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Dashboards

Samira Seidu

Has anyone been able to fully trust the dashboards in RE NXT? I’m a bit skeptical of the numbers I’m getting, and the fact that it can take up to a few hours for the dashboards to update makes it feel less efficient for reporting. Blackbaud confirms that metrics in Analysis and Fundraising dashboards can take up to three hours to update.

I’m curious how other organizations handle their reporting. Do you primarily use the NXT dashboards, Database View reports/queries, Excel, Power BI, or a combination of these? I’d love to hear what works best for others.

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Delphine Rocher-Lewis

Definitely depends what data points you're looking at, but the Dashboards can be really useful for things related to portfolios (Actions, Prospects, Opportunities) and there are some great metrics that we can follow.

However, we mostly use Excel and PowerBI for our reporting. I use Dashboards more like add-ons for "easy" data.

Angela Pizzolato

My team has been using dashboards for the last few years. They have been a great tool for us. The output is limited but we do have a revenue report, opportunities, and event tracking dashboards that are regularly used. We don't use them with the expectation of real time results. Most people are checking them once a day or going to them for specific needs. For deeper analysis, we export information for work in excel and other reporting tools.

Samira Seidu

Thanks for your response. We currently use Excel as well, but we’ve recently been considering moving to Power BI. The goal is to eliminate some of the manual processes involved in Excel and move toward RE NXT for better visuals and reporting. However, I’m finding that some of the information in RE NXT, particularly the totals for donations received and committed, doesn’t always seem reliable.

Sara Niemiec

Currently, my team is using DB view reports and Excel. I'm not fond of the manual processes and am setting my sights on Power BI.

Angela Pizzolato

I'm not sure if this is covered in the training, but one thing I discovered was you really need to check every place there are dates or filters.

-Under Edit Properties on the Insight, you have to select the date field you want the date filter to control. For some reason it defaults to constituent added date. There are tons of options here for fiscal and calendar year constituent, gift, action, and opportunity dates.

-Check any hard coded or relative date filters in the Insight itself

-For giving, also check the gift types you have set up for default committed and received. You may need to recreate those in the Insight.

Bobby Steurer

@Angela Pizzolato Well said. The constant checking for dates/filters alignment has been somewhat of a distraction for me in past experiences. I like the idea of Dashboards, but they're definitely not as "set and forget" as one would hope. I find the available insights leave a bit to be desired, too. I don't know of a better, easier alternative though. It's a trade-off - do you deal with those hassles and limitations of Dashboards so that your staff can easily see stats any time they want, from any device? Or do you teach yourself the ins/outs of something like Power BI, which then sort of becomes a siloed tool that only you have the "keys" to?

Alex Wong

I don't use Insight/Dashboard from RENXT, however, when I investigated them, the data is trustable. It is the nuance of settings (i.e. Committed vs Received gift type setting, date filter, etc)

The lack of additional data (specifically with custom field) is why we never used it in any production capacity.

We build Power BI (data powered by Data Warehouse using SKY API/Power Automate) that is integrated into RE NXT using SKY Add-ins. So to a regular user/staff, it's like a report that exists in RE NXT.

Don Burrhus

We too use the RENXT dashboards, but the lack of available fields and filter limitations in combination with the complexity of our data leaves much to be desired and has lead to inaccuracies, so we don't treat them as gospel. We routinely use external tooling (Excel/Tableau) to get to the precise answers needed.

JoAnn Strommen

LOL - I recently had to set up multiple dashboards for our athletic department to track their scholarship funds. I have a headline insight that displays the total amount. It's the accuraate figure per accounting. Next to it I have an insight that column chart showing the total. At end of FY26, the amount varied by $6.30.

I had other staff look at all the settings. We could come up with no reason for the discrepancy. Another of their dashboards varied on the two by a couple hundred $.

So trust? Only with confirmation. 🤔

Don Burrhus

https://community.blackbaud.com/discussion/comment/316832#Comment_316832

We had a similar quandary… I found that it came down to the Insight reflecting Fund split Amounts incorrectly. There was a filter for certain Funds to be excluded and the amount reflected in the Insight was not the same as the Fund Split. The Fund Split amount contributing to the sum had a strange proportion calculation applied, but at least it was consistent across all of the relevant gifts.

Keith Wilson

We use Insight Designer and RE-NXT dashboards and find them reliable. As others have stated, you do have to be very thorough in checking all of the settings in Gift Configurations, Received/Committed Revenue etc. Interestingly, we also use Power BI to report gift revenue to Executives within the org, and the Power BI report is always wrong. We're pretty sure it has to do with soft-credits, but we have never been able to resolve the discrepancies. 🤷‍♂️

Alan Cole

We have used dashboards for a while now, and find they work very well for us. One area I struggled with in using them is with revenue reports. This almost always because of a filter or output setting in the insight. Dates, gift types, or committed vs. received revenue are usually the culprit when I struggle to validate the accuracy of a report. But once you get them set up it is great. I have on occasion, had to go back and tweak a report because it doesn't match a corresponding database view report, so I do validate them periodically.