Skype Chat: Managing Database Growth - March 26th

Hi everyone!

Thank you to all who joined our Skype session today about space/storage issues in your databases and how to handle database growth.  

Attached are the summary and transcript of the session.  We had two outstanding questions:

1. Determining what information we can get for hosted organizations about the fragmentation on their databases, how we can request to re-index, and what maintenance practices are currently in place for hosted databases

• Index rebuilds and/or reorgs are done every night on every database. The indexes are either rebuilt or re-organized based on a fixed set of criterion. The criterion is what is recommended as Best Practices by Microsoft. 

• The maintenances that are done are index rebuilds and/or reorgs, full text rebuilds and backups, either full or differential.

• You can ask for index rebuilds if you’d like, but since they’re essentially done every night anyway, it’s probably not going to make a difference.

• We can get you information on fragmentation in any database as needed.  However, it’s worth noting that fragmentation does not contribute to database growth.  It’s also always going to exist to some extent because it occurs during normal data processing such as inserting, deleting or updating data within the database.

The two areas that cause the most growth outside of normal data growth are in audit tables and export tables.  If you're interested, our hosting team can provide list of all audit and export tables and how much space each is taking up. Just submit the request via a support case.

2.  Getting details about whether there are plans in place to create a utility to help manage growth/space issues, similar to the Windows cleanup tool

-I’ve talked to product management, and have GREAT news – they are actually working on a “Database Growth Manager” utility for the Administration area of CRM right now, which they anticipate will be ready for version 4.0!  They are putting finishing touches on a working prototype on real client data, and in the coming weeks, they are looking to do some discovery and show you all how it looks. 

If you’re interested in signing up to participate and see what’s in store, here’s the link:

https://www.timetrade.com/book/WYS7Q

-Also, regarding the question about functionality to determine when a query was last used/run, we’ll also be including this in version 4.0, in the “Information Library.”  For each query, we’ll be able to see:

• What date was it last run on?
• Who ran it last?
• How long did the last run take?
• How many results were in the last run?
• How many times has it been run?

So many exciting updates coming along!  It looks like we’re on exactly the same page as the Blackbaud Products team.  I hope this is helpful to everyone.  

Caroline Barnes:

Thank you to all who attended our Skype Chat today about Workflow. 

 

The following items are attached to this post:

1.  The video overview of Workflow that we discussed

2.  The transcript of today's chat

3.  The summary of today's chat

 

Many of you expressed interest in the possibility of participating in some in-depth training sessions around setting up and using this functionality.  I am looking in to this to see what we can put together for you.  If you're interested, I encourage you to subscribe to this topic so that when I update it with further news, you'll be notified!

Thank you to all who attended our Skype Chat on Reporting in CRM.  Attached are the transcript and summary.  Next week, we'll be discussing CRM Upgrades.

During the session, two noteworthy discussions came up:

1.  A request to initiate a comparable weekly Skype Chat group for BBIS.  Standby – we’ll be kicking this off within the next 1-2 weeks.  Keep an eye out in our Upcoming Events page for updates!

1.  A request for a way to share custom reports (or really, anything you’ve built for CRM).  I’ve created a topic here in the community where we can start sharing this information.  If it takes off, we can build a completely separate board to be used as our code library!  Take a look and share a cool report that you’ve written with the group!  We heard about some really great ones in our chat today.

Caroline Barnes:

Thank you to all who attended our Skype Chat on Reporting in CRM.  Attached are the transcript and summary.  Next week, we'll be discussing CRM Upgrades.

 

During the session, two noteworthy discussions came up:

 

1.  A request to initiate a comparable weekly Skype Chat group for BBIS.  Standby – we’ll be kicking this off within the next 1-2 weeks.  Keep an eye out in our Upcoming Events page for updates!

 

1.  A request for a way to share custom reports (or really, anything you’ve built for CRM).  I’ve created a topic here in the community where we can start sharing this information.  If it takes off, we can build a completely separate board to be used as our code library!  Take a look and share a cool report that you’ve written with the group!  We heard about some really great ones in our chat today.

Thank you to all who attended our Skype Chat on Help Desks last Thursday!

Attached are the summary and transcript of the session.

I want to call out the wonderful user portals that UNC - Chapel Hill and UGA have created to share with their users - they are full of blogs, tutorials, training classes, and news about their CRM databases.  What great resources!!

You can check them out here:

UNC - Chapel Hill: http://davie.unc.edu/index.html

UGA: www.alumni.uga.edu/gail

Caroline Barnes:

Thank you to all who attended our Skype Chat on Help Desks last Thursday!

 

Attached are the summary and transcript of the session.

 

I want to call out the wonderful user portals that UNC - Chapel Hill and UGA have created to share with their users - they are full of blogs, tutorials, training classes, and news about their CRM databases.  What great resources!!

 

You can check them out here:

 

UNC - Chapel Hill: http://davie.unc.edu/index.html

UGA: www.alumni.uga.edu/gail

Thank you to everyone who attended our CRM Skype Chat last week, about your experiences working with Blackbaud.  We had a lot of helpful feedback and suggestions, which I'll be working on following up on during the next few days and weeks.  If you're interested in receiving updates on the action items in the attached summary, feel free to subscribe to this topic, by clicking Topic Options > Subscribe.

Caroline Barnes:

Thank you to everyone who attended our CRM Skype chat about Mailings.  We had an interesting discussion.  In particular, it came up that there were a lot of questions about handling name formats in CRM.  As such, I reviewed our current IdeaBank suggestions related to name formats and have listed them below, so that anyone interested can review and vote for them:

 

• Include Name Format Options in Correspondence
• Allow Name Format Options to honor the position of constituents as they appear on a constituent record– from Greg at UGA
• Tie a salutation to a constituent (fundraiser)- from Tracy at UIF
• make it possible to select specific Addressee and specific Salutation for individual Mail Preferences on the Mail Preference screen
• BBECRM: additional fields on mail preference screen (note: this appears to be a duplicate of the suggestion above – I’ve notified product management that they need to be combined)
• If/Then/Else Logic for Name Format Options

 

Additionally, a number of people mentioned that they were looking for a solution for listing alumni first in joint name formats.  We can do this by taking these steps:

 

1. Ensure that any name formats you want to use are marked as "Joint" on the Name Formats tab in Marketing & Communications configuration
2. On the Joint name formats tab, choose the second option, “List constituents from the following selection first”
3. Choose a selection of whatever alumni group you want to mail to (this is neat, because you could potentially have different selections for different colleges within the university, etc.)
4. Choose who to name first if both alumni are in the mailing (for UGA, males are listed first; at Michigan, they list females first) 

 

Finally, Tracy at the University of Iowa Foundation mentioned that they have a lot of special rules for name formats that CRM is currently unable to process - such as calling two spouses who are both doctors "Drs. Smith," as opposed to "Dr. and Dr. Smith" as a joint name - I have added this suggestion to the IdeaBank here - please add your votes!

 

Please feel free to comment with any questions!

Thank you to everyone who attended our CRM Chat last Thursday about managing security in the database.  

We discussed a hot topic - changes to security with the application of service packs.  Check out the transcript and summary (attached) to learn more, and subscribe to this post (Topic Options > Subscribe) for updates on the issue.  At this time, we are waiting for feedback from Products about features being added, and will share their response and continue the conversation from there.

Caroline Barnes:

Thank you to all who attended our Skype chat about the data warehouse on July 17th.  The transcript and summary are attached.

Thank you to everyone who attended our CRM Chat about managing queries yesterday!  

To follow up on the only action item: A number of people were curious about writing queries that pulled information from the data warehouse.  

This functionality became possible in version 3.0, where SDK users could create custom queries and query views based on the data warehouse.  

In version 4.0, we will be adding a new front end query source view, which will allow users to query on constituent information as pulled from the data warehouse.  

Attached are the transcript and summary from the September 11th chat about Integration with Ruffalo Cody and OneSolution.

Transcript and Summary from the 10/23/14 session on Prospect Management

Attached are the summary and transcript of the session

On December 4th, Becky Fullmer and Thomas Lee from The Ohio State University presented a wonderful demonostration about the prospect qualification process.  The session was recorded, and you can view it here.

The summary of the session is also attached.

Our first session in 2015 focused on different ways to manage individual, household, and group records.  The transcript and summary are attached.

Attached are the transcript and summary of the session