"Streamlined" report generation

Dan Hout-Reilly

So this upcoming change to the new "Streamlined report generation" has me worried. It seems like another of Blackbaud's "improvements" that just cause more work. It seems that I will no longer be able to edit a report's parameters, generate that report without saving the edits, and export as PDF AND Excel. I will often edit report parameters without saving so that I don't overwrite an existing report, but I want the information in Excel AND I want the PDF which provides the criteria page. Will I now need to save the parameters and generate the report twice?

Nicholas Murphy

I noticed this the other day and added it to my list to make a post about in the Community.   Our organization uses the Raiser's Edge NXT and Financial Edge NXT.  When Standard Reports were released as a preview in Raiser's Edge NXT, I assumed that the lack of ability to preview reports was due to the preview status and that this functionality would be available when it went to general release.  Seeing this now in FE NXT, I fear that is not the case.

Why would you create a reporting system without previews? This was clearly never tested in the real world.  The vast majority (probably more than 80%) of the reports our team runs are to verify the accuracy of a transaction(especially those not yet posted, as reports are the only way to see those effects on the GL) or obtain an account balance.  Why would you want to be in a situation where you run a report, not be able to monitor its processing, have to download it to your device, and then open it?  While opening a download is relatively simple on a PC/Mac, it is extremely cumbersome on an iPad or mobile device.

The claim that you can continue working while reports run has always been the case.  Clearly, whoever produced that video has never run a report in FE NXT.  Only if you open a report and run have you not been able to continue working.  Running from the context menu (...) or save and run has always allowed you to continue working and view the status of the report process in the lower right corner. What I have experienced in RE NXT, and based on the video linked in Dan's post, you receive a notification that the report is generating.  However, it goes away and you don't see any other notification until it is complete nor can you check on the status.  This will be extremely troublesome if processing several reports in quick succession.

Instead of creating a new process, let's make the current report functions better.  It almost always takes more than 5 seconds for a report to open to be edited. However, I often run into times that it can take 20 to 50 seconds to open.  On top of that there are times during the month/day, that reports run extremely slow.  Almost to point you can't get anything to run in a workable timeframe.  I have made repeated cases with no resolution.  I have asked multiple times what are the computing resources allocated to reporting in each database instance. That is, how many reports can be run at the same time in your database before being queued.  They have refused to answer the question and continue to make you run through the same list of solutions, none of which help.  The fact is, they are not allocating the processing resources that are needed.  This "streamlined report generation" will further hide the inadequacies because you won't know the status.  You won't know whether it is waiting for the server to pickup request, queued, or gathering data nor how long it is taking to process.

Roberta A. Gilbert

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/306343#Comment_306343

Hear hear! I said something similar in another thread. If a computer has time to tell you that it is waiting for a server response, then the server is too slow. I probably lose about an hour a day, waiting for reports to generate, or for the throbbing green ball to finally display what I came to see.

Stephanie Gabbert

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/306343#Comment_306343

Lucky you! Our balance sheet consistently taking 25 minutes to run, and our P&L about 5 minutes. And we have 40 P&L's at least, that we need to run.

Roberta A. Gilbert

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/307246#Comment_307246

🤨 Balance Sheets take time to run because they literally have to start at the beginning of your setup in FE, and roll forward x-number of fiscal years until the date you entered for the cutoff. But 25 minutes… seems excessive, even if you started with Blackbaud back when it was just Fundware. P&Ls are only for one year at a time, so they don't take as long.

But still, I miss having all these reports just pop onto the screen when they are ready, as they did in the database, instead of having us download a report, and open it in an external app, only to delete it seconds later. Rinse and repeat.

One thing that helped me: I open most PDF-style reports in another browser tab (Firefox, and I think most major browsers like Chrome, Edge, etc support this now) and then from there I can print it, save it, export it, etc with a keyboard command. Or I can just close the tab without losing the FE page where I first ran the report. This won't save FE's server processing time, but once you have the report, you don't need to open a 3rd party program to view it or save it locally.

Hope this helps!

Cyndi Park

Agree with all of the above comments. Another back step to the previous reporting is that I used to view the report, click on the date of an invoice, it takes me to the invoice, then I go back to the report and click on another date for another invoice.

Now I need to open up the pdf, click on the date to the invoice, then I have to go back to access the same pdf report to click on a different date. I just did that process 10 times. This is a waste of time.

There was also the note that you can go back and access a report that was processed 3 days ago. In concept this might seem beneficial. But if you use the same report template ("GL Activity") then every report is titled GL Activity even though they might have different filters. So it usually isn't an advantage. If you needed a specific previous report, I could access via download folder.

Becky Willoughby

Well the NEW Report Generation showed up on our system of Financial Edge NXT today, and it SUCKS!!! We no longer have the ability to just "view" the report by hitting RUN to make sure the parameters are the way we want them and then 'export to excel or pdf' for using in our processes. Unfortunately now everything goes to the download button/notification, then we have to open it, but make sure to close the window that submits the parameters before it runs (in the background). NOW it takes me 3 times as long to run a string of reports for our different borrowers just waiting for this report generation to take place, get it downloaded, check the information and then if I picked the wrong format that I needed, rerun the thing!!! Used to be able to 'preview' the report, then decide if better to have in pdf or excel. Another streamlining idea gone BAD. Please bring back the RUN mode so we can run several reports at once and don't have to keep closing the parameter window every time we want to generate a report for each of 25 borrowers at a time…..TAKES WAY TOO MUCH TIME!!!!

Ferdie Alayon

Today's my first time to run reports and see the changes. It's just not efficient.

Bring back the preview screen.

Susan Trippe

I'm confused. Nothing has changed with my FENXT reporting. I still have the preview screen.

Sandy Scott

Agreed, please bring back the report preview screen.

Augustine Gilmore

Agreed, I would like the preview screen back. Sometime, I just want to view a report.

Carolyn Maybruck

I don't see the point of taking away the preview…it does not 'streamline' anything.

Bradley Gustafson

My accounting team agrees; bring back the previous system. Yesterday I added a new column to one of my income statement reports and I typed an error; I forgot a '+' sign. That happens. I generated a PDF and never heard back; nothing. It wasn't until one of my team members double checked my columns for me and discovered my error and fixed it. The previous system would have at least told me there was an error.

Collin Shea Casey

Agree with everyone else that the new report generation is the opposite of efficient. Not sure if others have experienced this, but now when one team member is running a large report, it significantly slows down report generation for others on the team. This was never the case before.

If someone on my team is running a large report and I'm not aware that they're doing so, I'll try to run a report, receive the brief popup message "generating report - notification displays when complete", and then nothing happens……sometimes for over an hour. There's no way for me to know the status of the report, if it's actually generating, why it takes so long, etc.

In addition, I've run into two instances where I've received the error message "unable to provide .pdf download link", and support has been unable to assist me in any way.

Bring back the old report generation system, please!

Rena Lolley

I wholeheartedly with all of these comments. This is taking longer and not as easy to see the reports etc. I don't want to have to download the report every single time I want to run a report. I only want to download it when I am ready to send the report to someone else or print it.

Please Blackbaud - change this back to the way it used to be!

I am also now having problems with the report not saving my parameter changes. Specifically, when I change the level I want to see. It lets me change it and save it but when I run the report it is still showing the one with all 10 levels!