Limited Release Access to New Report Builder - Create a custom Insight Bank

Just taking my first deep dive into the NXT Analysis Report Builder today. Having used Excel and Tableau for analysis for the last few years, I am struggling with this module and so far, it seems like it has many limitations around the pieces of data you can look at (much like Reports in "classic" RE). Is there a feedback or working group for early adopters or people on the 90 day trial?


Thanks,

Lori Robbins

Institute for Advanced Study

Princeton, New Jersey

Thanks for the great feedback, everyone!


If there are specific data points you're looking to analyze but can't do so with an out-of-the-box insight for Dashboard builder or easily with Insight Designer (like Christine's "percent toward goals"), please share and brainstorm them here! Also, be sure to submit them to the Idea Bank so we can help gauge interest. This includes analogues to reports you may currently run in the database view, or — to Lori and Karen's point — ones you find difficult to pull off in either the web or database view of Raiser's Edge NXT. 


Also, as Christine suggests, I'm eager to see what insights you create with Insight Designer. If you share them here, I'll look to contribute them to our collection of insight recipes for everyone to enjoy. Thanks!

I have to add that as we're working through this feature there are so many things that we love about it. I'm having a little trouble getting the right numbers for total giving amounts, but hopefully that's just my error and I'll figure it out. I did just create a package insight that matches my RE report and query exactly so I know I'm on the right track. We're going to put together 2 fantastic dashboards before showing it to everyone in our department. I'm a fan of this product!

Ahh, I just started my free trial and it looks like there are some fields you can't use in the same report. For example, I want to make a list of all of the Opportunity Expected Amounts for constituents in a specific Fundraiser's portfolio. If I choose one of these fields, the other field disappears from the menu. I'm guessing that that is why the screen freezes when I try to apply the filter. 

Hey Guys,

This is great, both the idea to create an insight bank that all of us can work on to help each other not only with specific reports to build but perhaps generate other ideas to share.  And I really appreciate Graham's walk through of the report he created.  I've been struggling a bit with this myself but that's probably because I've jumped right in to try to create my own custom insights before working more with the report builder to better understand how the different pieces work together. 


The one thing I am having trouble with, and I don't think there's a solution to it at the moment, is reporting on pledge installments that are due within a particular time period.  In Graham's example, what I'm assuming he's seeing (and he's got all the data that backs this up) is any pledges that were made to those two funds within that time period. So the committed includes cash and all the pledges with no double counting, then it's broken down by cash and the pledges below.  What I'd like to be able to do is show cash in and what pledge installments are due within a particular time period no matter when the pledge is made.  More of a cash flow type of report to determine what we expect to have within a particular time period.  There's a huge dashboard I create every month for our multi-year campaign that shows cash for the entire campaign to date, pledge payments for the entire campaign to date, and pledges due for the current fiscal year.  Of course now that I'm writing that I'm trying to figure out why we want to look at it this way. I don't expect to ever be able to recreate the entire report with one NXT dashboard but I would like to have the numbers match for each section so there aren't any (or as few as possible) questions about the differences. I don't think pledge installments are part of this yet but I have made the suggestion on the idea board.


This is probably a case where we're going to have to start training our staff to understand that things are not exactly the same as they are in the database view (such as soft credits that Graham mentioned).  There will probably be lots of these types of things but hopefully it's just an instance of getting comfortable with reports that are much more visual and user friendly but information is reported slightly differently.  I'm trying to get my staff to understand that so they start to work more in NXT and less in the database.  An example like this is just what I need to do that.


Thanks again.

Are there tutorials yet for this new feature? Graham's screen cast was excellent, but it has me wanting more training to see what this Report Builder can do.  Also, wondering if anyone can explain what is available in the Insights subscription that can not be done with the basic report builder.  TIA

Has anyone found a way to show just the top 10 of something?  I know on the canned NXT dashboards it shows top 10 donors, or top 10 funds, etc. depending on the dashboard.  I'd love to have one on showing the top 10 funds to our capital campaign but I don't see a way to just have an insight include anything like that.  Thanks.

Hi everyone - 


I have a report that I created in Excel to track and compare cumulative FYTD fundraising progress by fiscal year - like the overview tab in the NXT Fundraising>Reporting module, but YTD for each month instead of MTD. Like this:



In the Insight module I have gotten to this point. It's just stringing the months along without dividing them into separate fiscal years:



Can someone tell me if it's possible to do a chart like this in Insight, and if so, what am I missing?


THANKS,

Lori




 

Two things that I haven't been able to build, and so far support calls tell me can't be built in a custom insight but seem like pretty standard fundraising data points:

     * A table of donors by giving level (any giving levels would do, they can be pre-set, although of course it would be awesome if we could access our donor giving tables from the classic view)

     * A way to have the number of LYBUNTS on a report, rather than just current donors or constituents. I realize this is available on the Retention dashboard, but I am trying to build a dashboard specifically for our major gifts team, and this would be very helpful.


I'll put these over in the idea bank as well.


Thanks!

 

Larry Wheeler:

I have an insight which looks at solicitor credit by solicitor.  It was easy enough to build and looks nice, but it does not have an 'expandable' component.  We are unable to click on the bar of a particular solicitor and get a list of those gifts (like you are able to get with Actions by Solicitor), for example.


Is this something I'm doing wrong, or is this a limitation of the report builder ?


Thank you for any suggestions/comments!