Converting from Sphere to Team Raiser

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Linda Allen
Linda Allen ✭
Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
in Blackbaud Luminate Online® & Blackbaud TeamRaiser® Discussions
We are considering switching from Sphere to Team Raiser and looking for advice from those who have made the switch. Is there improvement on the back end? Those that only have TR and not luminate how difficult is it to get gifts into RE. What do you wish you knew before making the switch.
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  • Michael Ugarte
    Michael Ugarte ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    I would also love to know this as well.... 
  • Leeanne Clark
    Leeanne Clark ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    Hi Linda, 


    Where I work we just recently made the switch and launched our first events in January of this year so it's still fairly new for me. Currently we use a blueprint (basicaly a template in Sphere) to build our 40 run/walk events a year, we also have other events and a DIY fundraising TeamRaiser that is currently being built. We do use Lumiate Online to Raiser's Edge intrgration for the donations so I can't speak to that process if you don't. That said, the back end is cleaner for the most part and easy to enter gifts offline if needed. However, the biggest downside for back end entry has to be company gifts not made with an indiviudal representative. You can enter a general company gift for an event, but you cannot credit this to a particular participants/team's fundraising efforts. The only way to currently do this is to enter the company gift with the name of the company entered as the first/last name of donor. We're still trying to figure out if there are any other solutions to this since that has the potential to really disturb our database. 


    The two biggest things I was I knew before making the switch was the limit to updates blueprints and social sharing from a participant fundraising page. In Sphere we could update a template and push to all the child events with the exception "

    Update ONLY Child Events that have NOT modified this area." With blueprints you cannot choose this option, you either push the update to all child events or you cannot. Also, in Sphere if a participant customized their personal page photo and then shared their page link on Facebook it would populate their custom photo. TeamRaiser will only populate the default image even if they customized which is very disappointing for my fundraisers. 


    I hope some of this was helpful!


    Leeanne
  • Linda Allen
    Linda Allen ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Thank you Leeanne, the was helpful. We are holding for at least another year hoping to get more feedback from others. One feature we have is to allow survivors to register for free and anyone else who either can't afford the fee or doesn't want to use a credit card online. We have found that the majority of them raise a lot more than the $10 registration fee in the end. I understand this is not an option in TeamRaiser. We only have 2 events a year that we use it for any both have custom templates.

     
  • Leeanne Clark
    Leeanne Clark ✭
    Ninth Anniversary Photogenic First Reply
    Hi Linda, 


    Having a free registration type is definitely an option in Team Raiser, we have one for your race day volunteers. We have 5 different fee types and this is the only one we have that is free, but all types are "fundraisers" that then get participant centers to manage their fundraising online. There are a few ways you can do this in TeamRaiser. 


    1) Use a discount code: This would require them to enter a code to get the discount, but is one of the most straight forward options. 


    2) Set a $0 fee type publicy: Everyone can techncially see this fee type and register for it. 


    3) Make it a hidden $0 fee type: This we don't use, but may be the best option for some. This restricts the fee type until a promo code is entered by the participant to show they can use it so only though that should can use the $0 fee type. 


    Leeanne

     
  • Linda Allen
    Linda Allen ✭
    Tenth Anniversary Facilitator 1 Photogenic
    Good to know about # 2 which is the way we would want it I was only told #1 was an option which I didn't like for our survivors
  • Noah Cooper
    Noah Cooper ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Leeanne Clark:


    Also, in Sphere if a participant customized their personal page photo and then shared their page link on Facebook it would populate their custom photo. TeamRaiser will only populate the default image even if they customized which is very disappointing for my fundraisers. 

    Leanne,


    The issue you're describing with Facebook share is actually solvable with some meta tags in your page wrapper. The JDRF One Walk and Ride websites are good examples of this.


    Here's an example of some Open Graph meta tags you could put in the <head> of your wrapper:

    [[?xpersonalxteamx::x[[S334:pg]]x::<br /><br/>  <!-- personal and team pages --><br /><br/>  <meta property="og:url" content="[[T4:[[S8]]]]"><br /><br/>  <meta property="og:title" content="Your title for personal and team pages."><br /><br/>  <meta property="og:description" content="Your description for personal and team pages."><br /><br/>  [[?xx::x[[C4:graphic_upload]]x::<br /><br/>    <!-- user does not have a photo uploaded --><br /><br/>    <meta property="og:image" content="http://[[S29:DOMAIN]]/images/default-personal-and-team-share-photo.png"><br /><br/>  ::<br /><br/>    <!-- user has a photo uploaded --><br /><br/>    <meta property="og:image" content="[[E130:[[T8:[[C4:graphic_upload]]]] [[T8:../]] [[T8:http://[[S29:DOMAIN]]/]] replaceall]]"><br /><br/>  ]]<br /><br/>::<br /><br/>  [[?xparticipant_centerx::x[[S334:pagename]]x::<br /><br/>    <!-- participant center --><br /><br/>    <meta property="og:url" content="http://[[S29:DOMAIN]][[S29:PATH]]TR?fr_id=[[S334:fr_id]]&pg=personal&px=[[S1:cons_id]]"><br /><br/>  ::<br /><br/>    <!-- default for all other pages --><br /><br/>    <meta property="og:url" content="[[T4:[[S8]]]]"><br /><br/>    <meta property="og:title" content="Your default title."><br /><br/>    <meta property="og:description" content="Your default description."><br /><br/>    <meta property="og:image" content="http://[[S29:DOMAIN]]/images/default-share-photo.png"><br /><br/>  ]]<br /><br/>]]


    You'd want to change out the placeholder text and images I've included, but what this code is doing is saying that if the page being shared is a personal or team page, check if there is a customized photo, and if so, instruct Facebook to use it. The default photo will only be used if there is no custom photo uploaded.


    There's also an extra bit in here that checks if the page being shared is the participant center (which is doing by checking if the pagename is "participant_center", you'd need to change that to what your page is actually called), and if so, tell Facebook to share the personal page, since that's probably what the participant was actually trying to do.


    You can expand on this conditional to do even more advanced stuff, like setting unique meta tags for the donation confirmation page for example.

  • Jeremy Reynolds
    Jeremy Reynolds ✭
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic
    Thanks Noah, we'll take a look at that. I was just about to update our template's tags, and that's exactly what we needed!


    I noticed that the issue seems to come from PC2 not creating any reference for data-janrain-image in teamraisers_utils.js -- if that gets added in at a later time, do you think it'd override the open graph tags from your code?


    Also wondering, is there a reference anywhere to the different E/T/C tags?

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