Over the weekend, a security flaw was discovered with Internet Explorer (IE) versions 6 through 11. The security flaw allows malicious hackers to get around security protections in the Windows operating system. They then can be infected when visiting a compromised website.  Microsoft is working a fix; however, at this time the Department of Homeland Security has recommended that you stop using Internet Explorer.

Here are some additional information regarding this vulnerability.

• This security vulnerability infects the user’s Internet Explorer browser when they visit web sites with specifically crafted Shockwave Flash code and is not internal to Blackbaud products. Once exploited, this flaw allows malicious hackers to bypass security protections within the Windows operating system.
• Blackbaud Hosting Services sites do not use Shockwave, so your interaction with your hosted products is not vulnerable. However, we do recommend disabling Shockwave Flash, or enabling Enhanced Protected Mode in IE 10 or higher in order to protect your own enterprise.
• As a general best practice, we recommend that any user who works with sensitive information and accesses Blackbaud Hosted products via IE should only visit sites as required for business purposes.
• **Users of Windows XP will continue to be vulnerable to this issue even after MS patches IE due to the recent end of XP support. We recommend upgrading immediately if users are still on XP.

You can find this information in Knowledgebase solution Microsoft Internet Explorer “use-after-free” vulnerability.

Do you have upgrades on the brain??

Seems like everyone is planning for an upgrade, working on an upgrade, or anticipating the next release these days!  In an effort to personalize the experience, we are bringing a new series of updates to the CRM Community (www.blackbaud.com/bbcrm).

The Blackbaud Upgrades team (Joe Price, Emily Carpenter, and Michael Butler), will be sharing insights and news about upgrades as more and more of us move to version 3.0 and start looking forward to version 4.0.

You can subscribe to the Upgrades board in the community for regular updates from the team – and they’ll be monitoring the topic closely, so feel free to engage them in discussions and post questions, even if you’re not quite ready to begin the formal upgrade process!

You can find our Upgrades and Releases board in the CRM Community, by going to Forums > Upgrades.  First time users may be prompted for a login – just use your Blackbaud.com username and password.

Interested in sharing some details about your organization’s upgrade?  Feel free to add a new message in the community, or contact me at caroline.barnes@blackbaud.com.

Do you have ongoing performance concerns in your CRM database?  The performance team wants to hear about them!

Join Len Wyatt and David Hendershot from the CRM Products team for a Skype Chat next Thursday, June 5th, from 2-3pm ET to share your experiences.  The Performance Team would like to get a broad picture of the concerns that you have.  Typically, they only hear about escalated and critical problems, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other, more common issues that you’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis that we can help with.  While we can’t commit to address any particular item in advance, we can start the conversation here!

This Skype chat is for users to share their performance stories, let others comment on whether they see the same things, and let us ask clarifying questions.  Try to come prepared with as much detail as you can:  Hearing “The Enhanced Revenue Batch is slow” doesn’t tell us nearly as much as “When I take Y action using Z number of records it takes X seconds, when my expectation is that it should take W seconds.”  Not every case will be that clearly defined, but you get the idea.

The discussion will be entirely in our CRM Skype chat group (no phone or video/camera necessary).  Here’s how to join:

1. Download and install Skype.
2. Add carolinebarnes.bb as a contact.
3. When your request is accepted, you will receive a contact request to join the Blackbaud CRM Community Group.  Accept this request.
4. Once you’ve accepted the group contact, you can right-click on it and add it as a favorite contact.
5. On June 5th, click on the group in your list of Favorites to see the conversation and join in.

Please feel free to contact me at Caroline.Barnes@blackbaud.com if you have questions or would like more information.

Back by popular demand, this class is a repeat of the Dashboards and KPIs class taught in February.  We’ll learn the fundamentals and build a number of KPIs and Dashboards during the class.  If you’re not taking advantage of this functionality, join us to learn how!

We’ll learn how to do the following:

• Identify and configure KPIs for a variety of functional areas
• View and track your KPI information in a number of ways, including: widgets, KPI Dashboards, and RSS feeds
• Set up dashboards for yourself and other users.
• Organize your dashboards into folders, pages, and parts.

Class Information:

Friday, June 13th, 1pm Eastern

Register Here

We’ve recently made improvements to the Product Discovery process so that you’ll always know which topics are in discovery, and so you can be notified when new subjects are added.

The Product Discovery process is an important way for you to express your organization’s needs for CRM.  It allows us an opportunity to learn about problems you have that we can solve for you, and helps us determine how our product will grow and develop.

We have added a brand new page to the CRM Resource Center that lists all available Discovery sessions, so that you can keep track and participate.  From the home page, just go to Events > Product Discovery.  The CRM Product Management team personally updates this board every time they set up new topics, so you’ll always have the latest and greatest news!

Tired of having to go back and check for updates regularly?  We’ve solved that problem too!  Now, you can subscribe to the Product Discovery board by clicking Options > Subscribe.  That way, you’ll receive an email notification (to your Blackbaud.com login email) any time we add a new post.  You’ll be able to follow the link in the email to check out the new topic, and sign up for a session if the topic is relevant to you!

Sign up now and help us chart the course for the future of Blackbaud CRM!

As the fiscal year’s end draws near it is common for many organizations to begin the process of reconciling Blackbaud CRM to the General Ledger.  Many organizations use query as a tool to group transactions in similar accounts or as a reporting tool, but it is important to note that there are some limitations that need to be highlighted.  Queries are used to group records that meet a set of criteria as defined by the user, but they don’t always have access to the whole picture.  When a posted transaction has adjustments it is important to know how the query tool will act.

The query tool allows us to pull the current distribution of a transaction.  In the following example, the debit and credit of a specific revenue transaction are displayed for a posted transaction:

After saving an adjustment on the posted transaction the query now displays the following results:

Note that the new distribution is displayed.  There are no entries for the original accounts or the reversals.  A query of the distribution on a transaction will only show the current distribution.  The values for the reversal and the original distribution are stored in tables that are not available for the Revenue query view.

Query is a valuable and powerful tool, but it is important to be cognizant of the limitations.  Users attempting to reconcile Blackbaud CRM to the General Ledger are encouraged to use the Account Distribution Report.  The Account Distribution Report provides a breakdown by General Ledger account that includes the adjustments and reversals, giving users a complete view of the account’s activity.  The Revenue user guide details the steps to run this report.  To view this report you can follow these steps:

1. From Revenue, click Account distribution under Reports. Or, from Analysis, click Revenue reports and then Account distribution.
2. In the Account system field, select the account system for the transactions you want to view. This field only appears if your organization configures multiple general ledger account systems and implements site security, and you have rights to work with multiple account systems.
3. To select the GL accounts to include, click Include and select All, Specific, or Selected. If you select Specific or Selected, in the field that appears, search for GL accounts to include in the report.
4. To select the transaction types to include, click the search button in the Transaction types field. The Transaction types screen appears where you can select one or more transaction types. When you select transactions types, you limit the report results to only the transaction types you select. By default, all transaction types are included unless you use this filter. From this screen, you can click Select all to choose all transaction types and Deselect all to include none. Examples of transaction types include pledges, refunds, and payments.
5. In the Post date field. select a specific time period of post dates to include. If you select “Specific Date,” the From and To fields appear where you can enter a specific period of time.
6. In the Post status, select the post status of the transactions to include. You can include posted or not posted transactions, or both. Note: Transactions with a post status of “Do not post” do not generate general ledger distributions and are excluded from the Account Distribution Report.
7.   To display the report in both summary and detail format, select Include detail. To view the report in summary format only, do not select Include detail. Warning: If you filter the report using a small amount of criteria or no criteria at all, and you select to view the report in detail, a message may appear alerting you that results exceed the capacity of the report. In this case, we recommend you filter by smaller segments of activity, such as post date, specific accounts, or specific transaction types.
8. To group the report by account alias, select Group by account alias. If you do not select this option, the report is grouped by GL account.
9. With Multicurrency, the Currency field appears. Use this field to determine how you want to view transaction amounts in the report. “Base” is the base currency of the associated account system. “Organization” is the organization currency, and “Transaction” is the revenue’s transaction currency. When you add revenue, the program calculates and stores the base currency and organization currency amounts, along with the original transaction currency amount. When you switch currencies on the report, the amounts displayed are the original currency amounts calculated when the transactions were added.
10.  Click View Report.
11. To close the report and return to the previous page, on the shell toolbar, click Back.

What is Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation?
Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) is a new law that sets rules on the sending of commercial messages across many technologies such as email, SMS, MMS, social direct messages, etc.  CASL requires express “opt-in” consent. This means that under CASL, emails can only be sent when the recipient, through implied or express consent, requests the email, whereas under CAN-SPAM (the current law in the US) the messages can be sent until the recipient requests they stop.  Additionally, all requests for consent and almost all commercial electronic messages must meet prescriptive sender and contact person identity and withdrawal of consent requirements.

When does this take effect?
CASL will come into effect on July 1st, 2014.

How am I affected by these new laws?
CASL requires organizations sending emails to and from Canada to obtain express or implied consent before sending any communication. “Express consent” means that a user took action to opt-in or approve to receive communications from you. “Implied consent” is when no action was taken to approve communications from your organization, but you have a business or non-business relationship with the recipient.

The new law applies to all messages sent from or to Canada; however, Blackbaud cannot advise how CASL will affect an organization. Each organization should reach out to an appropriate legal resource for information about how they may be affected by this new legislation. More information about CASL and electronic messages can be found on Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation’s website, along with the regulations and exemptions from the law as an organization or business.

What are some things I need to do before the law takes effect?

• Get Consent. Send messages to get your recipients to sign up to receive different types of messages from your organization. For example, a user might like to receive messages about upcoming events but not your weekly newsletter.
• Get Clear. Review all your email templates and messages to ensure the messages that go out comply with the commercial electronic message requirement to clearly identify where the message is coming from and all the parties involved.  More information on the requirements can be found here. You also need to provide a way for users to unsubscribe from receiving email messages at any time.  Please note that Blackbaud already requires a unsubscribe link for every message that BBIS sends.
• Get Prepared. Be sure to review your internal processes, as you will need to provide proof of consent for every message that you send. Make sure that every record in BBCRM has this data entered.

What can I do in Blackbaud Internet Solutions (BBIS) to help me comply with these regulations?

• You can utilize our integrated Email Subscription Form (created via form builder) to collect email addresses that are then recorded directly into BBCRM. You should always be offering a communication preferences form inside of your email blasts so that your recipients can easily update their email and offline preferences that also write back to BBCRM. This will help you track and manage consent.
• You can update the setting for default users who sign up on your BBIS site to opt in to receive email messages. This setting determines whether new registered users in BBIS opt in by default to receive email messages from your organization. If you wish you turn this feature off/on for all users please follow these steps.
• You can add a new constituent attribute asking for consent on the new user sign up/login and profile forms to allow current and new users the opportunity to remove consent at any time during their relationship with your organization. Here are steps to add attributes to the profile form and the user sign up/login form.

If you have any more questions about using our BBIS, please contact Blackbaud Product Support at 800.468.8996 or create a case at Case Central.

These materials are provided for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue.

Blackbaud is working to make our Quality Assurance processes more effective by incorporating the tests you run when you’re preparing for a CRM patch, service pack or new release.  Any test cases provided by you will be reviewed against our current test suites for accuracy and aid us in molding our manual and automated test suites to cover the tests that matter most to you.

Our automated suite of test cases is run at regular intervals. We would also tag each test case we match or write with a client identifier, so that in the future we can run an automated suite of client specific test cases prior to any upgrade and/or go-live. If you’re interested in this, and willing to share your test cases and processes with us so that we can incorporate it into our QA processes, please contact Julianne Maerlender, the Enterprise Quality Assurance Manager, at Julianne.Maerlender@Blackbaud.com.

Blackbaud Internet Solutions (BBIS) is our Enterprise level website management platform, which integrates directly with Blackbaud CRM.

During the past three months, something special has been happening – BBIS users have been joining together with member of Blackbaud Support and Product Management to form a user group online.

Every week, we meet and discuss a topic of the group’s choosing – we’ve talked about event registrations, designing BBIS pages, customizing BBIS using the SDK, and more.  Usually, we all sign in to a chat group in Skype and just type to each other, but we’ve also joined conference calls together to talk and have different users demonstrate how their BBIS sites look.

It’s been a great way to share ideas, troubleshoot problems and find solutions, and learn about new functionality and the possibilities that are out there.

Now, we want to invite you to get involved!  Listen in, share ideas, and maybe even present information on your own area of expertise!  Join us on Wednesdays from 2-3pm Eastern time every week.

What you’ll need: Skype. That’s it. No mic or camera. These are basically IM sessions – like our chat support resource. You’ll be typing; not talking. So for those of you who work in a loud office or in a cubicle, these are ideal. Here’s a preview of how the chats look:

Just download Skype and add me – carolinebarnes.bb – as a contact. I’ll put you in our BBIS group. All you need to do to join a chat is log on, and click that group. There’s a call feature, but you don’t need it. Just log on and chat!

SCHEDULE OF UPCOMING TOPICS:

August 13 – Processing batches of BBIS data in CRM

August 20 – Administration

August 27 – Email

September 3 – First-Time Visitor/User Sign-up customization (Presented by Thomas Lee at OSU)

September 10 –Mobile-friendly/responsive templates for BBIS (Presented by Melanie Sumner at UNC)

September 17 – Advanced Donation Forms (Presented by Daniel Felton at UGA)

September 24- Direct marketing emails

October 1– User and Security management

October 8^th – BBCON (no chat this week)

October 15^th – Social Features of BBIS (Presented by Barb Laane from Feeding America)

October 22^nd – Multi-level events and event registration

Recently, we’ve had some organizations reach out to us with questions about Blackbaud’s recommendations for firewall settings. Cary McDonald, our Senior Product Support Lead for Developer Solutions and technical guru, shared some helpful insight into what we can (and can’t) suggest in terms of your firewall configuration, and the reasoning behind it all:

Blackbaud CRM and BBIS are standard .Net based web applications that also communicate over standard web ports, 80 and 443. We strongly recommend using port 443 for all traffic to make sure all the traffic is encrypted and that industry best practices for securing web applications are implemented as well. As far as recommendations, that is about it. Web security should be handled by your security professionals that keep up with the rapidly changing environmental threats and their mitigation, and in most cases not by Blackbaud application specialists.

Most questions that have come up regarding firewall or connectivity recently center on enhanced security measures that are often implemented as firewall or load balancers add-on modules. In many cases, they provide protection by inspecting, caching, or filtering the content that web applications are sending between the web servers and the end users. Your organization will likely have very specific security policies that are required to be implemented, tested, documented, and remediated regarding the implementation of security for web applications. The tighter your organization’s security, the more likely you will run into an issue where a particular security measure blocks a specific Blackbaud CRM or BBIS process from working correctly.

Some examples of the issues that come up?

• Application firewalls can strip out content that violates the rules that are configured to keep unwanted content from going in or out of the network.
• Caching or proxy servers keep copies of content to distribute to users (which helps make web servers more efficient) but sometimes this causes problems if the content is meant to be dynamic.
• Load balancers can try to optimize web server connections and not keep established connections on the same server. In some cases, it times the connections out. This can cause processes to fail when persistent connections are not configured.

Our support team is always available to help determine the area where a problem is occurring. We can assist with troubleshooting and provide direction to your security application vendor, if needed. In many cases, seeking support from your firewall or load balancer vendor will likely provide a faster resolution to your issue. With the multitude of security products in use today, Blackbaud Support is not trained on the various products or qualified to make specific recommendations regarding their configuration, but we will help as much as possible.

We invite you to read more about the new Knowledgebase changes happening here in Support. Check it out: New Knowledgebase Changes.

If you want to be in the know, make sure to subscribe to our Support News blog!

Recently, a team of security researchers announced a vulnerability named “shellshock” (CVE-2014-6271, CVE-2014-7169) which affects Bash, a program that some Unix-based systems utilize to execute command lines and scripts.  In this context, we would like to inform you that the following Blackbaud Hosting Services products are secure:

• ALTRU
• Blackbaud Enterprise CRM (BBCRM)
• Blackbaud Merchant Services (BBMS)
• Blackbaud NetCommunity (BBNC)
• Blackbaud Online Express (BBOX)
• Blackbaud Secure Payments (BBSP)
• Blackbaud NetSolutions (NetSol)
• Patron’s Edge Online (PEO)
• The Raiser’s Edge (RE7)
• Sphere

More specifically, this vulnerability only affects software that uses GNU Bash through version 4.3, typically based on Unix, Linux, and Oracle.  It does not affect all software that uses Windows.

Nearly all of the products in Hosted Services do not use Bash, and we have tested and validated that the products that may use it, including Luminate Online, Team Approach, Donor Direct, and eTapestry have gone through an emergency change in order to address any potential vulnerabilities.

As always, Security is at the forefront of our environment and we strive to provide a safe and secure hosting service for all of our customers.

If you have questions, please create a case on Case Central, and choose your product, or contact our Support team using our chat feature.

Do you have donors with complicated pledges who split their pledge across multiple installments and have each payment applied to the installments differently?

If you answered yes, then the new Edit installment wizard introduced in BBCRM version 4.0 will help simplify this process.

Instead of going to multiple locations in the program to edit installment information, you can now save time by doing so from one location.  You can change the schedule and installment amounts for each designation within this new window.

Within the Edit installment wizard, the grid displays the designations for the commitment and the total amount applied to each designation. Any amount displayed in red or in parentheses indicates imbalances in the grid installment totals, helping you know action needs to be taken before the installments are saved.  The summary section at the top of the screen shows the amount and frequency of the pledge, in addition to the date and amount of the next installment.

At the top of the grid, the Pledged row shows the total pledge amount, as well as the amount designated and not designated. It also shows the amount for each designation. The installments and differences rows highlight if there are differences between the amount pledged and the amount designated.

Below that, the installment schedule is listed with amount and designation information. You cannot change the number of installments or the installment dates, but you can change the amounts for each designation. This is helpful when you want to pay off the balance of one designation first (i.e. pay off the Building designation before the other two designations).

It is also helpful if a constituent needs to skip an installment but will make up the difference with the next installment payment. In this scenario, you can change the installment amount to zero and then add the amount to the next installment.

We hope these changes make it easier for you and your users to complete complicated pledge tasks, allowing you more time to focus on your mission.

CRM 4.0 introduces the Information Library as THE place to manage, well, information.  This ListBuilder-driven area replaces what would normally be seen when adding an ad-hoc query but a closer look reveals it’s more than just a replacement.

There are options to search/filter/sort this list down to the column level as well as a few extra columns that surface statistics covering when the query was last run and how many results the run contained.  The Information Library and the approach it takes with displaying queries and KPIs is welcomed as you’re now able to easily mark favorite queries you use often.  Additionally, with the ability to multi-select the items in the list, you’re now able to easily group and move them into folders to help with organization.

Here, I’ve created and marked a query favorite.  Expanding the entry gives me some additional information as well as new options to View exports that have used this query.  We’ve also added in an OData link for all queries which can be used to consume them with 3^rd party products like Tableau or Excel.  A more detailed view of the OData feature can be found here.

Also, with CRM 4.0, we’ve added ability to query Constituent information directly from the Blackbaud Data Warehouse.  The largest benefit of using the Data Warehouse is in the speed of the results.  You get answers in seconds versus minutes or more, making it a powerful option for data lists, selections, or reports.

Let’s edit this query and explore some more:

Hard to tell in a blog post, but editing any query will now expand the editor fully in the browser window.  No more expanding manually just to be able to view filters.  We’ve also added a “Save as” button as an option for all queries.  Very handy if you’ve ever been caught editing an existing query versus starting from a copy of one.

Aside from speed, the query node structure was simplified for this Constituents (from the Blackbaud Data Warehouse) source query view.  Also, queries created from the Blackbaud Data Warehouse that use date filters are now able to specify Rolling date ranges:

The Rolling date ranges are dependent on the Data Warehouse and are not available in any other source query views.  Likewise, queries created with this source query view or any against the Data Warehouse will be current as of the last ETL or refresh of the warehouse.  However, we do display how “stale” the data is on the results tab of the query as well as retain export, report, data list, and smart query creation options at the bottom:

Finally, while viewing query results in the application will still limit results to 500 records, that limit was removed when choosing to “Export to Excel” from the Ad-hoc query window.  Clicking “Export to Excel” above functions the same as it has in previous versions but the limit of records that would be returned has been removed.  This is invaluable when you have a lot of results but don’t want to create an export process to get them into a CSV or Excel file.

Recently, we’ve had a number of clients reach out with similar questions surrounding BBIS Email functionality. We decided to put together a list of some of the FAQs along with some additional information surrounding BBIS Emails we thought would be helpful.

After clicking “Send” on a BBIS email, what happens behind the scenes?

Regardless of the type of email message, a local or hosted application server sends information and email content via Web services to Blackbaud’s servers. To process the messages, Blackbaud’s servers validate the email formats, remove addresses that meet suppression criteria, and merge the remaining recipients’ information and other merge fields with the content. The servers then send the processed messages to Blackbaud’s Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) servers, which physically transfer the files to Internet service providers (ISPs) through multiple shared Internet protocol (IP) addresses. The MTA servers can send up to 2.5 million messages per hour and throttle the number of concurrent connections they make with ISPs.

To protect recipients from unsolicited email known as SPAM, ISPs use several tools and algorithms to track and block senders who do not follow industry best practices. To ensure messages successfully reach their intended recipients, Blackbaud uses several methods to support email delivery.

For more a more in-depth look into this process feel free to review the following guide: Blackbaud Communication Services Overview of Email Delivery and FAQs

How is information passed between BBIS and CRM?

BBIS passes information to CRM via the Blackbaud Enterprise Integration Service. This service can be set up from Administration > Schedules > Integration Services. In this area we will have the option to set the frequency, however, we do NOT have the option to set the amount of records processed each run. The default number of records processed each time the service runs is 500. If you would like to change this, it can be done with an application web.config update. Please contact support for more information.

Is BBIS email information stored in CRM, and if so, where?

Yes, BBIS email information is stored in CRM on a constituents communications tab as an appeal mailing. On this tab we’ll see the following information:

Can BBIS email effectiveness be tracked in CRM?

Most reporting on BBIS emails should be taking place within BBIS via the Email Report. That being said, we can look some information in query in CRM. BBIS information is stored within the Online Information Node within CRM query views. We’ll see the following BBIS information available in the following three tabs of a constituent query view:

Online Information:

Email Information:

Web Traffic:

In a revenue query we have the following Online Information available:

Join us for an overview of the Blackbaud CRM 4.0 software development kit (SDK) and the Blackbaud Internet Solutions (BBIS) developer portal.  This webcast will be held on Wednesday, December 10, 2014 from 1:00 PM to 2:15PM ET.  Register here.

We’ll learn from the Blackbaud CRM documentation and training teams while they share key features from the recent release.  A few highlights include:

• New C Sharp (C#) programming language project templates
• Specifications for creating customizations
• Interactive tiles for the new constituent summary page
• Search lists that query the Blackbaud Data Warehouse versus the transactional database
• New OData API to access ad-hoc query and smart query data
• BBIS developer portal features: including getting started information, developer guides, technical references, and code samples

Can’t make the event but would still like to view the content?  Registering for the event ensures you’ll receive the link to the recording.  Alternately, comment on this post and we’ll send it to you!

We’re excited to inform customers about an important enhancement we’re making to blackbaud.com that will help us prepare the framework for single sign-on!

Next week, all customers who access the Blackbaud.com website will need to update their accounts to sign in using the Omnibar which will allow single sign-on with Blackbaud products. This update will be required in order to continue to access our online support resources.  Next year, we’ll release single sign-on functionality for both Raiser’s Edge NXT and Financial Edge NXT in order to easily navigate between the NXT solutions and your Blackbaud.com account. After that, more products will be on the horizon!

The update process will allow you to choose to sign into Blackbaud.com using either your email address or Google account. That’s right; you won’t have to remember your username anymore!

Check out our videos on how to update your account:

• How to Update your blackbaud.com account to Login with Email (video)
• How to Update your blackbaud.com account to Login with your Google Account (video)

Still have questions? Take a look at some of the FAQs below:

Is my Blackbaud.com login the same as my Blackbaud software or the Blackbaud Hosting Services portal login?

No, your Blackbaud.com account login is specific to our website and gives you access to our online Support resources, such as Case Central, Chat, and our Knowledgebase. For more information about our support resources, visit us here (https://support.blackbaud.com/). If you have questions about accessing Blackbaud Hosting Services or your Blackbaud software, you can find helpful information here (https://www.blackbaud.com/support/loginhelp.aspx).

Can I still login under my original Blackbaud.com account username after the update?

No, you will need to update your account to either use your email or your Google account to log in to the Blackbaud.com website moving forward.

What happens if I want to use a different email and password than what’s on my Blackbaud.com account record?

No problem! You’ll just be asked to log into your Blackbaud.com account one more time with your old username and password during the process. The email address you use during the update process will be your new email on file with Blackbaud where you receive communications.

If I use my Google account, will this update my existing Blackbaud account information?

Yes, your new email on file will be whatever is linked to your Google account. This is also where you will receive communications from Blackbaud.

What if I want to sign in with my Google account and the associated Google email is different than where I want to receive my communications from Blackbaud?

The email address tied to your updated login will be where you will continue to receive communications from Blackbaud. Therefore, we recommend signing up with an account that matches the desired email address for Blackbaud related communications.

When I update my account, can I use the same password?

When updating your account, you can use the same password as before assuming it meets our updated security password requirements (see next FAQ).

What are the password requirements if I sign up using my email?

Your password must meet the below criteria:

1. 7 characters or more
2. Must have at least (2) criteria:

• Capital letter
• Number
• Special character (!, #, %, etc…)

What are some best practices for updating my account?

• Try to use the same email address and password as your existing Blackbaud.com account; it will make it easier to remember!
• If you use Google we recommend:

• You enable 2-step verification for enhanced security
• Setup your account recovery options

The Blackbaud Data Warehouse isn’t another application but an addition to Blackbaud CRM that can be used with reports and, in 4.0+, to query constituent information. The data warehouse copies data from your source database and places it in a data warehouse to allow you to conduct complex reporting and analysis.

After you create the data warehouse, options appear in Administration for the Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) process. The ETL process extracts records from the source database, transforms them for optimal loading into the OLAP cube, and loads them in the data warehouse. From Administration, you can access the Reporting data warehouse page to monitor ETL activity, schedule business processes to coincide with the ETL process, and manually start an ETL refresh.

When the deployment wizard creates the standard data warehouse, it also creates an OLAP cube to conduct complex reporting and analysis on the data in the data warehouse. The cube increases your ability to manipulate data from the source database, and it allows you to perform advanced reporting. With the OLAP Explorer, you can build pivot tables and charts based on the OLAP cube. The program also includes Microsoft Excel report templates so that you can use subsets of the data in the OLAP cube to create reports in Excel.

For more information regarding Data Warehouses Configuration, OLAP excel reports, OLAP explorer, managing data warehouses, and/or reporting data warehouse page please visit the following links:

The Data Warehouse Guide is our definitive guide to the BBDW.

There is also plenty of information searchable on the Blackbaud Developer Network and in our online support documentation.

Our new Blackbaud Forms manufacturer is located north of New York City, NY so they are affected by the snowstorm in the Northeast today, 1/27/2015.  Incoming phone calls are transferring to our call center agents at home and the plant itself is closed. Because of the snowstorm, UPS is not picking up any shipments today either.

The plant will be open for production and shipping tomorrow, Wednesday, 1/28/2015.  UPS has also announced that they will be operating on a normal schedule tomorrow.

You can still place orders today! We can accept orders for overnight delivery – with the understanding that these orders won’t ship until tomorrow, January 28 and delivery may be subject to other weather-related delays outside our control. This means we can ship last minute tax orders out tomorrow, 1/28/2015.

Financial Edge clients needing last minute 1099s and W-2s are strongly encouraged to consider trying the eFiling options available in The Financial Edge.

Here’s a reminder of our contact information:

Blackbaud Forms

Phone: 866-422-3676

Online purchasing: www.blackbaudforms.com (call for rush delivery options)

Email: forms@blackbaud.com

Mail:  PO Box 678, Tarrytown NY 10591

We are very excited to announce that we have entered the beta testing stage for our brand new Knowledgebase!

What’s new and exciting about Knowledgebase?

• No more login! You no longer have to log in to blackbaud.com to search for answers.
• Knowledgebase now includes product documentation and YouTube videos in addition to articles.
• Knowledgebase is now powered with better search capabilities – use keywords, phrases, filters and search suggestions you as type.

We’d like to invite you to test the new Knowledgebase and share your feedback. Are you ready to check it out? It’s easy as pie!

1. Go to our new Knowledgebase Preview Page: https://www.blackbaud.com/knowledgebase/kbpreview.aspx
2. Click the Knowledgebase Help button for instructions, tips and tricks.
3. Click the Knowledgebase Preview button.
4. Click the Knowledgebase Survey button to let us know what you think. Your feedback is important so take the survey as often as you’d like. We review all feedback so we know where to improve.

Please contact us if you have any questions or need assistance during this process. We’re excited to move forward with our new Knowledgebase and hope you are too!