Is Microsoft Copilot Lying to Me?

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Emmet OConlon
Emmet OConlon
Seventh Anniversary 25 Likes 10 Comments Name Dropper
in SKY Developer General Discussions

I was thinking of trying to set up some flows that would automatically notify users of potential gift entry errors--similar to all those error trapping queries we have, but with automation! When I asked Copilot to outline it for me, it spat out this:

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Here's a step-by-step guide on how to create a Power Automate flow that checks for gifts with the wrong constituent code in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT and emails the person who entered the gift about the error:

Trigger the Flow: Start by setting up a trigger in Power Automate. You can use the "When a new item is created" trigger for the gifts table in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT.

Get Gift Details: Use the "Get item" action to retrieve the details of the newly created gift. This will allow you to access the constituent code and other relevant information.

Check Constituent Code: Add a condition to check if the constituent code of the gift matches the expected value. If it doesn't, proceed to the next step.

Get User Details: Use the "Get user profile (V2)" action to retrieve the details of the person who entered the gift. You can use the "Created By" field from the gift details to get the user's email address.

Send Email Notification: Use the "Send an email (V2)" action to send an email to the person who entered the gift. In the email body, include details about the gift and the error with the constituent code.

Here's a sample flow outline:

Trigger: When a new item is created (Gifts table in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT)
Action: Get item (Gift details)
Condition: If constituent code is incorrect
Action: Get user profile (Created By)
Action: Send an email (Notify user about the error)
This flow will help you automate the process of checking for gifts with the wrong constituent code and notifying the person who entered the gift about the error.

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Are there triggers now that we can use? After looking, I could not find it. This would be so great if it's true! Does anyone know for certain? Or have our robotic overlords tricked me again?

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Comments

  • Matt Thacker
    Matt Thacker
    Fourth Anniversary 100 Likes 100 Comments Name Dropper

    Hey @Emmet OConlon, as far as I know, there isn't an “out of the box” trigger for when a new gift is created to use in Power Automate. You'd need to create a web hook and subscribe that hook to listen for the Gift Created. This web hook could then trigger your flow to run.

    I believe there was a session at the last Blackbaud Developer's Conference about using Power Automate to create a web hook, but not 100% sure on that.

  • Alex Wong
    Alex Wong Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary 1,500 Likes 2500 Comments Name Dropper

    @Emmet OConlon
    copilot give you the general idea of how to get it done and the steps are logical, which is what these “AI” tool are programmed to do.

    But the details/specific are mostly wrong, and your prompt affected this as well.

    • Trigger: When a new item is created (Gifts table in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT)
    • Action: Get item (Gift details)
      • this is your regular Blackbaud Gift connector's get a gift action
    • Condition: If constituent code is incorrect
      • this “may” be correct depending on if you are checking the gift's constituency OR the constituent's constituency.
      • If gift constituency, you can directly condition on that
      • if constituent constituency, then you need another action to get the constituent constituency, which can be more than one, which then you have to do some additional actions to “filter array” to know if match
    • Action: Get user profile (Created By)
      • this is not simple at all.
      • then “when gift is created” webhook when done properly, will give you the system record id of the user who created the gift (get a gift action does not give you created by)
      • you will then need to use the NXT ingegration endpoint for get a user by user id to get info on which constituent record is tied to the user, THEN get constituent for this user and hope there is an email in this constituent record
      • there are other ways, like Query API to get the “created by” field, but even then, unless your user is created after you migrated to RE NXT and user is created on the webview, which will make the user created by an actual email address to use, you are kind of out of luck
    • Action: Send an email (Notify user about the error)
      • this is easy step just to send the email.

  • Alex Wong
    Alex Wong Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary 1,500 Likes 2500 Comments Name Dropper

    @Emmet OConlon
    Honestly though, this isn't the best way to about what you want to do.

    You do not want to get an email for each gift that's coded incorrectly, rather, you want to get ONE email of all gifts that has error.

    so your logic should be more like:

    • Schedule trigger to run every day or every few hours
    • get a list of gift (better use Query API where you can get all the info needed in 1 list) created in the last X day/hours
    • use Filter Array and condition on the various error condition
    • condition on if length() of filter array is more than 0
      • create html of the filtered array
      • send email with the html table
  • Emmet OConlon
    Emmet OConlon
    Seventh Anniversary 25 Likes 10 Comments Name Dropper

    @Matt Thacker thank you very much! That was the exact info I was looking for.

  • Emmet OConlon
    Emmet OConlon
    Seventh Anniversary 25 Likes 10 Comments Name Dropper

    @Alex Wong thank you very much for your detailed and thoughtful answers.

    We do all of our gift entry through batch. Ideally, I would want one email to be sent when a batch is committed (I do not think that would be possible) so the gift entry person can be notified of the error immediately and correct it right away.

    I considered using a timer and building a list that would only pull gifts added every X hours, but the problem is that not all gifts in RE show the correct Date Added. If memory serves, we're still waiting on gifts from Event Registration forms to show the correct date added. Until that feature is updated, using a timer could create some process problems for us.

    I guess it's time to give up on the low code dream and learn this API stuff.

  • Alex Wong
    Alex Wong Community All-Star
    Ninth Anniversary 1,500 Likes 2500 Comments Name Dropper

    @Emmet OConlon
    still think that “when gift created” trigger will be too much. If you got a batch that is commitment and created 100 gifts and the whole bunch has incorrect constituency, then there will be 100 emails of errors, one per gift. That will be a bad user experience.

    You can do one of these:

    1. create a SKY Add-in tile (that is on the RE NXT homepage) that intakes a batch number, when submitted, it will run error checking on all gifts created by that batch. You can try this one: https://community.blackbaud.com/forums/viewtopic/586/69847
    2. create a MS Form with one question: Batch Number. submit and trigger flow that does the error checking

    This does require a process for the gift entry to remember to go and submit the batch number of the batch they committed/approved. You can introduce another automation at the end of the day that checks if there are new gifts that has batch that hasn't been submitted through the error checking.

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