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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One thing that can make the API confusing is its inconsistencies. Take for example the task of referencing the constituent object’s system id from another data object. The constituent system ID is used uniformally throughout to connect a constituent to its child objects such as, gifts, actions, aliases, solicit codes, etc. The naming convention however is not uniform. The objects have fields which are referenced in the following format:

OBJECTNAME_fld_FIELDNAME

so that an action references the constituent that is tied to it by the following:

oAction.Fields(ACTION_fld_RECORDS_ID)

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