Using the RE Controls – Part 1
There are a lot of controls that The Raiser’s Edge uses and that you can use in your code to give it a similar look and feel. This article is an introduction to using one of these controls – the SuperEdit70Ex. Like most of the API this is not documented. Indeed this really is not documented. There is no extra documentation other than by looking at the object browser.
Validating a Constituent Batch
Previously I have integrated Quick Address from QAS with The Raiser’s Edge. I implemented their pro API in order to validate the address on saving the constituent/relationship/participant and on demand using the VBA macro button. I created a plugin to update addresses en masse using their batch API. I implemented their pro API to create a “silent” validation during import. The one thing that I didn’t do at the time was to validate addresses in a constituent batch. At the time this was not a requirement.
The Obsolete API
Inspired by a posting on Wired (which in turn was taken from a Wiki on obsolete technologies) I wanted to give you a list of the top five obsolete areas of the RE:API.