A warning not to use NXT's donation forms due to issues with addresses.

Clement Girault

NXT's donation form designer has a few UX issues but also one huge deal-breaking issue relating to addresses. When a user enters in an address containing a unit number and selects the address (once it appears in NXT's address lookup autocomplete) the unit number gets stripped out. The end result is that we are not able to send direct mails to users who have filled in the form and our database becomes filled with incorrect data.

Austen Brown

Hi @Clement Girault - I recommend you check out the RE NXT Idea Bank and make sure that this topic is represented. If you add an idea, let us know here so we can show our support by voting.

Clement Girault

I really don't think fixing a glaring bug should be considered an "idea" at the Blackbaud end. I think it should be considered a priority. I've already suggested an interim fix that would prevent organisations from acquiring incorrect data (turn off your faulty autocomplete and let your user's browsers use their own tried and tested auto-complete until you've fixed the issue) but this has so far been ignored.

Anthony Gallo

Clement, have you reported this to the support folks yet? I'm just trying to find out if they are working a case and this is just a warning to the group or if this is the first BB is hearing about it.

Clement Girault

I reported it to support over a week ago so this is just a warning to others as Blackbaud hasn't posted such a warning themselves. It's also aimed at applying a bit of pressure on BB to fix things (as I've noticed the javascript for the OLX forms hasn't been updated since 2012 and contains long outdated jquery code). :-)

Keith Wilson

@Clement Girault, thanks for sharing this. I believe this might explain some of the recent returned mail we received that was missing Unit numbers on valid addresses. ?

Clement Girault

I logged an issue for this a month ago. Still no fix. And if there were any comms about this, I didn't receive them. Hugely disappointing – especially considering the interim fix should be as simple as disabling the one line of code calling the javascript that messes everything up.

Clement Girault

Monthly update: Blackbaud now says they won't do anything about this (the issue has been marked as “solved") and they don't appear to want to officially let their users know about the problem.

The “solution” that's been suggested to me: when/if donors realise their unit number was stripped off from their selection, the donors can amend their address manually.

Clement Girault

We're now in July and there is still no option to – at the very least – disable the poorly implemented autocomplete mechanism that strips out unit numbers. Among a few possible solutions, I've suggested Blackbaud use Loqate, to fix this.

Here's an example of a working address lookup:

But I've heard nothing back. Blackbaud's proposed solution is still that we should include some text on our donation forms explaining to potential donors that once they have selected their address (including unit number) through autocomplete they must then manually add the unit number before the address (as it gets stripped out).

Can someone at Blackbaud please confirm that there are no plans to fix this as a matter of urgency?

Dariel Dixon

@Clement Girault:

We're now in July and there is still no option to – at the very least – disable the poorly implemented autocomplete mechanism that strips out unit numbers. Among a few possible solutions, I've suggested Blackbaud use Loqate, to fix this.

Here's an example of a working address lookup:

But I've heard nothing back. Blackbaud's proposed solution is still that we should include some text on our donation forms explaining to potential donors that once they have selected their address (including unit number) through autocomplete they must then manually add the unit number before the address (as it gets stripped out).

Can someone at Blackbaud please confirm that there are no plans to fix this as a matter of urgency?

@Clement Girault Have you tried to escalate the issue? I agree that the “resolution” doesn't solve the problem. However, I would definitely be in contact with my account manager and trying to move this up the pipeline.