Old Dashboards Not Loading - All Insights Giving Errors

Tom Klimchak

Hi... I sent this into support via chat this morning, but it looks like other people may be experiencing the same thing: your Insight Designer dashboards are returning almost nothing but errors. 


Here's what I've been able to determine:

1. The insights themselves work well.  If you create a NEW dashboard and toss an Insight onto it, the Insight usually works.
2. Old dashboards seem to be the problem, and it could be tied specifically to the filters.  If you create an insight that ignores the filters on an OLD dashboard it also seems to work in most cases.
3. I was experiencing some weird loading issues with some of the Insights prior to this.  I'd have 7 out of 8 Insights load, but then I'd have to refresh the page once or twice to get them all to load correctly.
4. I wish Blackbaud would use "Dashboard" or "Report" consistently and not interchange them in various places. Ahem...

Here's a screenshot of what one of my custom dashboards looks like with the problem:



 

Rachel Kave

Having the the same issue-thanks for posting Tom!

Larry Wheeler

I am experiencing the same problem, but with only one Dashboard at this time.   The insights, 5 or 6 of them, are showing the same error as Tom shows.   I last made changes on the insights/dashboard on the 17th,  and everything was working fine all day yesterday.  

 

Blake Moody 5

Tom,


Thank you for sharing about this issue occurring with your dashboards. The issue seems to be related to the date filtering. We are researching the issue and hope to have it resolved ASAP.


Blake

Elaine Tucker

This also happened to me yesterday, with just one dashboard - it was one of the first I set up so maybe it was considered "old". It appears that the settings somehow "went away" so I just reset the criteria (luckily it was a very simple dashboard/insight)


Sorry to see that it seems to be a system wide problem.

These types of issues make it very very very difficult for our Senior staff to trust the dashboards that they see, which is NOT a good thing.

Larry Wheeler

My dashboard/insights have come back to life!   Has everyone else doing out there? 

Also,  I have an open case concerning the date filter    "Gift Date this year and compare to Same Period previous year".  I am using this in the Fiscal year mode.  The "Same Period previous year" sum of gifts is always the entire year total.  

Is anyone else experiencing this behavior?


Edit:  last year changed to previous year

Tom Klimchak

I agree with Elaine Tucker‍ that issues like this are not good and they are frustrating and, yes, they can undermine the credibility of NXT in some circumstances....


However, all my reports seem to be up and running this morning.  That means the reports were probably "down" for less than 24 hours, which is a testament to how serious Blackbaud takes these issues and how dedicated Blake Moody‍ and his team is to fix these sorts of things quickly.  We've been Blackbaud clients for about 10 years now and we've learned a few things about technical support and getting help.

1. The Helpdesk/front line support people are good, but don't always know the products as deeply as the users do.  The users often identify problems before the support people really understand what's going on.  Convincing the support people that there is a BIG problem is sometimes the most difficult part of the process.
   
    
2. Once you can convince the support people to pull in developers and technical staff a solution is usually found somewhat quickly.  And with NXT the solutions are found and implemented A LOT faster than they ever could be with just the database view.  And, man... the updates to NXT every few weeks are blowing my mind.  It's almost hard to keep up with all the coolness coming down the line ?

Larry Wheeler‍ - Yeah, we had the same issue with that "same period over last year" thing.  I just set up all most filters to be exact date, not fiscal year, and tell my users to choose the start of the fiscal year and TODAY's date.  I just assumed that's how it was designed... but, yeah, if it could be a "smart" filter and figure out that you really only want to compare data to the previous fiscal year as of "the same time last year" that would be cool.  

 

Blake Moody 5

Just to confirm and close the loop from my previous note...

As of around 6pm Eastern, the dashboards and insights should now be loading successfully.


Please accept our apologies for the interruption yesterday. The problem was caused due to errors caused by the date range filter, and they are now were fixed.


Please let our support team know if you continue to get the "This insight cannot be displayed due to an unknown error."


Blake

Larry Wheeler

Tom Klimchak:

Larry Wheeler‍ - Yeah, we had the same issue with that "same period over last year" thing.  I just set up all most filters to be exact date, not fiscal year, and tell my users to choose the start of the fiscal year and TODAY's date.  I just assumed that's how it was designed... but, yeah, if it could be a "smart" filter and figure out that you really only want to compare data to the previous fiscal year as of "the same time last year" that would be cool.  

 

 

Developers have recreated the issue and are working on a solution.  The reason I don't want to use exact dates with these dashboards is because they are for Deans and VPs.  I have locked down the dashboard so they cannot change the page filters, and they do not have access to the insights.  I did this so they can only see the gifts in their area(funds).  I also am displaying running totals on one insight and do not wish to change the date each day.


I will reply back to here once I hear something from the case.

Elaine Tucker

Larry Wheeler:

Tom Klimchak:

Larry Wheeler‍ - Yeah, we had the same issue with that "same period over last year" thing.  I just set up all most filters to be exact date, not fiscal year, and tell my users to choose the start of the fiscal year and TODAY's date.  I just assumed that's how it was designed... but, yeah, if it could be a "smart" filter and figure out that you really only want to compare data to the previous fiscal year as of "the same time last year" that would be cool.  

 

 

Developers have recreated the issue and are working on a solution.  The reason I don't want to use exact dates with these dashboards is because they are for Deans and VPs.  I have locked down the dashboard so they cannot change the page filters, and they do not have access to the insights.  I did this so they can only see the gifts in their area(funds).  I also am displaying running totals on one insight and do not wish to change the date each day.


I will reply back to here once I hear something from the case.

 

Larry Wheeler‍  and Tom Klimchak‍  I am totally on the same page as you. I have made almost all of the dashboards/insights as read only because of all the nuances specific to NXT - don't want my dev officers & Sr. staff going "what if..." and then blowing up the whole dashboard   It took ALOT of work on some of the dashboards to be formatted and filtered to meet the request of the different departments, so the information showing was ACCURATE for their specific request.