Tag Archives: Validatrix

GDPR and Consent in Raiser’s Edge

Beginner, , , ,

I have been really busy of late. While many an EU non-profit have been kept awake at night because of GDPR, I have not quite been kept awake but nevertheless been very involved in implementing GDPR into our products. This has taken the form of the new consent module.

If you are not in the EU or otherwise not on the latest version of RE7 then you may wonder what I am talking about when I mention the new consent module. I am not going to go into too much detail here as Blackbaud have some good resources that cover it here.

What I will say is that the implementation of consent is very different from many other modules in RE. Luckily there is less and less scope for RE7 API developers as Blackbaud moves towards NXT and expands the REST based SKY API. So I am wondering if as, a last challenge towards those remaining in the RE7 API game (myself included), Blackbaud decided to make the new consent module even less consistent than previous modules.

Here are a few of its features:

  • The consent collection cannot be found within the regular BBREAPI assembly. You have to look elsewhere for it.
  • It does not save alongside the rest of the constituent records but has its own save routines. What this also means is that the VBA events are not fired when a consent record is saved.
  • In the first release it does not cause an exception when you do not supply a valid combination of channel and category as it does in the UI but if you are really clever (or decipher the sample code), you can determine how to do your own validation.

Now I should not be too harsh on the BB developers. Introducing a new module like this is extremely difficult. There are so many intertwined areas that must be accounted for and I am sure that the design decisions were taken for a reason. (One of which being that it is much easier this way to work with very many consent records if they are a standalone entity)

How are we updating our applications to work with the consent module?

Audit Trail:

As you would expect changes made on consent records will be tracked but because consent records are saved as a standalone entity they will only be saved if the constituent record is also saved afterwards.

Validatrix:

This is a tricky one. We have included consent records as part of Validatrix but because they are a standalone entity and are open and saved in their own rights, they do not fire the VBA events that tell Validatrix to prevent a save. That means that a user can add a consent record and shut the constituent without saving the constituent. You cannot therefore have a consent record as the primary criteria. However, if you have the consent record as a dependency of a constituent based field then it will be included in the criteria when you save the constituent.

Importacular:

As you would expect, Importacular allows you to import consent records. You can match on any combination of channel, category, date, response and source to ensure that you are not creating duplicate consent records (although by default it matches on channel, category, date and response).

Chimpegration:

This is perhaps our most ambitious development. Until Blackbaud add consent information to query and export you are not able to export consent records to MailChimp. However it is probably more useful to export the outcome of the consent records i.e. solicit codes which show you a good picture of a constituent’s intentions.

On managing campaigns you can add a consent record based on the action i.e. if a subscriber unsubscribes you may want to add a consent record.

Sync is where the most complex piece of development occurs. We allow you to map individual groups and group items to the addition of different types of consent records. Equally when specific solicit codes are added (in response to consent records being added previously) these can be mapped to group items. We have a longer description of this on our knowledgebase.

When is this available? Importacular, Audit Trail and Validatrix are already live. Chimpegration is live for self-hosted and will go live in the near future for hosted organisations.

Just When You Thought Validatrix Could Not Get More Complicated…

Advanced, Not Code,

One of the problems of offering a tool that can create custom business rules for almost any scenario is that it has to have a lot of functionality. As we developed Validatrix we realised that some of that functionality was missing so we added it on. The problem with that of course is that the more you add on the more complicated the application becomes.

We have attempted to remedy this by offering the Validatrix Query Converter which does a good job of converting queries into rules and is often a good starting point for expanding a rule further.

We realised that we had missed out on a piece of functionality that was preventing us from creating a rule with a specific scenario. It is possible to all sorts of logic within one rule. We can check if a field value is exactly the same as another, if it is not the same as if it is greater than or less than etc. Continue reading Just When You Thought Validatrix Could Not Get More Complicated… →

Validatrix Query Converter Makes it even easier to protect your data

Not Code,

When we first developed Validatrix we had a lofty ambition that users of Raiser’s Edge would be able to protect their records using any combination of business rules. Out of the box, RE allows you to make some fields required. If the whole organisation wants city to be a required field all you have to do is going to configuration and set that field to be required.

However there are many limitations with that. What if we are only working with email only records. We may not have a physical address for those constituents. Validatrix makes it possible to combine criteria to validate records.

(Do they have an address block: YES
OR
Do they have an a postal code: YES)
SO
DO they have a city:

No? Well show a message.

What we soon realised was that for simple scenarios it was not that difficult to create rules. We also realised that after much practise and taking a look at our Validatrix Recipes area on ZeidZone, it became easier. Those starting out or writing more complicate rules needed a little more help.

That is why we developed the Validatrix Query Converter. Most, if not all DBAs can write a regular RE query. If they can write a query to give all the records where a message would be shown then this tool can convert the query into a Validatrix rule.

I have to say straight up here that not every single scenario is covered. There are some things (not many) that query can do that cannot be done in a rule. (There are so very many more things that Validatrix rules can do that query can do!). However this should get the beginner and those that are working with complex rules onto the right track.

If you have any questions about this product then please do not hesitate to get in touch with us here.

 

Validatrix – Complex Business Rules with ease for The Raiser’s Edge

Not Code, , ,

I am really pleased to announce that we have released our latest plugin – Validatrix. (Or jump to the fancy animation). It always bothered me how so many business rules built into The Raiser’s Edge were arbitrary. You have to supply a surname but not an email address. You have to give a gift amount and date but not specify which segment it belonged to when given (as some organisations would do by adding an attribute).  It maybe that somebody is a VIP because they give over a certain amount of money or because they are a specific type of prospect or because they attended a VIP dinner. You cannot enforce these rules in The Raiser’s Edge as is. You can, however, with Validatrix.

Continue reading Validatrix – Complex Business Rules with ease for The Raiser’s Edge →