Blackbaud.com Outage

Becky Wise 2 · January 2016

Hi, all:

I'm curious to know how the Blackbaud.com outage impacted you? The users in our office were unable to log-in to Blackbaud.com with the single sign on and use RENXT and FENXT. Also unable to use the Knowledgebase. As the administrator for RE/FE, I made two phone calls before I had any information about a work-around. There was no information on the website (only the support phone numbers were listed), no information on the phone recording in the telephone tree and no emails with status updates. Another surprise was when the customer service representative who answered my third phone call was completely unaware of the issue until he made further inquires.

Our foundation is relatively new to Blackbaud products, and with all the hype about their service, I expected better communication from them. Can you share how this impacted you and if you have come to expect a lower level of service when there are outages like this?

Becky

Jennifer Reager · January 2016

We aren't yet using NXT, so I didn't think about that aspect. I can understand that would've been a MAJOR issue.

It was frustrating enough to me that I needed to access Knowledgebase/support and couldn't.

I have always had a good experience with service and support, with the rare exception when I felt like I knew more than the person I was dealing with. I don't recall having seen this happen very often (I've been our ADMIN for about 5 years). Hopefully this won't become a common error.

Definitely contact your Account rep and let them know how it impacted your organization.

Holly Herbert · January 2016

Hi Becky,

I'm going to post this here as well so we share with Raiser's Edge. I'm sorry your team was impacted by the blackbaud.com outage. One suggestion I have is to make sure you're subscribed to the Community News blog. We have been posting updates regarding the outage there.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Holly

Community Manager

Nicole S · January 2016

I was actually unable to attend a training that was scheduled.

Karen Stuhlfeier · January 2016

Our NXT was always accessable, but it would have been nice to receive an email about this outage. It sounds like not everyone knew how to access their database. We receive so many other emails about other outages and server maintenance. Why wasn't an email sent out about this?

Susan Kies · January 2016

I didn't even know that blog mentioned below existed. It has only 9 posts on it total - I agree that email would have been a much more efficient way to reach users.

Jen Claudy · January 2016

Click on the following: [my community] > [My Account] > [Subscriptions] tab > edit the options here as desired, Blogs are the second section and there are two for the Community (Blackbaud Community Blog and Community News).

Not that a dedicated email wouldn't have been helpful, as stated in this thread.

Domain Admin email sent 6/17/19 · January 2016

I would posit that I should not have to be subscribed to a blog thread to receive notifications about an outage for www.blackbaud.com and support.blackbaud.com -- additionally, I'm subscribed to "weekly" notifications on several products and blogs rather than "instant". That doesn't mean I want to know about a current outage in next week's recap.

To be 100% fair, I did receive a response to a community post and a phone message I left with support -- I know Blackbaud was trying to get the problem and fixed and reach out to everyone was much as they could have -- but in the future just send a courtesy email to all customers. Be transparent about the issue. I received several marketing emails while the Blackbaud website was down so I know you all were able to send email.

Laura Caswell · January 2016

I agree with Jeremy. I shouldn't have to subscribe to receiving blog posts instantly in order to know your site is down. I get a daily email on most of the things I am interested in and a weekly on the others.

And as an added "gripe", I can't find half the stuff BB mentions for me to look at. I have yet to figure out how to navigate the "new" community site and if I have to spend hours finding stuff, I'm not going to bother. I truly don't find it user friendly or intuitive. Fortunately I am not a daily RE/FE user so I don't rely on the community for support. Most of what I need can be found in the KB.

laura

Laura Caswell

Info Tech

Worcester State University

Worcester MA

Blackbaud.com Outage

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