RE-Decoded

A technical look at the Raiser's Edge API from Blackbaud


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A First Customisation For Blackbaud Enterprise CRM (BBEC) on the Infinity Platform

April 2nd, 2009 by David Zeidman

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.

Posted in Beginner | 4 Comments »

A first look at Blackbaud’s Infinity platform

January 1st, 2009 by David Zeidman

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.

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Posted in Not Code | No Comments »

Blackbaud European Conference 2008

September 29th, 2008 by David Zeidman

I am really looking forward to the Blackbaud European Conference. Apart from the fact that I will be speaking there it will be great to meet a lot of the people whose posts I have read on the Blackbaud forums and on Blackbus.

If you are going to be there then come along to my session: The Raiser’s Edge Decoded – A first look at the Raiser’s Edge API. This will be a non-technical look at what can be done with the API. I will be looking at real live examples of how the API can be used to improve your organisations efficiency. The session is at 13.30 on Monday 20th October. I shall be at the conference both days and available to answer any questions you may have

Posted in Not Code | No Comments »

The Case of the Missing Tabs

July 25th, 2008 by David Zeidman

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: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Intermediate | No Comments »

Using the RE Controls – Part 1

May 15th, 2008 by David Zeidman

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.

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Posted in Intermediate | 3 Comments »

Validating a Constituent Batch

April 30th, 2008 by David Zeidman

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.

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Posted in Not Code | 1 Comment »

RE7VBA tool not working as expected

April 7th, 2008 by David Zeidman

When you write code using the RE7VBA tool that compiles the VBA code into a DLL to be deployed, the environment is very similar to the built in VBA environment. There is the same development environment and access to the same code. So you would think that switching between the two would not be a problem.

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Posted in Intermediate | No Comments »

The Obsolete API

March 26th, 2008 by David Zeidman

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.

  1. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Intermediate | 2 Comments »

In a .NET plugin “deleting makes Raiser’s Edge go backwards”

January 4th, 2008 by David Zeidman

OK so the title can be interpreted in many different ways but what is says in essential the truth.

 I had a complaint from a client who was testing a plugin that I had created. She said that “deleting makes Raiser’s Edge go backwards and that the arrow keys were broken too”. Of course it took some probing for me to work out what she really meant but here is it is.

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Posted in Intermediate, Not Code | No Comments »

VBA in Imports

November 26th, 2007 by David Zeidman

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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Posted in Intermediate | No Comments »

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