Automation Error

Joanna Gallant

I received the "Automation Error" while attempting to receipt the other day. I contacted BB Raiser's Edge Support via chat. They said they would have Hosting Support contact me. By the time I heard from Hosting Support later in the afternoon, the error had repaired itself and I was able to receipt again.

David Springer

Richard McAdam:

Unbelievable - the error is back again. Three times I've had to get this fixed. Really starting to affect my confidence level.

Hi everyone, 


I'm sorry to hear that this continues recurring for you. This has been evaluated by our product team, and a permanent fix is planned to be released as soon as possible (likely 7.96 in October). 


In the meantime, as Tracey mentioned, one option to produce the receipts would be to receipt the gifts through Receipts and to create the document through Export or Donor Acknowledgement Letters. This is obviously not ideal, but should avoid the error consistently. 


Normally, refreshing or recreating the hosting profile will also resolve the error for an individual user, but may need to be repeated periodically, as Richard mentioned. Steps to recreate a hosting profile are in Knowledgebase article 50044.


I apologize for the inconvenience of this issue, and once the list of changes in 7.96 is finalized, we'll be creating a Knowledgebase article for it. 

Richard McAdam

October?!?! For an issue that has been ongoing and affecting Canadian customers for months? This has to be fixed much sooner than that, via a patch update or something. I won't speak for everybody, but I don't have the time or resources in my advancement office to be sitting waiting for for days for this issue to be fixed whenever it arises. I have three batches of receipts that are piled up from this week alone, and with our annual appeal mailing going out in the first week of September the issue will only be compounded.


I've been waiting on an update for my latest occurrence since Wednesday with no results. I have only a short week next week and then I'm on holidays, and I don't want these items sitting on my desk for an extended period of time. This is something that has to be made a priority by Blackbaud for its hosted users.

David Springer

Richard McAdam:

October?!?! For an issue that has been ongoing and affecting Canadian customers for months? This has to be fixed much sooner than that, via a patch update or something. I won't speak for everybody, but I don't have the time or resources in my advancement office to be sitting waiting for for days for this issue to be fixed whenever it arises. I have three batches of receipts that are piled up from this week alone, and with our annual appeal mailing going out in the first week of September the issue will only be compounded.


I've been waiting on an update for my latest occurrence since Wednesday with no results. I have only a short week next week and then I'm on holidays, and I don't want these items sitting on my desk for an extended period of time. This is something that has to be made a priority by Blackbaud for its hosted users.

Hi Richard, 


The profile recreation definitely shouldn't take days, so I've asked an analyst to follow up with you to make sure it gets corrected ASAP. I'm sorry to hear that there's been a delay in resolution so far. 


While we'd love to be able to push out a fix for this sooner than October, extensive testing needs to be fully performed for this and other fixes planned to be released in 7.96. I definitely understand the need to produce receipts consistently and with a minimum of hassle, but we also need to make sure that we're minimizing other issues that could be introduced by code changes.


As Tracey mentioned, Knowledgebase 67836 lays out an alternate solution that would allow producing the receipts without the profile recreation I mentioned below. I've included the steps below, but unfortunately, those are the two best options for custom receipts if you run into the Automation error until a permanent fix is released.


From KB 67836:
Use Acknowledgement Letters in Mail, which can include receipt numbers:

1. In Mail > use the Receipt function to generate receipt numbers, choosing Pre-printed receipts.
2. Mark the option to Create an output query.
3. When prompted, be sure name and save the output query and to select Yes to mark gifts as Receipted to save the Receipt number.
4. Then in Mail, go to Donor Acknowledgement Letters.
5. If needed, edit the existing simple or conditional mail merge documents to add the Receipt Number field to the templates and any other needed/required information.
6. Complete the mail merge to generate the acknowledgements with receipt information.

Lindsay Felstead

Ok, so I'm not the most savvy person when it comes to social media, but my DBA found this discussion for me so I wouldn't feel it was only me. I've been having this issue since April with the ability to generate custom receipts going on and off with no regularity or warning the entire time. Thankfully as a smaller organization with a smaller donor base we've been able to manage. However, as it is one of the reasons I was hired, it would be nice to have the ability to perform my duties, in their entirety, consistently.


I've been dealing with one rep for months, emailing back and forth and updating on the status of the error but receiving no info on the status of the case. Last week I got tired of waiting for a call back when the error occurred again and I decided to start a new chat. Up until this point I was not told about the option of creating a new Hosting user profile even though I'd been working with support for months! The new rep told me about the secondary hosting profile and it worked, for one day. I came in on Monday and now neither profile allows me to run receipts.


I'm new to working with the hosting service but have been working with Blackbaud software for over 10 years. I've usually been satisfied with their customer service but this entire issue has greatly affected that feeling. I'm curious why, through all of this, I wasn't told that this was a known hosting error, others were experiencing the same thing and there was a solution in the works? Do they not realize, from a customer service standpoint, this information might take the sting out of the situation? Work arounds, flipping back and forth between accounts, having others do my job... I'm willing to work with it as long as I know it's not just me, there's a larger issue and it's being dealt with! With these types of issues, when you're on your own, you figure it's something you're going to have to work around or bypass for the long run. When it's bigger than just you, you know there is an end in sight (even if that end is in October).


As a client, I'm beyond frustrated over this. Frustration with the error I can deal with, but the frustration over the lack of information, the 2 months and a new rep it took to find out about the alternate account work around and being left hanging overall is just poor customer service. I just hope others experiencing this issue and contacting Customer Support will be provided with more information regarding this, and perhaps even a link to this discussion so they know they aren't the only ones and there is solution in the works.


Lindsay Felstead

Victoria General Hospital Foundation

Winning Manitoba

David Springer

Lindsay Felstead:


...As a client, I'm beyond frustrated over this. Frustration with the error I can deal with, but the frustration over the lack of information, the 2 months and a new rep it took to find out about the alternate account work around and being left hanging overall is just poor customer service. I just hope others experiencing this issue and contacting Customer Support will be provided with more information regarding this, and perhaps even a link to this discussion so they know they aren't the only ones and there is solution in the works.


Lindsay Felstead

Victoria General Hospital Foundation

Winning Manitoba

Lindsay, I'm sorry to hear that the case has gone on so long with no mention of the profile recreation. I've followed up with the team to ensure they're aware of all the options to help avoid this in future cases, and updated our resources to point toward the existing Knowledgebase article with the suggestion to recreate. I know this doesn't necessarily help your frustration in this case, but we definitely want to help other customers avoid similar frustrations in the future.