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Blackbaud Cloud

Robert McConnaughey

I am reaching out the community to ask a few questions regarding NXT / Database and their experience with Blackbaud.

We recently moved from the on premise applications of both Raiser's Edge and Financial Edge to the Cloud

Our Account Executive at Blackbaud assured us that all the concerns other users were or had experienced with NXT and Database such as slowness and accessibility had been resolved and we were okay with moving to the Cloud as it would be much better and get better support since more of Blackbaud's resources were being put into their new platform applications.

We made the transition and have been in the Cloud environment for about a month now and we are regretting our decision.

I have reached out to Blackbaud over the last month with little to no resolution

Some of the issues we are experiencing are

- Users are unable to access certain modules of RE both in NXT or Database view. This is not a security setting as they could access the module yesterday but not today. Blackbaud support suggests we redo their user account as they cannot explain why this happens.

- As most of the administration work for both RE and FE is not accessible in web view and needs to be done in database view, accessing the system is extremely slow.

- Citrix times out after 15 minutes and is causing issues with accessibility

- Custom Crystal Reports are accessible one day but not the next or they become unlinked

- What if any issues are other users experiencing?

- If you have or had issues was/is Blackbaud responsive in getting them fixed and how

Additional question - are there any RE / FE users who integrate with the third party product PaperSave - this is another area of major issues for us

Thank you

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Comments

Austin titus

Join the crowd! I've been waiting 4 months to get our 80 FE issues resolved. So far, not one fix.

AnneMarie Smith

I think they have grown too much and are having trouble keeping up with issues. I've been with Blackbaud for years but customer service is no longer responsive and everything has to be escalated.

Anne-Marie

Jose Dominguez

We have been complaining about the slowness for years and BB only recently tried to fix it. At the end of the day nothing changed. Servers are in Boston and we are in Los Angeles.

Stacey Brake

Same issues here. We migrated from DonorPerfect to RE NXT in 2018. We were constantly having the database view freeze up to where we had to reboot. It also moved at a glacial pace...adding items to the Media tab, for example, took FOREVER to add. After a few months of complaining, a support person took charge of our issues and resolved some of them - speed, connectivity issues, freezing screens. We still have challenges, but whatever he did helped (as well as installing the latest version of Citrix). Also, because we are an NXT customer, we have to use the server in Boston (the only one they have for NXT) but we are in Los Angeles which I think is also a factor in the slow connection/response times. I agree with the other posters - customer service via the support line can be ineffective at times but keep hounding them until something is done.

Robert McConnaughey

Blackbaud commented to me that we were the only client experiencing these issues with NXT and the Cloud. . . . although not happy with the issues we are all experiencing but glad to know we are not alone. So thank you everyone for your input and please keep posting.

We are located in Palm Desert, CA and since we integrate with PaperSave our data is required to be housed on the Boston server for the two applications to communicate. It does seem counter productive for West Coast customers having to access their data from a East Coast server.

Blackbaud did correct the time out issue with Citrix which seems to have helped with slowness and drops in communication with PaperSave. This has not been a fix all for sure.

Hopefully Blackbaud is reviewing these comments from other users and will take corrective actions moving forward.

Sannyasin Siddhanathaswami

Aloha from Kauai!

Yes. We also experience slowdowns. We are in a rural part of the island of Kauai, which is many miles from the main island of Oahu, in the middle of the Pacific! We are about as far as you can possibly be away from the Boston servers in the USA at least.

I've worked with support on these slowness issues with some success. What's most telling to me, is how varied the speeds are. Sometimes it's actually pretty fast, sometimes it's unusable.

I suspect it has something to do with their servers being loaded regularly, versus distance from Boston.

I'm shocked to hear that support told you that you were the only client experiencing slowness!?!?! That's not good.

Hopefully things will improve.

Siddhanathaswami

Wendy Taylor

RE: Papersave - We have been using papersave for years and it was not until we upgraded to NXT (and the cloud version of papersave) that we started having issues. While it is very frustrating, I have found papersave support very helpful. I must add though; I went through several papersave support personnel before I found one who went above and beyond for our company to get our issues addressed. Papersave has since been working with minimal issues and when an issue arises, it is addressed within an hour or two. My main suggestion would be, when you find a good papersave support technician get their direct contact information. It was after I was talking to the same support personnel each time I called that everything got so much better. I feel like this made me a person to them, instead of just a random phone call from a random company that happens to use the papersave software.

Thomas Walker

Austin titus:

Join the crowd! I've been waiting 4 months to get our 80 FE issues resolved. So far, not one fix.

Austin, could you let me know your organizations name or site id? I'd like to look at them in our CRM.

Thanks

Austin titus

Tom-

Your message to me: "Austin, could you let me know your organizations name or site id? I'd like to look at them in our CRM.

Thanks"

I thought you would never forget your visit (and Heather's) with me! Our organization is: Epiphany Church, ArchNY

Bill Lathram has the list of all items submitted of which a mere 2 have been addressed. A lot of promises but no results. So very frustrating- as I demonstrated to you, especially since so many of the items are simple fixes for a company with so may competent engineers!