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Luminate Online Web Services (SOAP) - breaking change notifications

Szymon Zaleski

Is it possible to subscribe to some kind of notification list to get informed whenever data objects within the Service Reference for LuminateWS are getting updated?

We are using Luminate WS to build a on-site data warehouse. For the second time within the past two months our sync started throwing “Error in deserializing body of reply message…”, which went away after updating Service Reference. It would be nice to know when an update like this is coming to be prepared for a necessary software update.

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Comments

Crystal Bruce

@Szymon Zaleski Hi! You can subscribe to the blogs here Blackbaud Luminate Online® Blog. The Luminate team posts updates there. I am also checking with my team on this particular update and how it was communicated. Thanks!

Jason Durocher

@Szymon Zaleski Thanks for reaching out, Szymon.

At this time, all updates—including changes to data objects and service references—are documented in the LWS Release Notes. We recommend checking this page regularly for the most up-to-date information: Luminate Web Services Release Notes

William da Silva

@Szymon Zaleski Disruptive updates can be frustrating. As far as I know, the LO SOAP API has not changed much in many years, so your issues might be related to something else.

If you are interested in acquiring a managed product, Charity Automator by SimpliPhi can run the ETL process and pump your data in your onsite data warehouse. Our custom ETL engine can also grab data from other systems including Raiser's Edge NXT, Financial Edge NXT, Salesforce and more…

Venky Immadisetty

@Szymon Zaleski
Hi Szymon, could you please explain the overview of how you are storing the data into your database. Are you using Server API calls? How was the setup done?
Thank you!

Szymon Zaleski

@Venky Immadisetty
We are using SOAP, not REST API (Server API you mentioned).
There is a pretty good documentation on the SOAP capabilities here:
https://developer.blackbaud.com/lo-api/web-services/getting-started
including examples of how to develop a similar client application.

We have our own SQL server that we use as a data warehouse. I designed tables to reflect the LO data structures described here: https://developer.blackbaud.com/lo-api/web-services/types
and created a .NET application, that runs on a specific schedule and incrementally downloads new and updated constituents, donations, emails, surveys, and Team Raiser data. When you build an application, you can link a specific service reference (WSDL) that contains methods and data structures, with all the custom fields your organization is using.

Now because we are also using the same SQL Server to store RENXT backup, that we download daily, it allows us integrate RENXT and LO reporting, as well as exposing LO data in RENXT through SKY Add-ins as NXT tiles, for example email stats on a constituent record, or their Team Raiser participation and fundraising totals (I had a presentation about our SKY Add-ins at last year's bbdevdays and then at bbcon in Seattle). It also allows us some level of integration between the two systems, like creating new records in LO, when a new constituent with an email is added in RENXT, or maintaining LO mailing groups for specific memberships in RENXT or specific types of donors by adding and removing constituents from them daily.