Are You Using Local Disk Mapping in Blackbaud Hosting Services?

Recently Blackbaud Hosting Services sent out an email communication to all our users of The Raiser’s Edge, The Education Edge and The Financial Edge to confirm the complete rollout of disk mapping in our data centers. We wanted to highlight a couple of questions we have received as users have enabled this functionality.

Disk mapping allows users to bypass the hosted Files folder when moving files between the hosted environment and the local machine. More information on this new feature can be found in the Knowledgebase solution, How to directly export files from Blackbaud Hosting Services to your local computer (BB739515). We would also like to remind our users that disk mapping is currently for local drives only; network drives are not yet accessible from the hosted environment.

Note: Permanent files such as Crystal Reports, media files, and scheduled queues will still require storage in the hosted Files Folder.

Users will receive a prompt when logging in that an online application is attempting to access the local computer. Each user will need to allow the access in order to use the disk mapping functionality. As Blackbaud Hosting Services is an internet based application, Windows Security requires that all users are prompted when Internet-based applications attempt to access their local hard drive. Should you no longer wish to be prompted to approve this action, the steps in the Knowledgebase solution, Error: An online application is attempting to access files on your computer when launching a Blackbaud Hosted Application can be taken to permanently remove the prompt for your Citrix application only.

We have also found that some users have unintentionally disabled the disk mapping functionality by declining this prompt during login. If a user wishes to use disk mapping, but initially declined the access and is no longer receiving the prompt upon logging into the hosted application, they will need to log out, close the browser and uninstall the Citrix Receiver. After the uninstall completes, open the Hosting landing page and follow the prompts to Install the Receiver. Once Citrix has been re-installed, the user can launch the hosted application and they should receive the Windows security prompt again, at which point they can choose the option to allow access.

Please know it was your feedback that had us focus on this new feature and for that we thank you. It’s our intention to provide you with the best possible service and user experience. Your voice is important and it’s listened to.

If you have questions about disk mapping, please create a case on Case Central, choose your product, and select the Blackbaud Application Hosting topic or contact our Hosting Support team using our chat feature.

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