Printing Gift Letters / Receipts from Donor Record?

Trent Smither · May 2023

Hi, is there a way to print individual gift acknowledgement letters from within the donor or gift record in either NXT or database view? Thanks.

Austen Brown · May 2023

@Trent Smither - Natively, this is not possible within either view. You can however, utilize Power Automate with an add-in button for Web View to accomplish this. Check out this link for more information:

Trent Smither · May 2023

@Austen Brown thank you! I am laughing because I really want to do this, but also think this might be above my ability set.

In your estimation, how much time would this take for a beginner?

"To successfully complete this tutorial, you need to meet the following prerequisites before beginning.

You are an environment admin who can create and connect applications in the Blackbaud Marketplace for your Raiser's Edge NXT solution.
You have a SKY Developer account. If you don't have one, you can create one by completing the SKY Developer Getting Started.
Access to Microsoft Word and Microsoft SharePoint."

Veronica Renzo · May 2023

@Trent Smither You can download the free version of Letter Box to use within RE NXT. This might be your easiest option. There are tutorials available and shouldn't take you too long to learn if you are just doing basic ack letters.

Carrie Aranda · May 2023

@Trent Smither I second the free version of Letter Box. We just implemented this in order to be able to reprint donor receipts from gift records in NXT and it works great. It is working so well that we are thinking about upgrading to the paid version so we can do our bulk letters and annual donor statements through Letter Box.

Austen Brown · May 2023

@Trent Smither - Since it sounds like this would be your first flow via Power Automate, I recommend taking the time to watch the Accelerator Course that Blackbaud has put together, to learn how to use this app - building flows yourself is a time/effort commitment. Link to the online course: https://docs.blackbaud.com/microsoft-connectors-docs/microsoft-power-platform/getting-started/training#accelerator-101-on-demand-videos

If you would prefer someone else build it for you, the firm I work for has an automation division: AutomateGenius. Check out this link for more information on fundraising automations that will delight your donors, streamline your gift processing and help raise your org more money: https://askgenius.com/automategenius/

Karen Diener · May 2023

@Trent Smither:
@Austen Brown thank you! I am laughing because I really want to do this, but also think this might be above my ability set.
In your estimation, how much time would this take for a beginner?
"To successfully complete this tutorial, you need to meet the following prerequisites before beginning.
You are an environment admin who can create and connect applications in the Blackbaud Marketplace for your Raiser's Edge NXT solution.
You have a SKY Developer account. If you don't have one, you can create one by completing the SKY Developer Getting Started.
Access to Microsoft Word and Microsoft SharePoint."

I would estimate that it will take more time than warranted to do something that is SO fundamental for nonprofit organizations. The bulleted items above are, to be fair, all about getting access and not about skills. But wrapping your heard around it all, and helping your users do the same, could be a challenge.

You WILL be building skills to be sure, but also potentially building technical debt for your organization. If you build a flow and it works great, what happens when you leave and it breaks somewhere down the road?

My recommendation is to try something like the RedArc product that others have recommended. It is a pretty good balance between ease and cost.

Karen

Alex Wong · May 2023

@Karen Diener
@Trent Smither

No doubt that embarking on “customization” of RE NXT via API is a “technical debt” for the org, though I think really depends on the org's need. If the org need can be easily taken care of by off-the-shelf product, and the org doesn't mind paying for the service, then that's great match.

If org has more potential customization need, using a partner is a good idea, though an expansive one usually.

Something simple to get your feet wet and then explore down this path may be a good development in your career and your appreciation by the org you work for. Every non profit org would love to have their manual little process automated without the need to hire a full fetch developer. Through these automation, human error is relieved and time is saved by those that has been doing it manually. Even if you do plan to leave the org, these are skills you will take with you and will be a strong experience for better pay.

Regarding “technical debt”:
If customization has been developed, regardless of through org's own staff or vendor or off-the-shelf product, “support” is needed regardless. Either the org is paying for the “support” via monthly service payment, or new SOW with the vendor, or hiring replacement staff that comes with the knowledge.

Dan Snyder · May 2023

@Trent Smither You have received a bunch of great answers to your question here and as a shameless plug, I will be presenting on this type of add-in at #bbdevdays on June 6 at 12:30 EST. I have shared the flows I will cover in my presentation (you won't necessarily need them all) here.

Karen Diener · May 2023

Absolutely correct, @Alex Wong. There are some serious growing pains in the industry right now, and nonprofits are going to need to recognize the need to pay staff and keep them educated, and/or pay other vendors. This is all really new technology to organizations who barely - if at all - have an RE database administrator. I've worked for the type of organization that would not have been able to afford additional products, and could never have afforded to provide training for me to learn them. And I would never have had the time to learn that on my own.

My point is that PowerAutomate, like everything, has tradeoffs and is not the answer to everything.

Karen

Rachel Cavalier · May 2023

@Trent Smither

Like mentioned by some of our fellow community members, we use Letterbox - we started using the free version and have now moved to the paid version so that we can roll it out to be used by the whole department.

We did consider going the DIY route with Power Automate as my team do have relevant past experience and qualifications to be able to learn and implement a solution ourselves, but we just don't have the time to do so* and did think ahead to what would happen if something changed in the future - whether that be staff move on/retire or an API change. Would we have the time available then to learn again/bugfix etc?

* One of the team has been learning on their days off work and we've implemented some useful things separately but these are things that if they broke, it wouldn't be too big a deal.

Adrienne Baumann · May 2023

@Trent Smither

Hi Trent - Thank you for asking this question! I asked the same thing to our BB account manager a couple of months ago and they said it is not doable since our database is hosted by BB. An organization where I previously worked self-hosted their RE7 database and we were able to easily merge letters right from the constituent record. I sure miss having that feature!

It sounds like LetterBox may be a workable fix.

Printing Gift Letters / Receipts from Donor Record?

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