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.

Well when I say that I found a solution that is not true at all. A solution was posted on Blackbus a while ago by Jeff of PalmettoTech as to how you solve this. All I did was to stumble over it on YouTube (I was intrigued to see that somebody had clicked on a link to Zeidman.info from there!). It is a good solution, clearly not as robust as using Window scheduler to run an API application to perform a task (for which you do need RE:API) but it is definitely worth taking another look at if this is something you need to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xYg4XIftPw