Warning - RE latest patch broke exporting soft credits

shani traum · May 2016

Hi all,

Wanted to give you a heads up on a problem with the latest version (.1) of RE. We discovered this when exporting giving and the results didn't make sense. Blackbaud confirmed this is a "known issue" with the latest patch and will fixed in the next update (date unknown).

We ran a query of constituents with gifts during a time frame. Soft crediting gifts to the soft credit recipient. The query pulled correctly and so donors of gifts without soft credits appeared as did the soft credited constituent of gifts where there was a sc applied. So, Mr. Schwartz made a gift with no soft credit. Mr. Cohen made a gift soft credited to Mr. Katz. Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Katz appear on the query.

As you know, when exporting gifts and asking for data with soft credit going to soft credit recipient, the donor should appear with the amount given if there is no soft crediting involved.

So, Mr. Schwartz has a $150 gift that is not soft credited to anyone,...He should appear with $150.

On the export, Mr. Schwartz's giving shows as $0.

This is obviously wrong.

When I spoke to the helpful person at Blackbaud, he discovered that this is a known bug of the latest release and "they are working on it". However, as we all know, BB does not warn it's users when bugs appear after updated. So, I'm sharing this with you - in case you are pulling the same kind of export and your results aren't as obviously wrong as ours were. We were seeing way too many $0 entries so we questioned the report. You may not be as "lucky".

Which is why BB really needs to warn it's users when they break something.

Shani

Jarod Bonino · May 2016

Hey everyone, just wanted to chime in here.

An intentional (albeit seemingly misguided) change was made in Patch 1 that resulted in the issue you are observing. While I agree with you Shani on your assessment that the results you are seeing in Patch 1 are not expected, I want to make it clear that the change was made in response to a request/reported bug that suggested the "new" functionality is actually desired. Perhaps more important, however, than how it should work in this case (given the somewhat ambiguous wording of the export option) is the way the product has worked for years. Going forward I can assure you that we will be making a sincere effort to scrutinize any change going forward that potentially changes long standing functionality in Raiser's Edge that many of our users (such as yourself) may have grown accustomed to or grown dependent upon. I won't bore any of you with the details about how and why this particular misguided change occurred, but I wanted to assure you that the change was intentional (it didn't just break) and we have since decided to roll back the change that was made in Patch 1 to restore this functionality to the way it has worked for years. Patch 2 includes this change and is being deployed into our hosted environments this week. It should be made available to on premise clients early next week.

Thanks,

Jarod

shani traum · May 2016

Intentional change/Broken feature....Tomayto/Tomahto :-)

Seriously though - thanks for the update. Glad to hear the roll back is due soon. My boss was trying to pull a couple of reports and we couldn't figure out why data wasn't pulling the way, as far as we were concerned, it should (and always had). We kept reviewing the gifts, the query, the export, and back again and couldn't find anything "wrong".

Is there someplace that we've missed (or been ignoring) that spells out these changes when patches/updates are applied?

Shani

Jarod Bonino · May 2016

Our standard practice is to include information about what is in a given patch in a KB tip. Here is the one for Patch 1:

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/99784

It's worth noting that we did update it to include information about this particular issue once we realized it had negative implications for some clients.

shani traum · May 2016

So are these KB tips something that are emailed out to users?

And I'm not trying to be a pain, just trying to avoid the frustration of "not knowing why" in the future. The link doesn't mention the change in functionality except as a Note. Was the change mentioned in the original KB tip and then changed to a Note issue once it was discovered? Because the change is not mentioned in the tip sheet itself, except as the note.

Thanks,

Shani

Jarod Bonino · May 2016

Our standard practice is to notify hosted clients about upcoming upgrades and include links to kb tips like this. Once we release a patch to our on premise clients, an additional email is sent to all clients (not just hosted) that includes links to the KBs and additional information about the patch. If you are not receiving those emails, but would like to, you can follow the steps mentioned in this tip to opt-in to future emails:

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/44242

We make every effort to include notable changes in the tips and we keep them updated with notes (like the one you mentioned) if further information changes what we would consider "notable".

In addition, in this specific scenario we generated a separate email that was sent to all potentially impacted clients detailing the findings around this particular issue. The content of that email is as follows:

Dear Blackbaud Customer,

All clients who have Raiser’s Edge™ hosted with Blackbaud have been upgraded to the most recent version of Raiser’s Edge: 7.95.6280 Patch 1 (What is in Patch 1 for the Raiser's Edge 7.95?).

In an effort to clarify any issues with soft credit exports, we want to take this opportunity to provide information on what could be occurring and how to confirm that your exports are accurate.

A video demonstration of this issue and steps to reach the desired export totals can be seen in Knowledgebase article 100854.

We plan to resolve this in Raiser’s Edge 7.95, Patch 2, which will be released soon in Blackbaud Hosting Services. For updates on this release, please refer to the 7.95 Release blog.

Thank you for your patience as we continue working to improve Raiser’s Edge.

Blackbaud Support

Again, this particular issue is a bit atypical given the nature and impact of the change in question, but I do believe we did everything we could to make sure you were aware of the issue as soon as we analyzed it ourselves. I apologize that the communication did not appear to reach you or the rest of your users in this case. I would encourage you to sign up for future release announcements and trust that distribution channel going forward for any announcements like this.

I hope that helps! If you have any further questions feel free to contact me directly to discuss further.

Thanks,

Jarod

Gina Gerhard · May 2016

Jarod - Just an additional point that 'affected clients' might also include clients not currently on that version -- but are contemplating going up to that version. Hopefully based on their subscription they would not be excluded just because they are not currently up on that version?

Jarod Bonino · May 2016

You are correct Gina. We don't just look for people that are on a particular version but instead consider anyone who has access and may install a particular patch/release as well. In this particular instance the communication was not sent to on premise clients because the patch was never made available to them. Had it been available to them, all clients would have been included in the communciation plan. Any clients with access to the update would be considered "impacted" or "potentially impacted".

Melissa S Graves · May 2016

Is it clearly told to those who are about to download and update to the patch with the problem that we should not update to that patch as it has a serious issue?

Tamara Seikel 2 · May 2016

I have to say I am furious about this. As a relatively new RE user (2 years) I always figure a problem I am having is due to something boneheaded I did. I spent all day today on this; I was using an export that worked in February and now isn't working. I went over and over everything, and even had a co-worker, who has about the same amount of experience as I do, go over it. It was only when I finally came here for advice that I saw this subject.

Also, I am signed up for some kind of notifications; I always get the notifications when there is going to be a service outage. I didn't know there was something else to sign up for. Why have so many different things to sign up for? There are only two of us that use RE at our organization. Send me what I need to do my job! And keep my sanity!

shani traum · May 2016

Here's the fix I was told about. If you have any questions, feel free to touch base with me.

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/100854

Shani

Matt Page · May 2016

Coincidentally I discovered a diifferent problem with soft credit exports that I've been meaning to post on when I got a moment.

I wanted to get a total for all the gifts made by people within a specific area. So I did a gift query for all gifts where the "donor" lived in the area, and I ticked to apply soft credits fully to both.

This obviously contained duplicates, so, following the standard RE line that "query is a grouping tool"; use export to remove the duplicates, that's what I did. I ran a gift export on all those gifts.

The result was that those gifts were still being included twice.

I played around with the soft credit options, but to no avail - they basically just seemed to mirror what the query was doing.

So what's with this? Given how the constituent query tool/export tool works I'd have expected it to only include each gift once. Are my expectations awry on this? Was it just a glitch in a bad version of 7.93? Or is this how it's meant to work (for reasons I don't now about)?

And is there a way to do this without having to export the Gift ID field as well and then dedupe in Excel instead?

Matt

shani traum · May 2016

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, you want a list of donors and soft credit recipients who live in a certain area. You pulled a query soft crediting to both so you would get both the donor and the soft credited donor.

Once you feed it into the Export you only want to see the gift once.

If you "soft credit" to Donor, it will appear on their row and the soft credited recipient should show with $0.

So, if Mr. Smith made a $100 gift that was soft credited to Mr. Jones. In the query, when soft crediting to both Donor and Recipient, both Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones should be included.

On the Export, Mr. Smith should show with $100 and Mr. Jones should show with $0.

Is this not what is happening?

Shani

Matt Page · May 2016

Hi Shani, thanks for your reply. Some clarificiations below.

shani traum:

So, if I'm understanding you correctly, you want a list of donors and soft credit recipients who live in a certain area.

Not exactly, really I only want the amount donated. But I thought a gift query and a gift export would be better than a constituent query/export.

shani traum:

If you "soft credit" to Donor, it will appear on their row and the soft credited recipient should show with $0.

So, if Mr. Smith made a $100 gift that was soft credited to Mr. Jones. In the query, when soft crediting to both Donor and Recipient, both Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones should be included.

On the Export, Mr. Smith should show with $100 and Mr. Jones should show with $0.

Is this not what is happening?

No, what seems to be happening is if I just select "soft credit to donor" on the export, it then excludes all the gifts where the soft-credit recipient lives in the area but the donor does not. But if I choose both it double counts those where both donor and soft credit recip live in the area.

Matt

John Heizer · May 2016

Jarod Bonino:

Our standard practice is to include information about what is in a given patch in a KB tip. Here is the one for Patch 1:

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/99784

It's worth noting that we did update it to include information about this particular issue once we realized it had negative implications for some clients.

My 2 cents; Blackbaud should list all changes made in any release, whether or not it has "negative implications for some clients" because, as this instance has shown, you never know beforehand what impact it might have. A list of "highlights" would be fine for most folks, but making a full changelog available would be a great help to the Community.

John Heizer · May 2016

shani traum:

Here's the fix I was told about. If you have any questions, feel free to touch base with me.

https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/100854

Shani

FYI, something strange with the link. It sends to https://webmail.hsl.harvard.edu/owa/UrlBlockedError.aspx. Maybe because you replied via email instead of online?

shani traum · May 2016

Hey Jarod,

As a hosted client, when can we expect patch
2?

I have a colleague who has an export with
about 30 summary totals. To add the work around is going to
take a huge amount of time so I’d like to be able to tell her it’s
coming soon?!?!?

Thanks,

Shani

Shani Traum

Database and Report Processing Manager

Department of Development

Hebrew SeniorLife

1200 Centre Street

Boston, MA 02131

(617) 971-5787

CONFIDENTIAL NOTICE:

This electronic mail transmission contains confidential
information

including Protected Health Information (PHI) that is legally
privileged.

If you are not the intended recipient, or designee, you are
hereby

notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of any
and

all attachments to this transmission is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. If
you

have received this transmission in error, please notify the
sender

immediately to arrange for return or destruction of these
documents.

Jarod Bonino · May 2016

Shani,

We are still on track to deliver along the same timeline that I referenced in my original post. Patch 2 is being deployed in our hosted environments this week and we intend to make it available to on premise clients early next week.

Thanks,

Jarod

shani traum · May 2016

Awesome – thanks!

I’ll let my colleague know – she’ll be very
glad to know she doesn’t have to change her uber export.

And thanks for letting me know where to sign
up for the email updates – I’ve taken care of that as well.

Shani

Shani Traum

Database and Report Processing Manager

Department of Development

Hebrew SeniorLife

1200 Centre Street

Boston, MA 02131

(617) 971-5787

CONFIDENTIAL NOTICE:

This electronic mail transmission contains confidential
information

including Protected Health Information (PHI) that is legally
privileged.

If you are not the intended recipient, or designee, you are
hereby

notified that any disclosure, copying, distribution or use of any
and

all attachments to this transmission is STRICTLY PROHIBITED. If
you

have received this transmission in error, please notify the
sender

immediately to arrange for return or destruction of these
documents.

Laura Caswell · May 2016

Jarod Bonino:

You are correct Gina. We don't just look for people that are on a particular version but instead consider anyone who has access and may install a particular patch/release as well. In this particular instance the communication was not sent to on premise clients because the patch was never made available to them. Had it been available to them, all clients would have been included in the communciation plan. Any clients with access to the update would be considered "impacted" or "potentially impacted".

Hi,

I am with Tamara on this. I believe I had already signed up for every possible notification concerning updates, patches and the like (we don't use Education Edge, I don't need that info) but I somehow missed this notification. And I can't seem to find anything on the newly re-designed site, which has been up for a while but I still can't find anything nor do I find it intuitive, but that's another rant. I just went to my Email Subscriptions and signed up for everything there even though I don't need any info about fundraising tips (I work in IT). Did I miss anything? Is there somewhere else I need to go to get info about software updates and their implacations?

Thanks,

laura

Warning - RE latest patch broke exporting soft credits

Comments

Categories