A while ago Blackbaud released Blackbaud Enterprise CRM. For me as an observer of all things Blackbaud related I don’t remember exactly when BBEC was released. There was no big announcement but instead there were small releases of information over an extended period of time. First it was snippets of information about the Infinity platform, then announcements that various organisations had selected BBEC and then finally mutterings of information about RE8. The gradual increase of information about the product range has, over time, increased the expectations of Blackbaud’s customers towards the release of RE8. This was no bad thing. Such releases of information, whether officially from Blackbaud or just speculation from within the community creates a buzz around the product. (Such a model has worked wonders for each of Apple’s releases). Unfortunately buzz can lead to hype which can lead to frustration. RE8 has this mythical quality about it. While most people realise that it is more than just vaporware (given the release of BBEC) there is nothing, as yet, tangible. Read the rest of this entry »
I have covered this a couple of time before (hence the more and more obscure title) in various posts; here and here but I have been preparing IDLookup for install on Blackbaud’s OnDemand hosting service. Among several requirements is the fact that you have to install the plug-ins manually and not through an installer.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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.
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.
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!
What better way of starting the new year than taking a look at the next generation of Blackbaud’s products that are based on their Infinity platform. A couple of products have already been released but unlike many other products released into the IT wild Blackbaud has chosen, wisely in my opinion, to make the release a quiet affair and not a must have upgrade. I have managed to take a look at Blackbaud CRM. This product is aimed at the larger fundraising organisation and its flexibility certain shows this.
A few days shy of the end of the year, I hearby present to you the top visited plugins of 2008 (unless of course there is a sudden rush on any of them before midnight in which case the list will be adjusted accordingly). This list is based on the top number of clicks through to the more information about each plug-in supplied by each plug-in author.
May 17th, 2010 by 
David Zeidman
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