Best Of
Re: Custom Smart Field - string data type max field size
@Dyan Karstens
I am not sure there is a great around that limitation. Smart fields do not support a long text data type like Memo. You might be able to do something fancy where the smart field value is a foreign key to a custom table you create that supports longer text, but that might be a little convoluted to create and support.
I think one way you might be able to get around that would be to use an attribute with a Memo datatype. You could write a global change and/or function that pulls in the desired string lists, and writes them to the attribute table.
Re: Repeating Letter Issues
Rats! That is exactly what I found. Everything referred to a Plumsail or Encodian or AI Builder which require extra cost. It may be going back to the drawing board and assessing our situation with letter codes.
I really appreciate the confirmation. I kinda felt like I was spinning my wheels in the mud and maybe not fully comprehending the flow structures or missing pieces in the process. There have been many redos and fresh starts?.
Thanks,
Cheena
Sharing my Import Templates
I had the pleasure of tuning into the Blackbaud Champions data cleanup roundtable yesterday and the subject of imports for cleanup and creating templates from the import guidebook came up. A few people mentioned wanting template examples, and I've built up a few over the years, which I'm sharing here. For all of these, if you are updating existing records, you will need the import ID of the constituent and sometimes the phone number or other piece of information.
Please feel free to ask any questions!
- Address import template - useful for cleanup or importing data from a third party verification service
- Actions import template
- Constituent import template - I used this one for brand new event attendees who were in an external system.
- Hard bounce Email Import - this is a template I use to mass mark emails as hard bounced from an external software (in this case mailchimp). You will have to query the email addresses and export the constituent import ID and the phone ID's for each email address you want to modify.
- Notes import template - Mass adding notes. We use this to track our top 25 vendors for each fiscal year.
- Phone Import - I use this for data cleanup by exporting phones, identifying duplicates, then using the constituent and phone ID's to change the phone types of the dupes to DELETE, which I can globally delete via a plugin. Especially useful after a phonefinder run.
Constituent Import Template - Individuals.csv
Hard Bounce Email Import Template.csv
New user - vote for my ideas!
Hi everyone! We are new NXT institution coming out of Slate. I have lots of ideas and would love your votes/feedback. Excited to be a part of this community! Links to my ideas:
- Constituent List Upgrades (RENXT-I-8403)
- Send emails in recipient time zone (RENXT-I-82229)
- Ability to view examples of what your email merge fields will look like populated (RENXT-I-8275/0
- Ability to copy and save summary field in Query (RENXT-I-8274)
Thanks!
Create Event Participant WITHOUT Creating a Constituent First
We are working with CVENT to integrate the event registrants with RENXT. For Event participants that match a constituent record, the integration is working to create an event participant. But for those that don't match a current constituent record, we keep experiencing an error when trying to create an event participant without creating a constituent first. Most of the event participants do match but there will be some that don't match that we only want as a participant record.
Has anyone found a solution to make this work in the API? Any suggestions or ideas would be helpful.
We have been working with BBaud Support and they are no help!
We are working off of the API documentation here: https://developer.sky.blackbaud.com/api#api=event&operation=CreateParticipant
Also included is the Payload here:
{
"raw": {
"rsvp_status": "Attending",
"invitation_status": "Invited",
"attended": false,
"rsvp_date": {
"d": 28,
"m": 5,
"y": 2025
}
}
}
***** The error we receive is the following:
HTTP response
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
cache-control: no-store, must-revalidate, no-cache
content-length: 189
content-type: application/json; charset=utf-8
[{
"message": "The contact ID is required.",
"error_name": "CreateParticipantContactIdNotSupplied",
"error_code": 1017,
"raw_message": "The contact ID is required."
}]
Re: Constituent List - exclude/include
@Dariel Dixon
I'm not sure it was intentional. Originally it seemed as though Lists was supposed to be the “better version of Query” in webview, completely redesigned from the ground up, just as webview batching was redesigned from the ground up. At a certain point BB realized that the old functions were much more robust than Lists and webview batching, and so they launched the plan to pull DB Query and Batch into webview instead - which is what they've been doing since last year. I think that is the reason that webview email links to Lists and not Query. My hope is that they add that connection down the road. But they have their hands full right now trying to meet their “complete webview functionality” by 2026 so as to deactivate DB view. So I don't imagine that other details like this will have much room in their priority list for awhile.
Re: Constituent List - exclude/include
@Karen Diener We send segmented emails by donor giving history. To send an email, you have to use a constituent lists, and to build a constituent list off a query, it has to be static. The need for the capability to create dynamic email lists that consider giving history logic seems like a given for advancement shops.
Re: Location for BBCOM 2025
@Payal Sen The conference FAQ says: “The in-person event will be hosted at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, 1101 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107. "
Re: Constituent List - exclude/include
@Karen Diener, she can't use queries because she is using the email feature in NXT. The email only allows you to create an audience from a list, not a query. @Amy Bridges can only create a list from a static query. Maybe when the Constant Contact functionality comes along this will change.
Re: Any best practices recommendations?
@Wade Barren Yes, as @Dariel Dixon said - widely debated subject.
While some donation forms allow you to have the field and make it required, it doesn't seem to be a popular item on many crowdfunding platforms.
I would love to say that we have it on all records so can use if formal add/sal is needed but we don't. Not having the title does require special attention when you have a default format for primary that uses titles.
So, we don't require it but do include it on all our alumni records as we get that info from university grad files. For a lot of crowdfunding donors, we don't have it and there are so many names that are gender-neutral - more all the time.
