All posts by David Zeidman

Attach Visual Studio to Raiser’s Edge

Advanced, ,

One of the benefits of using VBA or VB6 (probably one of the very few benefits) is the ability to easily debug code. Not that it is too difficult to debug using .NET but there are a couple of tricks that you need to know. When using VBA from within RE7 you need to do very little other than set a break point where it is needed. Using VB6 plug-ins you used to be able to just run the project and start the document (until, that is Internet Explorer stopped supporting the running of these component directly).

In .NET it is not as straight forward. Either you have to create a little application that starts the form that you are using for plug-ins or for “VBA” style macros and event based customisations you need to ensure all your files are in the RE7 plugin or custom directory and attach Visual Studio to the RE7.exe process. This is done using the Tools menu item “Attach to Process”. In the list you find RE7.exe and as long as you are loading the same version of the file in RE7 as you have open in Visual Studio you are able to debug.

One of the problems with this is that it becomes slightly difficult to debug events that happen on opening of RE7 i.e. in the application start events. It is possible that you can be quick and start the Attach to Process item and select RE7 before the application has reached the custom code but it is a pain.

What is more it seemed to me that there must be a way of automating this process so that it would be much quicker. Well I got out my automation handbook and started to program (I don’t actually have an automation handbook). I put together the following macro which does the trick. I then assigned the shortcut CTRL-ALT P (you could assign whatever you like but this is one that I assigned previously to open up the attach to process window).

 

    Sub AttachToRE7()
        Try

            Dim dbg2 As EnvDTE80.Debugger2 = DTE.Debugger
            Dim trans As EnvDTE80.Transport = dbg2.Transports.Item("Default")
            Dim dbgeng(2) As EnvDTE80.Engine

            dbgeng(0) = trans.Engines.Item("T-SQL")
            dbgeng(1) = trans.Engines.Item("Managed (v2.0, v1.1, v1.0)")

            Dim proc2 As EnvDTE80.Process2 = dbg2.GetProcesses(trans, My.Computer.Name).Item("RE7.exe")
            proc2.Attach2(dbgeng)

        Catch ex As System.Exception
            MsgBox(ex.Message)
        End Try

    End Sub

Audit Trail – with undo

Not Code

I am really pleased to announce the long awaited feature of Audit Trail Professional. We have been talking about adding the ability to undo changes to Audit Trail for almost as long as the product has been around so I am really pleased that we are now releasing the first version of the undo functionality (yes there will more soon). The reason it took a while to do was two fold. Continue reading Audit Trail – with undo →

The Raiser’s Edge Integrated with Potentiality… A series of case studies (2)

Beginner, , , , ,

Towards the end of 2010 we started working with Potentiality to integrate their system with The Raiser’s Edge. At the time I knew very little about them and their products. Their headquarters is in Melbourne, Australia with an office in London. Even though they have an office in London our main contact was with their Melbourne office. Their product was a community based content management system (CMS) targeted towards schools and universities but also used by any organisation that was trying to build up a community of supporters.

Continue reading The Raiser’s Edge Integrated with Potentiality… A series of case studies (2) →

What Should You Consider When Users Leave? (an additional thought to Blackbaud’s post)

Beginner, Not Code, , ,

I like BlackbaudKnowHow. The blog that consists of many articles on best practise within Blackbaud’s products often inspires me. The posts are written by a lot of different people at Blackbaud with a lot of experience in Blackbaud products. One post written recently, What Should You Consider When Users Leave?, highlighted what users of The Raiser’s Edge should do when one of their users leaves. (Update Sep 2020 – BlackbaudKnowHow is no longer active. A similar article can be found here)

One issue it does not cover (there are probably many more that were beyond the scope of the article) was what to do about action reminders that have been assigned to a user. The article suggests either deleting the user or changing their name, giving them prefix of “X”. Neither of these solutions help when a user has actions reminders associated with them.

It is possible to go in and change the assignments one by one. It is also very easy to miss them too. It is quiet easy to see what could happen if you miss a reassignment. A major donor who was due to be reminded about their donation is now forgotten about because the reminder instead of going to David goes to “XDavid” who is not longer at your organisation.

Our free plug-in Action Reminder Updater helps solve this problem. Select a soon-to-be ex-user and select a replacement user. Press start and all of the actions will be reassigned to the replacement user. Simple.

Flexible dedupe of The Raiser’s Edge database with IDLookup Dedupe

Not Code, ,

We are really pleased to announce IDLookup Dedupe. You can now take the power of IDLookup and apply it to the whole or part of your database. We have known for a while now that many IDLookup users dedupe their database with IDLookup. They export their whole database to Excel and then run IDLookup through it. Now the process got a whole lot simpler. Just select a query of records to dedupe (you can set up the query to run over the whole database) select your criteria sets, select your custom output fields and press start. Depending on the size of your database and the number of criteria sets IDLookup Dedupe will produce an output file of duplicate records in no time, ok it will probably take a while but it will be worth it!

The output format is then able to feed straight into The Mergician so that you can global merge records based on your duplicate file.

Not so that those who use The Mergician feel left out, we have also added the custom output format to The Mergician too. You can now add almost any field on the constituent record to the output and compare each record on a separate row.

IDLookup  is an extra module for IDLookup at no extra cost to those on maintenance.

Check out IDLookup

Check out The Mergician

 

Oh and if you have not already done so vote for Chimpegration for the Digital Fundraising Awards (no email or registration required)

Chimpegration shortlisted for a Digital Fundraising Award – Vote for us

Not Code, , , , ,

Chimpegration, our plug-in that integrates Blackbaud’s The Raiser’s Edge and MailChimp has been shortlisted for a Digital Fundraising Award. We are really excited about this. So many organisations are using both The Raiser’s Edge and MailChimp and can now integrate the two for free with Chimpegration.

Vote now and tell all your friends and colleagues to vote too for Chimpegration!

http://www.digitalfundraisingawards.co.uk/digitaltool

The Raiser’s Edge Integrated with Gmail… A series of case studies (1)

Beginner, Not Code, , , , ,

This is the first in a series of case studies looking at custom integration of Blackbaud products.

Unlike very many of our previous third party integration application the main driving force behind this application, Biographica, was the fact that we could do it. We did not have any particular client knocking on our door asking us link the two products and Google , funnily enough, did not approach us either asking us to develop an integration between The Raiser’s Edge and Gmail.

Continue reading The Raiser’s Edge Integrated with Gmail… A series of case studies (1) →