We are pleased to send you The Raiser's Edge 7.8. Before you begin using the program, take a moment to review the following notes, which highlight some of the new features. It is important to share this information with all Raiser's Edge users in your organization. A shortcut to the Release Notes for The Raiser's Edge has been added to your desktop, so you can access these notes at any time.
Raiser's Edge New Feature Highlights:
The new Data Health Center houses new and existing update services.
Blackbaud's Address Validation service has been renamed AddressAccelerator. You can access AddressAccelerator from the Data Health Center page in Administration. For more information about AddressAccelerator, press F1 from any screen in AddressAccelerator to access the help file.
Blackbaud's NCOA On-Demand has been renamed AddressFinder. Use the AddressFinder link accessed through the Data Health Center page in Administration to send data to and retrieve updates from Blackbaud. For more information, press F1 from any screen in AddressFinder to access the help file.
PhoneFinder is a new phone information updating service located on the Data Health Center page. PhoneFinder provides accurate phone information for your constituent records. For more information, press F1 from any screen in PhoneFinder to access the help file.
Use the PeopleFinder link accessed through the Data Health Center page in Administration to send data to and retrieve updates from Blackbaud. For more information, press F1 from any screen in PeopleFinder to access the help file.
The Data Health Center also includes a free data checkup service. At no charge, you can submit an export file to Blackbaud for analysis. Once Blackbaud finishes its analysis, we give you an overview of your data's general health and recommend actions you should take to update your data.
The Data Enrichment Services page has been replaced with Data
Health Center. A
Blackbaud Analytics link now appears in Administration. There is no
longer a Data Enrichment
Services Guide or section in Administration. For more information, see the
Blackbaud
Analytics Guide.
For US clients, Postal Discounts is now called PostalSaver. For Canadian clients, Postal Discounts is now called PostalSaver.
For Australia and New Zealand clients, Postal Discounts is now called PostalSaver. NCOA On-Demand is now called AddressFinder.
As of August 1, 2005, ANZ Direct no longer processes American Express credit card transactions. ANZ eGate now processes American Express credit card transactions as well as all other credit card types, including MasterCard, Visa, and Diners. We suggest you use ANZ eGate to process all of your credit card transactions. For more information about purchasing ANZ Egate software, send an email to anzeftpos@anz.com or is@eftpos.co.nz. File formats have been added to the Electronic Funds Transfer Guide. In addition, we added a new BNZ (Bank of New Zealand) transmission file format for processing credit cards in The Raiser's Edge 7.8. For more information about purchasing and using this software, contact the Payments Customer Services Team on 0800 737 774. File formats have been added to the Electronic Funds Transfer Guide.
You can work with advocacy actions fields in the Follow-up letters mail task in Mail. For more information, see the Mail Guide.
From the Org Address tab of a mail task, on the Contacts to Receive Mail screen, you can now click a Contact Attributes button to filter contact attributes. When you click the Contact Attributes button, the Contact Attributes to Consider screen appears. You can use the Filter, Category, Description, and Short Desc columns to include or exclude constituents based on filters. Click OK to save the changes. For more information, see the Mail Guide.
You can work with advocacy actions fields in constituent batches. For more information, see the Batch Guide.
You can now add action records with a new category of Advocacy to record actions your constituents complete on your Web site or in response to an action alert, action email, appeal, or phone call initiated by you. The new category improves the integration between the Raiser's Edge database and data downloaded using the Blackbaud NetAdvocacy component of NetSolutions or Blackbaud NetCommunity. Advocacy actions work differently than other actions in The Raiser's Edge. Instead of recording an action you took upon a constituent (such as a phone call, lunch meeting, or visit), this specific action category tracks the type of action a constituent took in response to a form of advocacy. For information about Advocacy action records, see the Actions chapter of the Constituent Data Entry Guide.
A new DNC column has been added to the Phones/Email/Links grid on all records where this grid appears. DNC stands for "Do Not Contact." When you mark this column beside a phone number or email address, a visual warning appears in the column. This warning tells you the constituent does not want to receive phone calls at the number or messages at the email address. The DNC column can be marked automatically for phone numbers listed on national, state, or Do Not Call lists when you download information from the PhoneFinder Service in our Data Health Center. For information about the Data Health Center, see the Data Health Center help file (press F1 while in the Data Health Center). For more information, see the Constituent Data Entry Guide.
You can use the new Preferred Do Not Contact? and Do Not Contact? fields in Query to exclude phone numbers and email addresses from queries, including generated mailing lists and phonathon forms. These fields are located in the Addresses node for a query under Preferred Address and All Addresses.
If you have the third party software Planned Giving Manager (owned by PC Calc), you can import data directly from that software to create a new Planned Gift record in The Raiser’s Edge (if you have the optional module PlannedGiftTracker). For more information, see the Planned Gift Tracking Guide.
When you use Event Management Plus Auction-Tracker with Auction-Tracker 6, you can send a group of constituents out of The Raiser’s Edge 7.8 for import into Auction-Tracker. Using the Assign Constituents and Integration Settings links on the Auction-Tracker page of Administration, you eliminate the need to manually enter all your auction participants into Auction-Tracker. For more information, see the Auction-Tracker Integration chapter of the Event Management Data Entry Guide.
We added a number of NetSolutions changes to The Raiser's Edge 7.8. For more information, see the NetSolutions Guide.
In NetMembers, you can now choose to remove the I wish to waive all benefits checkbox on your membership page.
NetSolutions now works with Capwiz. You can include advocacy links in your NetMail email messages and download advocacy actions for all constituents who used the link.
In Configure & Customize, we created an Organization Information tab. The new tab houses your Web page title, mission statement, page header, and email information, previously accessed from the Account Information tab.
You can now create a batch of the linked transactions even if there are other transactions unlinked. For example, if you have 300 donations downloaded, you can link the first 50 and create a batch leaving the other 250 in the grid to link at a later date.
With the new checkbox added to the Advanced Options screen in Configure & Customize, you can prevent credit card information from downloading with other online constituent information.
The Raiser's Edge encrypts credit card numbers entered in your database. If someone attempts to access your database through the "back end", the credit card data will appear illegible. Data displayed in the "front end", or user interface, depends on the security settings you establish for credit card numbers and the user's security rights. For more information about setting security in The Raiser's Edge, see the Security chapter in the Configuration and Security Guide.
We added the Advocacy Detail Report to the Action Reports category in Reports. The Advocacy Detail Report generates a detailed list of selected advocacy actions. You can break the report down based on constituent, date, recipient, alert title, or issue information. For more information, see the Reports Guide.
The Action Detail, Action Summary, and Tickler reports have been updated to accommodate NetAdvocacy. For more information, see the Reports Guide.
A number of new import fields were added to the Action Import to accommodate the new advocacy action. For a complete list, see the Import Tables chapter in the Import Guide.
You can globally change advocacy actions. For more information, see the Globally Change Records chapter in the Globally Add, Delete, & Change Records Guide.
You can globally delete advocacy actions. For more information, see the Globally Delete Records chapter in the Globally Add, Delete, & Change Records Guide.
If
you have The
Patron Edge, you can use the Patron Contact List
dashboard panel to analyze integrated data between The Raiser’s
Edge and The
Patron Edge. Generate the panel to view donors who
plan to attend an upcoming event (subscribers or single ticket holders).
For more
information, see the Dashboard Guide.