The plugin directory has been upgraded to include the possibility to filter by product type e.g. Raiser’s Edge, NetCommunity, etc. This is slightly limited as it is currently only possible to give each plugin one product category even though some span two products.

 I have also added sort functionality so that you can sort alphabetically, by most highly rated and most highly viewed (based on the click through to more information).

 As previously if you have had any experience with any of the plugins add your comments as it will help others to decide their usefulness.

Here is the link again: http://www.zeidman.info/php/plugins.php

At one time I was very keen on working with VBA on import. I now steer clear of this wherever possible! There are many reasons.

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I normally keep up with the latest changes in the Raiser’s Edge version.  I thought that the jump from 7.81 to 7.82 was not that great. I knew that there were fixes so that RE would work with Office 2007, there were some more changes to optional modules (I was only really familiar with events), there were new names for items in query and export, another change to Gift Aid and that was about it. At least that was it until I saw an item on the conference pages talking about the new Batch API code that had been made available. What?? Batch API! This is something that I have been asking for forever and it completely threw me when I just stumbled across it. Read the rest of this entry »

The idea of creating user defined business rules has been discussed in various threads at Blackbus and on the Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge forums (see User Defined Business Rules for example). The whole functionality  is really useful but there are clearly limitations.

One really good use of VBA is to perform this very task. For those not familiar with the build in version it allows you to select a query (constituent, gift or action) and for a all or a limited number of security groups it allows you to display a message on opening the record. This same functionality can be repeated using VBA. Of course you are able to query on a lot more, or perform more than simply display a message. Read the rest of this entry »