Ask the All-Stars: How to Get the Most out of the Blackbaud Community! 9614

Ask the All-Stars: How to Get the Most out of the Blackbaud Community!

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The Blackbaud Community is a fantastic way to connect with your peers, share best practices, and stay informed with Blackbaud announcements and updates. Here are some tips from our Blackbaud Community All-Stars, our most engaged members, on how to make the most out of your time! 

We asked our Blackbaud Community All-Stars to give their best advice and tips for using the Blackbaud Community. They delivered! 

Here are their tips:  

  • Take advantage of free time:Carlene Johnson recommends using down time to visit the community saying, “when I’m stuck on a Zoom meeting or have a query or export that is taking a long time to run, I pop into community and send connection requests to new members.” 

  • Set up reminders:Carrie Powell sets a daily calendar reminder to log in and takes it a step further by “checking the most recent discussions for the products we use and other discussions I’ve bookmarked. If I have a tip or an answer, I reply right then. Other times, I just skim through and learn from what other experts have already shared.” 

  • Subscribe to interesting forums:Alex Wong suggests subscribing to forums that interest you, even if you don’t actively participate, as they can help you expand your knowledge. Specifically, he suggests the SKY Developer forum because, “while not everyone will want to be a no/low-code developer, being able to see what’s possible can drive a creative mind.” 

  • Check your subscriptions:Christine Robertson recommends that all users check their subscriptions to “help stay up to date on all of the products they use.” Karen Diener subscribes to daily updates for all the products she uses and says, “I review posts as part of my morning routine. It’s an easy and interesting way to start my day!”  

  • Make use of bookmark tools: Brian Gray uses the bookmark tool within Community so he can reference particularly helpful discussions in the future. “I save the URL to posts that I may want to find later into a folder in my browser’s bookmark bar. I can edit the name of the browser bookmark if I need to add more information to help me find it later.” You can also bookmark helpful content to your community profile by clicking bookmark on blogs and by clicking the three dots on a discussion and choosing bookmark.  

  • Connect with others in your region:Rachel Cavalier likes to connect with other users in the United Kingdom to “share UK specific challenges and solutions to database management.” She does this by reviewing member profiles and looking at their organization name and location. You update your profile with your organization name and location (city, state, and/or country) by editing your “about me” section on your profile page.

  • Participate in monthly challenges: Dan Snyder recommends participating in the monthly challenges, saying “it is a good way to either build your profile or just stay active and see all that there is to the community.” Monthly challenges are opportunities to participate in a community activity to earn a unique badge. You can stay informed of all the challenges here. 

Want to learn even more about how to get the most out of Blackbaud Community? Check out our help page which has a variety of helpful articles. If you have an idea that you’d like to see implemented in the Community, let us know here.

Thank you to our All-Stars and thank YOU for being a valuable member of our community. You can read more about the Blackbaud Community All-Star program here – we encourage you to work toward becoming one! 

News Community News 06/03/2024 3:55pm EDT

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7 Comments

These tips help you stay informed, engage with others, and make the most of the community resources.

We encourage a 'No Meet Friday' policy at my foundation, so I set a standing block of time to check My Community resources and subscriptions. It's booked time that my colleagues know I am unavailable and gives me the space to explore and learn.

I have instant notifications to the forums I follow (I have a rule in outlook that directs these into a specific folder and I usually go through them 1-2 times a day); if I feel I can make an additional contribution to the discussion then I'll add a comment, otherwise it's lots of like/hearts on comments that resonate. Finally, I make a point to welcome new users to the site at least once a month. And

I will have to start making it a habit to check the community on a regular basis. I usually think of it as a if I have time type of thing. But being more intentional will be on my radar.

Great ideas!

Love these ideas. Would like to ask another question for the All Stars. Which reports and or Queries do you run and look at daily, weekly, monthly?

Amy Barker Amy Barker Jun '24

@Potique Johnson I'd be happy to share my query list and info about those queries as well, if you'd like to send me a message.

Dan Snyder Dan Snyder Jun '24

Similar to @Austen Brown I have dashboards in database view that I check weekly to try and keep our data tidy ?

Send me a direct message, I'm happy to share my data audit list. (I use RE NXT)

Brian Gray – great tip! I bookmark items but they're not well organized.

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