This post is totally unrelated to The Raiser’s Edge and the API but in case others are having the same issue I wanted to describe how I fixed it. I have just spent the last several hours trying to get the progress bar to scroll in the marquee style. I had seen several posts referring to using a background worker to retrieve data from the database while the progress bar scrolled in the UI thread. It sounded like the right solution but it didn’t make a difference.

I read one post that helped. It said that before you instantiate your form you need to enable the visual styles.

Application.EnableVisualStyles()

When I ran my application all of a sudden not only was my progress bar scrolling nicely but all of a sudden I could see the graphical styles that I always had seen in Visual Studio but never experienced in my Winform applications.

If you recognise the title of this post then I was inspired by a BlackbaudKnowHow article of a similar name. In that article the author describes the differences between the three terms and how they relate to Blackbaud Enterprise CRM. This is a good overview and works well for Blackbaud Enterprise CRM. However it breaks down when talking about The Raiser’s Edge 7.

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When I wrote an article a while back about the setting up a non-production database, I thought that I had the registry and how Blackbaud use it well understood. Of course that was before Vista, Windows 7 and elevated admin rights.

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I have been using Visual Studio 2010 for a short while now ever since the prospect of developing workflows for Enterprise CRM became a reality. One thing that I noticed when working with The Raiser’s Edge API however is that it is much faster to type out everything.

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Most people who regularly read this blog will hopefully (for their sake) never have to encounter this issue that has plagued me ever since I upgraded to Visual Studio 2005 (and then later Visual Studio 2008) and Vista (and then later Windows 7). Working with setup and deployment project is supposed to make life easier but I have had nothing but trouble with them.

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I have been doing some preparation for my two Blackbaud conference sessions (in London and in Washington D.C.).  Each year I present at the Blackbaud conferences I develop some new code to show. This year is no exception and without going into too much detail I am sure this will not disappoint those who are excited to see what can be done on the Infinity platform that The Raiser’s Edge platform code only ever dream of doing!

The SDK has some great integration with Visual Studio. For starters you are given very many template items to build your own components from. Intellisense works well in both the XML specs that you have to write and also in any corresponding .NET code. Read the rest of this entry »

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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You may be interested in knowing how to install a plugin because you have just downloaded one and want to install it or you have just developed a plugin and want to deploy it. This article covers both.
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There are a lot of misconceptions about what the Raiser’s Edge API is and what it can be used for. A lot of organisations are put off by the fact that the API is expensive to purchase on top of the fact that they may have to cover the cost of development too.

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When I first saw Shaun Sullivan’s code to create a .NET plugin in Raiser’s Edge I was a bit concerned. I tried out the code and after a bit of fiddling with it I managed to get it to work. Although I thought and still think that having an extra HTML page with the plugin as a user control was a bit of a hassle.

A much easier solution that I have done several times is to simply create a .NET class library with a form. When you start your plugin the form is shown directly in a new window.

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