Relocation to Microsoft Azure

Holli Lindsey

Has anyone recently relocated to the Microsoft Azure cloud-based server? Blackbaud has scheduled us for migration in early November and I am nervous! If you are so inclined, please share your experience and any tips or tricks you may have learned from it. Thanks!

Catherine Burns

Hi @Holli Lindsey
We migrated RE to Azure last November and it went smoothly. The time difference to NZ meant it was done overnight and we had no down time. We followed all the pre-migration guidance. All our users already had NXT access.

Following the update our staff had to learn how to log in to Database view from NXT and how to force quit RE from Database options when there is a crash or login issues. We had to set up the Azure SFTP and schedule password updates every 45 days, we have a Dataro integration that had to be reconfigured slightly for the new SFTP location, we had to re-point our RE Queue exports to the new SFTP, there were slight changes to shared drive mapping and navigation for importing and exporting files, and some ImportOmatic imports had to have the default file location remapped. These were all very manageable and updated within a few days of the change.

The only problem we could not resolve was that we used the old ImportOmatic Mailchimp connector (not Omatic Cloud) and this was broken by the migration to Azure. We now use the Red Arc MailChimp integration instead.

Richard Neal

@Holli Lindsey Good Morning, Holli! I'm interested to know how your migration went? Would you mind sharing? We just received notice they want us to migrate in the first quarter of 2023.