Migration to NXT

Raelean Hickson

We have been a RE customer since 1991 and are researching RE NXT. I would like feedback from RE NXT users - specifically those who used RE 7 and migrated to NXT. 

Could you please answer the following questions:

- Was the migration from RE 7 to NXT seamless? Did you experience any big issues?

- After using RE 7 for a length of time and now using NXT, are you happy with the change?

- Do you notice a big difference between RE 7 and NXT - are the differences positive? Or do you wish you were still using RE 7?

- What differences do you notice the most between RE 7 and NXT?

- Are you happy with the decision to move to NXT?

If there is anything that I missed that you want to communicate, please share. The research shows me that NXT is the system to use but I want to make sure I retrieve as much info as possible.

Karen Diener

While I unfortunately don't have the time to really think this through and answer your questions, I do want to set the stage a little bit because there are a couple of important concepts.


After implementing webview (NXT) you will still have access to database view (RE7).  You won't lose access to that view or functionality.  You can continue many of your existing processes there, and will have to in many cases because the functionality does not exist in webview yet.  For instance, robust queries and exports will continue to be done in database view, along with donor acknowledgment letters if you use that functionality.


Blackbaud has directed all development to webview for awhile now.  In many cases they are adding functionality to webview that already exists in database view.  But sometimes they have added new / better functionality in webview that does not write back to database view.  So if/when you start using those features, you may not be able to include them in database view p-queries or exports.  One specific example I can think of is a date feature for the Status dropdown on the Prospect tab.  It is just a dropdown list in database view, but webview applies a date to it so you can see how long a constituent was at a status.  It is a great feature and long overdue, but you will not (currently) be able to export that information from database view.


Webview is what Raiser's Edge will look like in some uncertain number of years.  So everyone WILL need to have it at some point if they continue with Raiser's Edge for their fundraising and constituent management software.


Karen

Dan Snyder

Hi Raelean Hickson‍,

Karen Diener ‍summed it up quite well, the only thing I would add is that as a school that moved to RE NXT 3 years ago we are happy with our decision. I am happy to have a conversation with you if you have further questions.

Candy Sangster

Hi! Here are my answers to your questions!

-- Was the migration from RE 7 to NXT seamless? Did you experience any big issues? Yes, it was very easy and "painless". We had no big issues. 

- After using RE 7 for a length of time and now using NXT, are you happy with the change? While I am happy with the change, I wish some of the same features offered in database view were offered in Webview.

- Do you notice a big difference between RE 7 and NXT - are the differences positive? Or do you wish you were still using RE 7? You will still have access and often use RE 7 (database view)

- What differences do you notice the most between RE 7 and NXT? NXT is way more techy. 

- Are you happy with the decision to move to NXT? Yes. I also encourage you to negotiate your price should your org decide to migrate. If you have specific questions about the negotiation portion please feel free to message me. 

If there is anything that I missed that you want to communicate, please share. The research shows me that NXT is the system to use but I want to make sure I retrieve as much info as possible.

Tiffanie Duncan

Hi Raelean:

I saw your post and wanted to give you some feedback on our experience as we just migrated to NXT in January 2019 after being just RE7 users for years. First I want to put the idea of NXT into perspective. By migrating to NXT you still have access to RE7. Think of your new tools as now the web view and the backend view. You can still do all the same tasks in the backend RE7 view, but now you have this more user-friendly view for fundraisers to use for all their tasks. So by migrating you're only adding a different look to what you already have. Here are my answers to your questions:


- Was the migration from RE 7 to NXT seamless? Did you experience any big issues? - We did not experience any big issues with the actual functionality upgrade, but we had some issues when it came time to set-up the security groups because those have to be set-up in both RE7 and in NXT and that information wasn't forthcoming until someone couldn't access a feature.


- After using RE 7 for a length of time and now using NXT, are you happy with the change? We are absolutely happy with the change. RE7 is now exclusively used by our data and gift recording team. All fundraisers exclusively use NXT because it is a much more user-friendly experience. 


- Do you notice a big difference between RE 7 and NXT - are the differences positive? Or do you wish you were still using RE 7? The differences are very positive but there are still things you can not and should not do in NXT that still have to be done in the backend of RE7. 


- What differences do you notice the most between RE 7 and NXT? The look and feel of NXT is just more intuitive and easier to navigate. Adding a constituent can be done on one screen rather than jumping from tab to tab.


- Are you happy with the decision to move to NXT? Yes, we are happy and our fundraisers love it because it makes life so much easier for their daily tasks. They can access and send information with web links that bring you right into a constituent's record or right into a list of constituents.

Lori Grace

Hi, thanks for the posts on this thread so far.  Our biggest issue is determining how to bring in historic letters that are in actions/gifts to NXT ... it doesn't seem to do that, or I'm not trained sufficiently to do this.


Any suggestions on how to bring these letters in to the constituent's record from RE7 to NXT?


Thanks,


Lori Grace

Pathfinder Village Foundation

 

Karen Diener

Lori - how are your letters "in" actions and gifts?  Are they attached as Papersave documents, or are they part of the action or gift record?


Karen

Lori Grace

Hi Karen, I assume they are attached, but I’m not certain on that.  Here’s a screenshot of a gift screen in RE7 if that helps determine the answer.



 

Karen Diener

I don't think that letters are attached, but I can't say for sure.  If you click on that Word icon in the lower right corner of the screen, are you able to access the letter?


Even if you use the Donor Acknowledgement Letters process in RE, the actual letter is not attached to the gift record.  If you had PaperSave, I believe you would still need to manually attach each individual letter to the gift record.  And if you run an acknowledgement letter directly off the gift record, I don't see that it attaches the final version of the letter in any way either.


Karen

Anna Zimmerman

Some great forward thinking questions, and great responses! Here's my feedback, as the database admin at my org. I cannot do everything that DB view does on NXT, and there's too much missing on NXT to report correctly or process certain gifts or mailings. Just no way. We can't fully migrate to NXT yet. However, NXT has been great for our fundraisers and representatives. NXT is user friendly, especially when it comes to phone access and the ability to look up quick details or record visit notes, etc. It's much easier to teach.


In summary, DB view is great for back of office, NXT is great for front of office.  

Christyn Schnell

Karen Diener:

I don't think that letters are attached, but I can't say for sure.  If you click on that Word icon in the lower right corner of the screen, are you able to access the letter?


Even if you use the Donor Acknowledgement Letters process in RE, the actual letter is not attached to the gift record.  If you had PaperSave, I believe you would still need to manually attach each individual letter to the gift record.  And if you run an acknowledgement letter directly off the gift record, I don't see that it attaches the final version of the letter in any way either.


Karen

Hey, Karen!  Always nice to "speak" to an old colleague.   At my current organization, we run our acknowledgement letters directly from the gift record and then add an action from the letter.  This does save the letter in both the gift and the action via that little Word icon in the bottom right hand corner as was screen shot.  Unfortunately, this does not translate into web view at all. 

What we have done on our end is save the letters outside of the database (so we can print them on letterhead and have them signed) and then I scan them before putting them in the mail.  I then have to add these saved letters within the web view in the gift's attachments.  It is a messy solution but it works for what we need for our reporting...though, once I have some extra time (bwahahaha!!) I am going to try and better streamline this process so everyone is happy - including myself.


Hope this sheds some light on this.


As a response to the original question about switching to NXT - one of the hardest things that I have experienced is the terminology.  Even chat support is confusing with how they inconsistently describe web view (typically referred to as NXT but sometimes not) and database view (typically just referred to as RE but, also, sometimes not) though both are NXT - one is database view and the other is web view. 

There are also items that may need some clean up to work properly out of the new NXT web view.  For example, emails out of the email marketing tool: you can only pick one email type or select the email that is marked as primary.  There is no ability to say "use this email and if that doesn't exist then use this email" like they have in OLX.  Having similar emails labeled the same or to have their preferred email marked as primary was not something that was consistent on our end so that was a large clean up - and there isn't really a way to globally change or even query on who doesn't have an email marked as primary, so that's a fun little thing.  You also cannot save a record unless there is a phone and/or email marked as primary - even if all those that you have on file are no longer valid.  We also wanted to make our emails more personalized and have a Dear <Donor's Name> but you can only pick one merge field: First Name or Nickname.  Because not everyone had a nickname in their record, we couldn't do this until everyone had something in their nickname field.  I solved this by changing the field name from Nickname to "Pref. Name" and filled that in for all constituents so we can now send personalized emails. It's those types of little details that need to be fixed to truly take advantage of all that web view has to offer BUT overall, I have no complaints about NXT at all.

Tom Klimchak

Hi, Raelean Hickson‍ !  I'm taking the time to answer your questions because we've only been on RE NXT for less than two years, so the whole experience is still fresh to us.  I happen to have the time to write out these answers because right now (9/22/20) RE NXT is partially down so my department's work has pretty much ground to a stand still ?


A BIG factor in your conversion to NXT will depend on whether or not you're "self-hosted" (your RE server is local and maintained by you).  We were self-hosted, so moving to Blackbaud hosted environment was a big leap for us.  If you're already hosted then I feel as though the change is not nearly as foreign... 


- Was the migration from RE 7 to NXT seamless? Did you experience any big issues?  It was eerily seamless!  We stopped using RE for three days.  By that time we had a login and all our data was sitting "in the cloud".  We were the most nervous about this but it was pretty easy.  Setting up user accounts and security in NXT was probably the wonkiest part of us.  I think that process has actually improved since we did it.


- After using RE 7 for a length of time and now using NXT, are you happy with the change?  A little under two years.  Mostly happy, though the "that's cool!" factor has worn off and now we're asking "why can't it do THIS?"  Our Development Officers are MUCH happier with it.  


- Do you notice a big difference between RE 7 and NXT - are the differences positive? Or do you wish you were still using RE 7?  Net positive.  RE NXT has all of RE 7 (database view) behind it.  So you don't lose much RE functionality.  You DO lose any direct access and control you may have had to your SQL server if you were self-hosted.  That bothered us for a while but we've gradually accepted it.  It limits some of your "outside vendor" solution options.


- What differences do you notice the most between RE 7 and NXT?  Again, our Development Officers do use RE NXT a lot more.  Actions are put in more easily, proposals are updated more often.  Downloading files and getting things out of "RE 7" (database view) are a little trickier but not a show-stopper.


- Are you happy with the decision to move to NXT?  Generally, yes.  Our IT department loves not having to upgrades things, our Development Officers like using everything much more.  The Raiser's Edge security breach and the much more frequent "partial outages" and slow downs of RE NXT over the last six months have really changed our opinion of Blackbaud, mostly for the worse.  We had some bad sales experiences and some awful support "adventures" for the first year or so after converting to RE NXT.  Most of those issues have been worked out now.


Good luck!  We would also be willing to talk or answer more questions if it would help!

Tina Gerraughty

We just switched over from RE7 to NXT a couple of weeks ago.  Mostly what we do we are in Database View.  All queries, exports, and gift entry are done in Database View.  You can use NXT for looking up a constituent and get a generalized view of the donor history etc.  You have the option of entering new constituents in NXT if you want.  You can also enter a gift in NXT, however we do our gift entry in batches so we only do gift entry in the Database View.  The Database View looks just like RE7.  It will all be familiar to you.  The cross over from RE7 to NXT went very smoothly for us.  Knock on wood.  However, today there is an outage at Blackbaud and has caused a nationwide sluggishness with NXT and Database View.  That's the only downside to going to NXT.  Overall we are satisfied with moving over to NXT.

Becky Jones

Our School uses both RE 7 database and NXT.  Both are for different aspects of use and data entry.  According to Blackbaud, RE database will NEVER go away.  Hopefully NXT will continue to improve so everyone will be able to use it efficiently.  For my part of Raiser's Edge, the database version is the one to stay with.  The NXT version is what my coworkers use that don't want to have to go into Citrix first and then log into RE.  Best way to describe the 2 versions....NXT is prettier; RE database is for the nitty-gritty data entry.

Le Wynnie

Hi,


We're in the similar situation that we are in the process of migrating to RENXT. However, there are three frustrating factors in RENXT. One is that not all fields available in the database view is available in RENXT. To get that details, you have to access the database view or have to create new custom fields just to be able to see it in RENXT. If not then you have to go back and forth between RENXT and database view, which is kind of defeating the purpose of having RENXT and making it more complicated than it's supposed to be or I should say, testing your patience.


Two, the reporting even with the Insights are very limited. While it looks much nicer than in the database view but not all fields are available to viewing in the report, and the other is the user security rights. Even with the help of RE, you can't drill down on the security right. Most of the time, it's either all or nothing.


Wynnie

Mary Chase

Hello! I just read through these posts - I learned a few things about NXT today! I thank you all for that.

We just signed our NXT contract and had our Welcome Call this week. I am working on a project tracking spreadsheet, as I will be the lead on the migration. Does anyone have a check-off list or project spreadsheet of some kind that you would care to share? I am also going to start a new discussion, asking this question.

Thank you, in advance!