A week without going into Database View: #ForMyNXTtrick

Preston Meche 2 · February 2020

Hi Folks,

I am contemplating an experiment, to be implemented next month (March 2020) or the following month (April 2020): spend one week without going into Raiser's Edge database view, using RE:NXT to complete all database administration tasks. Has anyone attempted this? I want to hear everything about your experience: good, bad, ugly.

A little about my role and organization: my official title is Manager of Development Information Systems (which is a fancy way to say database administrator) at an independent school (grades 4-12) in Washington DC. I have used Raiser's Edge (database view) for the better part of 8 years, at this school and a previous non-profit. My daily/weekly tasks range from constituent record updates, batch gift entry/receipt generation/acknowledgment letter generation (including printing), gift entry through Online Express, running reports (both canned and custom-created from Crystal Reports), query/export editing/running. Our database is Azure-based (all in the cloud).

If anyone has tried going solely NXT for any/all tasks, I'd like your feedback! Any advice?

#ForMyNXTtrick

Thanks,

Preston

I

Katherine Manniion · February 2020

Great experiment! Although I feel you may be frustrated pretty quickly. I'm looking forward to your results!!

Katherine

Elizabeth Perron · February 2020

Your post reminds me of the Tik Tok challenges my kids do. My favorite challenge has been the clean your room challenge:). The Tik Tok challenges work and I will be interested to follow your journey to see what you learn about NXT. I have posted this question on the Community Dashboard in hopes that others will join you!

(My Community > My Community Dashboard)

In harmony,

Elizabeth

Blackbaud Community Team

Karen Stuhlfeier · February 2020

I use it as much as I can and have moved most of our reports there. Until gift entry in NXT supports tribute gifts, pledges and pledge payments I need to use the database view. I also need it for acknowledgments and I import a lot with importomatic. What's wrong with using both views? They each have different capabilities. What would this prove?

Dawn Schumacher · February 2020

That's awesome! I'm going to follow this to see everyone's experiences!

Dariel Dixon 2 · February 2020

What's the over/under on this experiment? 3 days? I think the biggest challenge for you will be the letters, but you'll probably have issues with the batches as well.

But good luck with this. I'll be tuning in to see how it goes.

EDIT: This is a rather silly observation/comment, but I here's an idea. Have you considered taking your findings on the road to present at BBCON? If you document your findings well, it would be of great interest to all sorts of users.

Katherine Manniion · February 2020

LOL Dariel Dixon‍! I would have had the over/under in hours, not days! I'll take 3 hours until he finds something he needs to switch to database view to do!! There's a lot of fantastic stuff in webview, but for a database manager it's just not there yet (as we all know too well).

And your suggestion for a BBCon session on this is fantastic!!

Katherine

Dariel Dixon 2 · March 2020

Preston Meche‍ Have you started this experiment yet? I'm curious how it is going?

A week without going into Database View: #ForMyNXTtrick

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