Tips & Tricks

KaLeigh Lee · June 2018

Hi, Community!

I'm fairly new to Blackbaud products (specifically RE & Online Express). I've gone through the Blackbaud University training sessions, became certified at the professional level, and have used the program every day since I started in February. However, there's always tips and tricks you don't learn about that others with experience have come across.

SO - what's the best advice or tips/tricks that you've discovered in Raiser's Edge? Any would be helpful...You'll never know what we'll need in the future!

Best, and Happy Friday (and National Donut Day)!

Sunshine Reinken Watson · June 2018

I have learned so many tips and tricks through conversations at local user group meetings and here in the community. My best tip is to stay involved here in the community and join up with a local group if there is one in your area (or start one if there isn't one!).

Shannon Emery · June 2018

Welcome to the Community, KaLeigh! Glad to have you a'Baud.

That joke will never get old.

I moved your discussion over to our Raiser's Edge Community so that our amazing users can give you those tips and tricks you're looking for! Of course, like Sunshine said, the Community is a great place to start.

KaLeigh Lee · June 2018

Shannon Emery:

Welcome to the Community, KaLeigh! Glad to have you a'Baud. That joke will never get old.

I moved your discussion over to our Raiser's Edge Community so that our amazing users can give you those tips and tricks you're looking for! Of course, like Sunshine said, the Community is a great place to start.

See? I've learned something new already!

Samuel Meinders · June 2018

Welcome to the world of RE and congrats on your Pro Certification!

- For speed and efficiency I was sure to learn the "Alt" alphabetic codes so I can quickly navigate inside records. Open a record, Alt-G to look at gifts, Alt-2 for their Bio 2 tab.. etc.

- I use the 'Tab' key as much as possible so I limit the amount I'm moving my hand between the mouse and keyboard.

- Also, F3 to insert today's date.

- When entering any other date, if the day falls within the month you are currently in (It's June 4th and the check date was June 1st) you can just type a "1" and tab to the next field and it will autofill in 6/1/18.

- Creating and routinely running cleanup queries is more beneficial than trying to do a mass cleanup every year or so. When I came into our database there were hundreds of individuals without a gender. So for those with gender unknown I pulled "first name, spouse first name" to see if I could fill in their gender. If Jennifer is married to Marcus, Jennifer is very likely a female.

Hopefully 1 of these are helpful to you!

KaLeigh Lee · June 2018

Samuel Meinders:

Welcome to the world of RE and congrats on your Pro Certification!

- For speed and efficiency I was sure to learn the "Alt" alphabetic codes so I can quickly navigate inside records. Open a record, Alt-G to look at gifts, Alt-2 for their Bio 2 tab.. etc.

- I use the 'Tab' key as much as possible so I limit the amount I'm moving my hand between the mouse and keyboard.

- Also, F3 to insert today's date.

- When entering any other date, if the day falls within the month you are currently in (It's June 4th and the check date was June 1st) you can just type a "1" and tab to the next field and it will autofill in 6/1/18.

- Creating and routinely running cleanup queries is more beneficial than trying to do a mass cleanup every year or so. When I came into our database there were hundreds of individuals without a gender. So for those with gender unknown I pulled "first name, spouse first name" to see if I could fill in their gender. If Jennifer is married to Marcus, Jennifer is very likely a female.

Hopefully 1 of these are helpful to you!

These are great! Thanks!

Heather MacKenzie · July 2018

KaLeigh Hurley:

Hi, Community!

I'm fairly new to Blackbaud products (specifically RE & Online Express). I've gone through the Blackbaud University training sessions, became certified at the professional level, and have used the program every day since I started in February. However, there's always tips and tricks you don't learn about that others with experience have come across.

SO - what's the best advice or tips/tricks that you've discovered in Raiser's Edge? Any would be helpful...You'll never know what we'll need in the future!

Best, and Happy Friday (and National Donut Day)!

F3 to insert "today's" date in a date field is one of my favorites! I use it all over the database.

Elizabeth Johnson · July 2018

Hi KaLeigh! Welcome to the community.

You have already received so pretty sweet tips here. Both of the tips I offer I learned from Naomi Harding - BB trainer extraordinaire.

One of (pun intended) my favorites is the ability to paste multiple numeric values into a query using the "one of" operator.

I've linked to the kb here for you. You don't actually need to scroll all the way down as the kb suggests just scroll down a few rows and it works just fine. If you don't scroll you only get one value.

The other tip I learned was when organizing your queries have some category folders for short-term query use. I have folders to delete for the next three months, end of fiscal years, and ones to store queries I think I can delete but need to investigate a little further. So around August 15, I will quickly review the queries to in the July folder. If any need to be kept I move them. Then I can delete them quickly (although I have to delete one by one as you can't filter on the categories in Delete Multiple Queries*) especially when on hold or watching a webinar as it is a safe multitask project at this point. I have more categories and for ones that land in a topical category, I always start my description with either a deletion date yyyymmdd, RFD with a date (Review for deletion), RFDNC date - Review for deletion if no change since creation DND - Do Not Delete.

Way to go on getting your professional cert so quickly into your time using RE! Love the Blackbaud University staff! Hope you have the Learn Everything package.

*So I went to the idea bank to see if someone had suggested an idea about filtering by categories when deleting multiple queries and found several very similar ideas - perhaps a lovely BB person can merge them? In the meantime, I've voted for them all and would love others to join in!

https://re7.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RE7-I-156
https://re7.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RE7-I-1106
https://re7.ideas.aha.io/ideas/RE7-I-2136

Daniel R. Snyder · July 2018

I echo Elizabeth's sentiments about the one of paste feature, but wanted to add that if you find yourself needing to paste more than 500 values there is a great free tool called SmartPASTE that will paste the values in for you, instead of having to copy and paste 500 at a time.

Dan

Alan French · July 2018

Daniel Snyder:

I echo Elizabeth's sentiments about the one of paste feature, but wanted to add that if you find yourself needing to paste more than 500 values there is a great free tool called SmartPASTE that will paste the values in for you, instead of having to copy and paste 500 at a time.

Dan

I tried SmartPASTE but didn't find it saved me that much time, as it basically types in the data (albeit quickly!) thus locking up my keyboard so I can't get on with doing anything besides watching rows of numbers flowing across the screen. I'd be interested to know whether anyone finds it more useful though - is my computer just exceptionally slow?!

Dariel Dixon 2 · July 2018

Alan French:

Daniel Snyder:

I echo Elizabeth's sentiments about the one of paste feature, but wanted to add that if you find yourself needing to paste more than 500 values there is a great free tool called SmartPASTE that will paste the values in for you, instead of having to copy and paste 500 at a time.

Dan

I tried SmartPASTE but didn't find it saved me that much time, as it basically types in the data (albeit quickly!) thus locking up my keyboard so I can't get on with doing anything besides watching rows of numbers flowing across the screen. I'd be interested to know whether anyone finds it more useful though - is my computer just exceptionally slow?!

It's not you. I think it works like a macro. Regardless of locking up the keyboard, I find it insanely useful. It saves me a lot of time, especially when you have a large number of entries to search for. I usually try to set it to run when I have the time to not run anything else. If you prepare for the computer to be busy, it's not that bad.

It's still much faster than writing those queries by hand.

Lora Cowan · July 2018

KaLeigh Hurley:

Hi, Community!

I'm fairly new to Blackbaud products (specifically RE & Online Express). I've gone through the Blackbaud University training sessions, became certified at the professional level, and have used the program every day since I started in February. However, there's always tips and tricks you don't learn about that others with experience have come across.

SO - what's the best advice or tips/tricks that you've discovered in Raiser's Edge? Any would be helpful...You'll never know what we'll need in the future!

Best, and Happy Friday (and National Donut Day)!

Welcome, KaLeigh! One thing I use often is when entering a note in most places is the date/time/user stamp by using F5.

Natasha Kashefipour · July 2018

KaLeigh Hurley:

Hi, Community!

I'm fairly new to Blackbaud products (specifically RE & Online Express). I've gone through the Blackbaud University training sessions, became certified at the professional level, and have used the program every day since I started in February. However, there's always tips and tricks you don't learn about that others with experience have come across.

SO - what's the best advice or tips/tricks that you've discovered in Raiser's Edge? Any would be helpful...You'll never know what we'll need in the future!

Best, and Happy Friday (and National Donut Day)!

Pasting constituent IDs (limit 500) to the bottom of Constituent ID = one of field so that you can query on a list of individual prospects! Not immediately obvious, but essential to our business processes.

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