Power BI Connector & Multiple Raiser's Edge NXT Environments

Dave Cole

Dear Community,

I'm trying to set up Raiser's Edge NXT data in Power BI for multiple environments (the environments are split by geographic region).

Is anyone able to confirm whether this is possible with the endorsed connector on GitHub, and if so, what the workflow is to set this up and use data from multiple environments in Power BI?

GitHub - blackbaud/powerbi-connector: Blackbaud data connectors for Power Query and Power BI

Regards,

Dvae

Alex Wong

@Dave Cole
this is possible.

I recommend that you separately setup one application on your developer account per environment to separate them. Then follow the same process to create multiple Blackbaud (E1).mez, you might need to edit another file in the mez zip file to give it a distinglishable name when selecting in Power BI

Dave Cole

@Alex Wong thanks for your response!

Could you please expand on what you mean by editing a file to give it a distinguishable name when selecting in Power BI?

I've named the .mez file differently, and changed Blackbaud.pq to BlackbaudNZ.pq to distinguish. This hasn't worked, I still just see the one connector listing in Power BI.

Regards,

Dave

Alex Wong

@Dave Cole
I haven't done this myself as i do not have multiple environment to deal with.

Since each mez file requires you to have the client_id, client_secret, and subscription_key entered into the text files that get zip-ed into mez file, I imagine the easiest thing to do is to setup different mez file for each environment, and somewhere in the mez file is an indicator for the name of the blackbaud custom connector, which if changed can allow for multiple to show up in the selection list. However, that's my assumption, which you will have to try out

I don't know if you can use “ONE” application (client_id/secret) for all the environment, I guess that “can” be possible, but will get confusion very quickly

Dave Cole

Hi @Alex Wong,

Unfortunately that doesn't work. I do have 2 applications, one for each environment. I've got 2 instances of the connector (.mez file) which are named differently. Each connector necessarily has different details for the client_id (because they connect to 2 different apps). When you open Power BI, you can only see the one connector entry, like in the screenshot I sent in the previous post.

Previously, I connected both environments to one application, hoping that a single instance of the connector would work in Power BI and be able to differentiate between the environments. This also doesn't work; there's no option in Power BI to prompt a change in authorisation between environments.

Could you please advise what prompted you to say originally that catering for this circumstance is possible? Understanding that you haven't set this up yourself before.

Dave

Nancy Clein Tafoya

@Dave Cole Did you find a solution for this? I also have the same issue - two .mez files with different names, different client ids, but only 1 is recognized in Get Data. Do you know how to change the name of the data source from Blackbaud (Beta) (Custom)?