Update Constituent Assigned Appeal response

Andrew Peterson

Hi all, just attended my first BBDevDays and left feeling inspired to build something for my org. I've done my best to research this forum first but I'm not having any luck finding any details.

I'm curious, is it possible to use connectors and PA automate to update the response on a constituent's assigned appeal based on the amount given? For example, if someone opens an email and then gives from that email, the appeal and package from the gift record will update the amount given field on the assigned appeal, but I'd love the response to move from “opened” to “gave”. Does any of that sound feasible? It's a task that I would love to automate and take off my plate to do manually (ish, with exports and imports).

Austen Brown

@Andrew Peterson - This is a great idea! Unfortunately, you'll be restricted to what is possible through the API. Email response isn't yet in the API nor is update a constituent appeal. Tip - API is directly related to WV, if you can't do it in WV the answer is likely “No”. Here's a link to the API documentation:

While there is a “list constituent appeals” action in the API (Constituents area) it doesn't return an import ID, which is a bummer. My suggestion otherwise would have been to gather recent gifts (nightly) coded the specific appeal that were processed through BBMS to then create an import file that you could run through DBV manually (or automatically through Queue) to update these…. but this was thwarted by the lack of an import ID.

I suppose in the vary least you could keep the ‘gather recent gifts’ piece and compare with the data from the ‘List constituent appeals’ API. If the response on the appeal needs to be updated, generate a notification that's sent nightly - then every morning review the notification and update appeals manually where needed.

Andrew Peterson

Thank you @Austen Brown! That's what I suspected as I was poking around. I appreciate the alternate suggestion!

Ben Lambert

@Austen Brown @Andrew Peterson fwiw, there is an endpoint for updating a constituent appeal in the NXT Data Integration API:

https://developer.sky.blackbaud.com/api#api=nxt-data-integration&operation=EditConstituentAppeal

Dan Snyder

@Andrew Peterson and @Austen Brown So, I came across another thread about constituent appeals just before reading this and was exploring the documentation and there might be a way to do this. I say might because using the test it features I have not been able to get a test to succeed in updating the response area, though it appears to be listed as an option.

Like Austen mentioned, there is a “list constituent appeals” action in the Constituents area of the API, from there you can get the system record id of the constituent appeal (1782406 in the screenshot below). You can also get the appeal system record id (532) and constituent system record id (58324). When you pull the recent gifts you would probably match on the appeal system record id. Then, I just discovered there is an Edit Constituent Appeal option in the NXT Data Integration API (I was typing this as @Ben Lambert responded) where you could use the constituent appeal id to update the response.

Huge caveat: I have only been doing this using the Try It feature and not directly in Power Automate and as I mentioned above, while “response_description” is part of the Edit Constituent Appeal endpoint, I have not been able to get it to work and I suspect that is because we cannot currently edit that in WV as Austen mentioned.

One final note. Austen mentioned not being able to get the appeal import id. While that is true, I have noticed that other than some from our conversion to RE way back in 2003, all of our appeal import ids have the same start and then end with the system record id. This may just be something for our org as we generally are manually adding our appeals so Raiser's Edge assigns the import id and system record id, but wanted to mention it as something to consider for building your own import ids even if they are not accessible via the API.

List constituent appeal response

Appeal ImportID and SystemRecordID

Austen Brown

@Ben Lambert - The one place I didn't look! Lots of great stuff hidden in NXT integrations API.

Alex Wong

@Andrew Peterson
Yes, you can automate this.

there is going to be some consideration on multiple of the same assigned appeal on the constituent that you will have to work through (if that situation exists), otherwise, the 2 endpoint pointed out by Austen and Ben will do the trick.

@Dan Snyder I tested the Edit endpoint and it works to update the Response. However, keep in mind that Appeal Response is a “table entry”, so it is configurable to your org's want/need and is not the same from org to org. So make sure you are using a value that exists in your RE NXT table for appeal response.

{
"response_description": "Yes"
}

Dan Snyder

@Alex Wong Thanks for this, I figured it was something like that but clearly didn't have the time to dig in.