Important Changes To Login Procedures For Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT
This announcement is relevant to Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® and Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® customers who:
- Are hosted in a data center - not Azure.
- Manage login credentials in the database view.
What is happening?
As part of ongoing updates to security protocols, we will soon replace Blackbaud Hosting Services (“Citrix”) credentials with Blackbaud ID (BBID) authentication for accessing the database view of your software. This change streamlines the login experience, eliminating the requirement for users of both web view and database view to manage two sets of credentials, their BBID and Citrix logins.
Once updated, you will use your BBID exclusively to access database view. Say goodbye to the separate Citrix login.
What is the timeline?
We are rolling these updates out in waves beginning in late March. Your organization’s Blackbaud.com account administrators (“organization administrators”) and solution administrators for your NXT solutions will receive an email two weeks before your scheduled update.
Who are the organization admins and solution admins for my organization?
How does this impact my organization?
- For solution admins:
After this update, you will manage user access to database view via web view from Control panel, Security so each user can link their account to a BBID. - For all users:
After this update, instead of logging into Blackbaud Hosting Services (Citrix), users will log into web view with their BBID, select Database, Open database view, and launch database view from the new Citrix access page. - After this update, instead of using Blackbaud Hosting Services (Citrix) credentials to log into the Files Folder, users will enter automatically generated login credentials. To access the credentials, users will select Database view options from top right corner of the Citrix access page.
You must take action
To prepare for this update, solution admins will need to complete the following steps:-
STEP 1: Configure Windows Authentication for each database view user to ensure user settings are properly maintained during this update. If you don't take this step, users may notice color preferences, file locations, Favorites, column selections and order of columns are reset to default when they log in the first time after the update occurs.
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STEP 2: Ensure that every user who accesses the database view version of your solution has a BBID. As an administrator for your software, act now to ensure all users are configured correctly in Control panel, Security, have set up their BBID, and can log into web view successfully.
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STEP 3: Please communicate this change to your database view users so they are aware of these actions and changes.
Helpful Resources
If you have additional questions regarding this update, please contact Support.
Knowledgebase articles:
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Read Blackbaud Hosting Services changes to accessing database view for more information and FAQs.
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Read I need to become an admin for my NXT/SKY solutions if you need to become a solution admin in your database.
Leave a Comment
Hi, I submitted a ticket about this a few moments ago - the communication for non-NXT orgs has been pretty confusing thus far. All of our users were emailed about setting up their BBID, but the email itself did not differentiate between RENXT and RE7 subscribers. From everything I'm reading, it looks like users will be directed to log in now via renxt.blackbaud.com and launch database view, but one KB article mentions that the “new” login url will be login1.blackbaudhosting.com, which is the same as our current citrix login URL. I'd love some clarification because right now we're pretty confused as to what exactly is changing for us.
Hi Jess, you are hosted in OC2 and that data center is going to be switched permanently later today. We had an opt in for about a month to let folks migrate as they wanted to but we are now at the point where that datacenter will be switched for good. Once switched, either URL will work because the current citrix login page will be redirected to our NXT login page. Users will login with BBID and go to an NXT page to run their applications instead of going thru citrix. We handle all the handshakes now so they will only need to use the one BBID login.
Users will setup a new BBID or login with an existing BBID and link that account to their current citrix login thru our wizard. From there they should bookmark the new application page and that will be their portal to launch RE (and anything else).
Good to know
How will we access Crystal Reports and our test database with this update?
@Kelly Garwood All of the options you currently see in the Citrix application window will be in our new experience. Instead of being directly in Citrix you will stay in NXT and we will communicate with Citrix and pull back all the options your account has access to. The only possible exception would be the Administration icon since that is no longer needed and it is replaced by using your BB settings.
Hey Everyone, great questions. I hope these answers help.
@JoAnn Strommen this won't be an issue at all. We are really bringing a similar experience that Azure has to our other datacenters. If we flip the switch before your move, you are fine and if you go to Azure without you will essentially get the same effect.
The statements are an AND in the sense that if you are in Azure, the second item is irrelevant to you. If you manage credentials in your database then you would need to make some changes to the accounts with the steps provided above.
@Sunshine Watson this does not affect anything besides the way we authenticate into the system. BBID will control the Citrix login instead of you having to do that login separately. Permissions will not change for your users. The one thing to note is that the Citrix Admin Console will go away and you will manage everything thru our NXT permissions page.
As for the Supervisor account, we have this answered in the FAQ page mentioned above.
Our webview users have database view profiles but do not have access to the database view. Will they after this change, or can the admin turn that on/off?
How will we log in to the “Supervisor” user in the database view, which is not connected to a BBID?
@Anthony Gallo thanks for the info. I'm not 100% happy about that, but I imagine our web view users will scream in horror and click out of the database view if they open it in error. Ha.
@Sunshine Watson I got some clarification on this and you are correct. Since BBID will be linked to the Citrix access, the user will be able to get into DB view but their permissions will determine what they can see.
Am going to ask here, Anthony, vs. support where they will have to research. Like the increased security for which BB is striving.
"This announcement is relevant to Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT® and Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT® customers who:
We're being moved to Azure second week of April. Will this be an issue? And are above conditions an “and" statement or an “or”? Don't have all the details figured out on hosting by Azure so not sure about how managing login credentials is done there.