Gift Notification for Gift Officer - How to only show new records added to the list

BrieAnna Clothier

Hello,

I created a new gift notification workflow for one of our gift officers that prefers emails of this information vs looking in RE NXT every day. Anyway, I mostly have it set up and working, however, the gift list in NXT its pulling from is set to include gifts from the last 7 days.

I currently have the flow to run every night at 11pm.

What is the appropriate way to ensure it only emails him with new gifts added to that list each time? He doesn't want to see duplicate information but our accounting team doesn't always post new gifts every day. They try to do it daily (Post today gifts from yesterday), but they don't work on weekends so Monday-Wednesdays they are trying to play catch up with posting gifts from Friday-Sunday. Because of the posting schedule variables, I thought the list including gifts from the last 7 days made the most sense. But now I fear it'll email him duplicate information each day until a gift from 7 days ago drops off.

Does my concern and question make sense? I want the report to run every day so he is notified daily if a new gift has been given, but I don't want him to be emailed duplicate gift info.

Thanks in advance for any help on this.

Alex Wong

@BrieAnna Clothier
are you using one of the template, if so which?

You are overly concern about the “gift date”, which may be affected by the way your entries people work.

Your flow should focus on gift date added. Set your flow to run each morning at 5AM (doesn't really matter 5AM or 9AM). Then use the filter for gift date added to include gifts added yesterday only. So on Saturday 5AM, your gift officer will get an email for gifts added into RE NXT on Friday. Likely nothing on Sunday nor Monday, and Tuesday 5AM will get email for gifts added into RE NXT on Monday.

Once you get things working, you can get fancy, and account for weekend. Meaning, Sat and Sun 5AM the flow does not run. Mon-Fri only. flow will detect if “today” is Monday and get gifts that has been added into RE NXT from Friday-Sunday.

Issue with this appraoch: RE NXT Donation and RE NXT Event Registration. As the Blackbaud bug still exists such that the date of approval (gift webview batch) is NOT the date added. So if you uses RE NXT Donation or Event Registration, I can talk about how I handle that.

BrieAnna Clothier

@Alex Wong
Thank you. I was looking for the gift date added feature for the list and didn't see it as a filter.

If I switch the focus of the NXT list using the gift date added and instead put that in the workflow itself, you are saying that would work? I imported the zip file from a class I found from BB. I attached it to this thread.week3-gift-notification-flow.17973fa314d14327a1009bb2916f4f29.zip

BrieAnna Clothier

@Alex Wong
Also, to complicate things further, checks that are entered into RE are automatically giving credit to the assigned gift officer, but for whatever reason the online gifts (we use iDonate) do not do that so I have to manually add GO credit to online gifts each day (or a few times a week). So the gift list for the person this workflow is for is only going to show records after I add the credited to information on that record. So it has to be added by Accounting and then credited to the GO by me before it will show up in this list. With that being said, I don't know if using the date added will solve this?

Carol Grant

@BrieAnna Clothier - Hi BrieAnna, I thought I would help out a little here. Alex is referring to the List Gifts part of the flow and in your sample below, it would be Pull Davids Gifts List. If you click on that you will see toward the bottom a list of fields like this:

Gift Date Added= Added on or after. Here I am using a Past Time variable that I set up before that says Get Past Time which can be go back 1 Day, 1 Week, 2 Days. Anytime you want to look back to today and then you put it in that field.

As far as you having to code the online gifts with the Fundraiser, you can do a few things.

1. Set the gift flow to run at a specific time after you are done coding them. So maybe you could them each morning but you are done by 10am. Set the flow to run at 10:15am.
2. You could automate adding the Fundraiser in a flow. Look for ones that are missing and add them, I'm not sure how complicated this process is though. Have that run at night after gifts are in, then the gifts flow can run after that or the next morning.

I hope this helps,

Carol

BrieAnna Clothier

@Carol Grant
Thank you!

Alex Wong

@Carol Grant thank you for jumping in.

@BrieAnna Clothier keep in mind that List parameter (to select a saved gift list from RE NXT) is mutually exclusive to ALL other parameters on the List gifts action.

It only has Added on or after parameter, so you need to play with that. (so you cannot do I only want gift added From a date To a date.) If you need to do From and To, then you do the From (using Added on or after), THEN use the Filter array action to reduce/remove gifts from the result beyond the To date.

Unfortunately, there is no current API endpoint that can “edit” the gift's fundraiser/solicitor. You can only specify gift fundraiser/solicitor on “create” gift API endpoint. Which there is a way around this by “copying” the created gift to create a new “exact copy” gift and specify the fundraiser logic. This will also take care of the “date added” bug of webview gift batch. However, a LOT more involve to go into detail in a post.

It may not be worthwhile to dive into this much customization at this time as Blackbaud has promoised a much more enchanced webview and API gift functionality to come soon.

As far as your process goes, do you or your team approve the webview batch at 11:59PM every night? if not, you will run into gift date added not picking up any gift from webview batch.

BrieAnna Clothier

@Alex Wong
This is so far over my head. I feel like we may need to just keep it as is and the GO this notification flow is for may need to deal with the duplicates. At least he is being notified of them in a relatively timely manner.

Is there a recommended course I should take for PA specifically in regards to RE? I did the 5 week accelerated course I found from BB and I took an instructor led class from BB University, but I need more education than this.

Alex Wong

@BrieAnna Clothier
Another way you can do this is using Query API, which there are template on how to, but no template specifically using Query API to do gift notification. Maybe i'll create one in the future.

As for classes outside of what BB offer, I don't think there is but there are BB partner that may do it.

I have heard this quite a lot lately, so if you are interesting, I can offer a paid course to teach (1 on 1): from basic to intermedate level until you are good on your own. If interested, can email my personal email: ffxkenshin@gmail.com

Susan Walters

@BrieAnna Clothier, you can add some actions in you flow that add a Gift Attribute of “Reported” to each gift when it is selected for your daily list. Then filter your list to exclude gifts with that attribute. I do something similar when I pull lists of new donors. I add a Constituent Attribute, and even though they show up in the NXT list, I filter them out in Power Automate before I add them to my reporting list.

BrieAnna Clothier

@Susan Walters - Thanks!

Erik Leaver

@BrieAnna Clothier We offer in-person training on Power Automate & Power BI in our Regional Workshops. We have one next week in Boston and in the Fall in Chicago and Houston (registration to open by mid-March). We will also offer a class at BBCON as part of the pre-conference day. And of course, there will be lots of opportunities at bbdevdays, our annual developer's conference (reg to open in mid-March).

We also have monthly virtual user groups for Power BI & Power Automate where you can ask questions & get help with your projects.

Don't get frustrated! Most practitioners start with small projects and then build on those skills over time.

BrieAnna Clothier

@Erik Leaver
Hi, Can you please share the Chicago and Houston workshop information (where to find the registration once it is open, dates, etc)? Also, is this for all skill levels? I'm a newbie and am a bit overwhelmed because I have such high expectations of myself and from my team that is requesting certain automations from me, but am not yet schooled in these topics.

Erik Leaver

@BrieAnna Clothier Our Chicago & Houston workshops are our Fundamentals class. These are 2-day, slower paced classes tailored for those beginning their Power Platform journeys.

We'll have an announcement in the community when registration opens!