Connections : API

Kintera Integration with Blackbaud Platforms

Steve MacLaughlin — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 13:22:00 GMT

For the past few weeks our teams in San Diego and Charleston have been very busy working on integrating a variety of things. And obviously a big part of the integration effort has been around our products.

Blackbaud CTO Shaun Sullivan posted a very cool screencast that shows off Kintera integrating with The Raiser's Edge and Blackbaud Enterprise CRM. The demonstration shows the Kintera Connect API, the RE API, and the Infinity platform API all in action.

In the screencast, Shaun shows an example of constituent data from Kintera flowing into The Raiser's Edge. He also gives a little bit of a preview of how the Kintera integration to RE7 will have first-class status within the application. There is also a demo of how data from Kintera can be pulled into Blackbaud's Infinity platform.

The examples in the screencast provide some insight into the technical workings of the platforms. But they are not intended to be representations of final code or what Blackbaud intends to ultimately release to customers. We want to make sure we're managing expectations properly.

A couple of additional details around some things Shaun references in the screencast:

Blackbaud is in the process of developing a Kintera Adapter for The Raiser's Edge
The Kintera Adapter will surface as a first class area within The Raiser's Edge
Blackbaud is currently in the early stages of a pilot program for the Kintera Adapter
Blackbaud will also be extending the no license fee offer for the RE API to current Kintera customers that have The Raiser's Edge
Blackbaud plans to release an initial version of the adapter prior to the end of the year

There's been some FUD being spread out there and we felt that it was important to let customers and the nonprofit technology community know what's happening. The teams working on this project have accomplished a tremendous amount of work in a very short time. I think this is a great example of the technological horsepower that the combination of Blackbaud and Kintera's resources can generate.

I'll be posting some updates as we move through our pilot program and the general available of this offering. Stay tuned...

Did Someone Say Open Platform?

Steve MacLaughlin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 12:55:00 GMT

There are a couple of new and very cool things posted over at Blackbaud Labs regarding the Blackbaud NetCommunity API. The release of BBNC v5.5 later this month will include a further expansion of the open toolset.

"Lot's of effort has been put into expanding the API into new areas of the platform, primarily around giving the Custom Part developer much more access to core platform features like RSS feeds, Document Libraries, built-in dialogs, donations, user accounts, and programmatic part creation, to name just a few." - Michael Andrews, Blackbaud Distinguished Engineer

The open platform capabilites in BBNC have been native and haven't required any additional cost for clients to use since the product was first released in 2004. These new changes, additions, and improvements should help developers currently using the BBNC platform and those that plan to in the near future. To get a little bit more information about what's new I went straight to the source. Here's a little Q&A between me and Michael Andrews:

Q: You noted that a change in the BBNC Open Platform is improvements to the object model names and structure. Can you talk about how this should help developers already using BBNC to build custom parts?
A: Consistency and discoverability mainly. Growth of the API will be more organized

Q: I noticed that the Transaction Property is now built-in to BBNC v5.5. How does that help reduce the development time to build custom donation transactions?
A: For BBNC v5.5 we are supporting recording real donation transactions as if they were recorded by our donation form part. This means you can create your own donation form, process it (credit card, debit, pledge etc) via the API and have it recorded for you. It will show up in RE / eCRM as if it were from one of our donation forms. You no longer have to define a custom transaction for it, nor create a custom transaction processor in RE for it, and all the other mumbo jumbo that goes with those steps.

There is even an option to pre-fill “donation transaction object” with the current user’s bio data which you can use to pre-populate your custom form – so it eliminates the Custom Web Method you would have had to create to go get that data from RE as well. AND if that’s not enough, you can design an email template providing custom merge fields (and the donation fields), that can be sent as the acknowledgement email. The thinking there is it seems likely that if you were doing your own form (say for eShopping) you may want to include what they bought in the email. There is a similar set of functions around creating new users and the corresponding built-in signup transaction. Very useful if you wanted to easily associate getting a user account w/ your custom part, very common in an eCommerce world.

Q: What was the goal behind opening the Custom Server Controls? Will this continue to grow in the future?
A: The idea there is to allow custom programmers access to common UI elements to use in their parts like selecting/uploading images, queries, funds, summoning a part’s editor, the HTML editor, etc. This allows your part to do some real powerful stuff and feel more like its built in. Yes, lots of potential to add more like this. These components safely wrap up the internal javascripts and server-side business logic for some otherwise complex code.

Q: There are a couple of Blackbaud developed custom parts available for download. Any hints at what might be released next?
A: Demos of all the new stuff. Donations, adding users, RSS feeds, document management, DIV based menu, breadcrumbs, good times.

Look for more things to be posted on Blackbaud Labs in the near future.

Update: Here's a link to a review of the changes posted on the Customizing NetCommunity weblog.

More Magic Tricks with the Blackbaud NetCommunity API

Steve MacLaughlin — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:39:00 GMT

Earlier today, Blackbaud announced an extension of our Blackbaud NetCommunity platform specifically designed for Community Foundations. This offering has been implemented with several customers and it really changes the game for how community foundations interact with their constituents.

“Our major donors will now be able to access real-time financial information in a secure and personalized setting. They will no longer need to contact our office and wait for us to print and mail the statement. In addition, organizations and fund-seekers will be able to view and apply for funding opportunities online. The donor and grant portals will enable us to operate more efficiently and effectively.” - Brian Lewis, Program Director, Montana Community Foundation

This new solution was made possible because the Blackbaud NetCommunity API allows clients and partners to develop both tight data integration as well as new functionality within Blackbaud's Internet platform.

“With the Blackbaud NetCommunity API, we can not only easily integrate GrantedGE for grant management, but also leverage it to build online tools that extend the power of the solution and provide the type of sophisticated functionality that has previously been reserved only for ‘for-profit’ organizations.” - Fred Armistead, Senior VP of Products, Fusion Labs

The combination of form and function using the BBNC API is something that's unique to our solution and something that's not possible with most vendors serving the nonprofit market. We continue to deepen the capabilities of the Blackbaud NetCommunity API and there will be a future blog post discussing what's on the horizon.

Eating Our Own Cooking

Steve MacLaughlin — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Yesterday Blackbaud re-launched the labs.blackbaud.com website and it's built entirely on Blackbaud NetCommunity. Michael Andrews prefers to call it "drinking our own champagne," but I think you get the point.

There are a lot of new things to be found on the site, including a set of Blackbaud Labs RSS Feeds, because the site covers a broad range of topics. You'll also find a new downloads area where we'll continue to be unveiling functionality that our clients can utilize.

This whole approach to sharing ideas, tools, and sample code continues to get a lot of positive feedback. And we think that continuing to support clients and partners that are developing their own extensible applications helps the entire ecosystem.

Goin' Mobile with Blackbaud NetCommunity

Steve MacLaughlin — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:57:00 GMT

Over at labs.blackbaud.com there's some new and cool things posted. Michael Andrews, the original mastermind behind Blackbaud NetCommunity, has posted both a white paper and free sample code to use BBNC on a variety of mobile devices.(Much more compelling than a press release.)

A couple of highlights from what's been published:

You can take donations from a mobile phone that will flow to The Raiser's Edge (RE) or Blackbaud Enterprise CRM (BBEC), just like any other BBNC donation.
You can access secured RE/BBEC data in real-time from your mobile phone.
You can auto-redirect website visitors to your mobile phone homepage if the browser is from a mobile device.
You can use the same page design tools you already use in BBNC to create content and forms for mobile phones.
You can share news, contact info, slideshows, donations, directories, and many other types of content.
Most smartphones (iPhones, BlackBerrys, etc) will treat the displayed phone numbers and email addresses as actionable links.
And it's free.

The white paper also mentions some improvements we're making to the BBNC API in version 5.5. We are continuing to reduce the amount of effort on the part of developers to build new functionality and exchange data. Some of the improvements include new functions for creating user accounts, logging users in, access to more page information, access to the back office code tables, additional server UI controls, and yes, the ability to create donation forms without starting from scratch.

Because we're not having to spend time and effort on the data side of things it has allowed us to focus on simplifying and expanding what clients can do with the functionality. We also think that making some key tasks easier to implement will help our clients to further push the boundaries of what they are doing online. When you're freed up from some of the grunt work, then lots of innovative things start to happen.

On a side note, Blackbaud customers in the UK have the ability to use inbound and outbound SMS text messaging through the optional Text Messaging Service in The Raiser's Edge v7.83. This capability combined with the mobile BBNC functionality could really create some groovy possibilities.

BBNC API Allows Form and Function

Steve MacLaughlin — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 12:52:00 GMT

Blackbaud formally announced today that all Blackbaud NetCommunity customers can now receive The Raiser's Edge API without having to pay a software license fee. The BBNC API has always been free to use for clients and this was the next logical step to encourage more development. Our BBNC API wiki also continues to grow and expand as well.

At last week's NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference there was a whole lot of talk about open API's and what various companies and organizations were doing with them. But about 97% of the discussions and spin about open APIs were all about data or functionality. Very little of the conversations were about data and functionality. A user could move data from this system to that system a bit easier. Or a user could build new features on top of a single platform. But not both.

The major difference about what Blackbaud is doing with our API initiatives is to allow clients the ability to do data exchange and functionality development. You want to surface information unique to your organization online? Great! It's all there and we've given you the ability to do it. (Not just limited sets of the data.) You want to build your own functionality in the application, but take advantage of the built-in security, transaction capabilities, or content editor? Great! That's all there too. It's form and function with no limits.

Last week I got an email about this kind of stuff in action. The U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association and Foundation launched the latest version of their online website built using BBNC. USNA is one of several clients that have built their own data exchange and functionality using the BBNC API. USNA's Garrett Keating, who runs his own Customizing Blackbaud NetCommunity blog, showed me a Google Maps + BBNC + Raiser's Edge data part that they built just for their alumni community members to use.

This is an example of some of the really powerful things that the plat form allows you to do. Garrett references some other parts built using the BBNC API on his blog. All is this is pretty exciting stuff and I have been talking to a lot of clients that have also developed their own parts or have partnered with Blackbaud Interactive to assist them in this development work. Look for some more examples and news in the near future.

Blackbaud NetCommunity API is for the Birds

Steve MacLaughlin — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:27:00 GMT

The great part about my job is that I get to work with a wide variety of so many nonprofit organizations. And from time to time you draw more of a personal connection to the things a nonprofit is doing. This post is about one of those connections.

I grew up in Jamestown, New York, home of the naturalist Roger Tory Peterson. As a kid, we used to make several visits each year to the Jamestown Audubon Center and Sanctuary. You could spend all day out there counting birds, bugs, snakes, turtles, frogs, flowers, squirrels, and woodchuck holes. And winters in Western New York can be rough so spotting a Robin was always a welcome first sign of spring.

Up the road a few miles in Ithaca is the Cornell Lab of Ornithology at Cornell University. The Lab is a nonprofit membership institution whose mission is to interpret and conserve the earth's biological diversity through research, education, and citizen science focused on birds. The Lab is also the home of the Macaulay Library, which has the largest collection of animal sounds in the world. The library has more than 160,000 recordings and a growing archive of natural history videos. And they are doing some really cool stuff online.

The Lab helps operate several online websites including All About Birds, eBird, and The Great Backyard Birdcount. The newest website is LivingBird.org. This is the online version of Living Bird, the Lab's member magazine that is published four times a year. They decided to publish the first online issue for anyone to view. Starting in April, they will be putting the newest online issues behind a login for members only. All past issues can still be viewed for free. The website was built using Blackbaud NetCommunity and not only looks amazing but also takes advantage of the Blackbaud NetCommunity API.

Now, some of you may be wondering why I'm devoting a bunch of time to talking about a website for bird watchers. Well, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, which tracks wildlife recreation, birdwatching is now a hobby of 47.8 million Americans. The birdwatching trend continues to grow as both hunting and fishing have been in decline. That's something worth chirping about. And it speaks to how nonprofit organizations often serve a very unique and distinct group of constituents.

The interesting thing about the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is how they have transformed themselves from a mainly research and conservation focused organization to also adding a sizeable membership base to help support these activities. The Lab has successfully done something many nonprofit organizations struggle with — get people to be passionate about what your organization does and be willing to support it loyally.

Many nonprofits struggle with what content to publish online and more importantly what types of content are valuable enough to keep constituents coming back for more. They key to solving this problem is to think like a constituent and create some personas around what would compel them to give their time and attention online. The staff at the Lab has clearly done their homework and I think they've done a great job on the new LivingBird.org site.

Birdwatchers want to see birds, get information about birds in their area, learn about new places to explore, and have an opportunity to read and share stories about something they are passionate about. The LivingBird.org website does an excellent job of combining content from the printed magazine and special web only content that includes amazing video and photographic content.

It's the kind of content that extends the experience into some new directions, and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology used the BBNC API to make it happen. The talented web design and development team at the Lab built a variety of extensible parts for BBNC including the following:

Flash Video Player: A XML-based flash video player that is H.264 capable, delivering HD quality video over the Internet. The Macaulay Library already uses H.264 encoding for all of their videos. For the first time, the Lab can now deliver the library's high quality video online. Content managers can just add the URL of a simple XML file into the part and this will automatically feed the movies into the flash video player.

Lightbox Photo Gallery: A XML-based photo lightbox gallery that allows visitors to view selected photos online. Just like the flash player, the custom part was built to make it very easy for a content manager to prepare the XML of photos in the slideshow. The custom part does the rest of the work and generates the dynamic photo gallery. The part is all HTML and CSS based, so it can be styled any way the designer wants to display the content.

There are several other really cool custom parts that the team at the Lab also developed including an ad rotator for internal promotions and ads, Google custom search, and some other parts that help enhance the online experience. With all the talkie talk about open-this and open-that I think it's always worth showing real examples of a real open API in action. The LivingBird.org site is proof positive of one of many Blackbaud NetCommunity customers taking full advantage of our open API.