The Raiser's Edge 7 For Beginners: Top 10 Tips

Douglas Clinton — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:30:00 GMT

Here's more from The Raiser's Edge 7 for Beginners. This Top 10 list is right at the front of the user guide and provides solid tips for everyone.

Save your parameter files so you don’t have to recreate reports and mailings each time.
Use Favorites so you can focus on just the parts of The Raiser’s Edge you use everyday.
Customize your workspace by using Home Page.
Use Dashboard to create reports and get a glimpse of how your fundraising efforts are going.
See only the fields and information you want by using Custom View.
Speed up your data entry by using Batch to enter data in spreadsheet format.
Press F1 anywhere in The Raiser’s Edge. The program knows where you are and offers help on the area you’re in.
Set User Options, or rules, to make The Raiser’s Edge behave the way you want on the workstation you are logged into.
Add system-wide Business Rules to help you work more efficiently in The Raiser’s Edge.
Back up your data!

Sarah's Shortcuts: Overcoming a Bad Memory

Sarah McBride — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:26:00 GMT

Over the past few years, I've come to accept that my memory is not particularly strong. Fortunately, that hasn't caused much of a problem for me in my work, but if I was responsible for your data entry, you might have reason for concern. And really, even if you or your colleagues are with it 24/7, there's always at least a slight margin for error (especially when post-lunch sleepiness rolls in).

The good news is that The Raiser's Edge includes the option to create user-defined pop-ups that can serve as wonderful reminders when you open particular records. Let's say you periodically receive gifts from constituents who are marked as having no valid addresses. Your organization may have a policy in place to update their addresses when new donations come in, but if you're in the process of entering fifty new gifts, you may very likely forget to check whether the donor has a valid address.

That's where pop-ups come in handy. By creating user-defined business rules, you can set up The Raiser's Edge to give you a pop-up reminder when you open particular records. In the example above, I could create a query of everyone who has the No Valid Addresses checkbox marked and then design a business rule to remind me to update their addresses when adding new gifts. I could even tailor the message to only appear for certain user groups if I didn't think everyone suffered from an insufficient memory (not saying they don't).

Knowledgebase provides step-by-step instructions for setting up user-defined pop-ups (BB1495), so give it a try and let me know how it goes!

The User's Edge : business rules

The Raiser's Edge 7 For Beginners: Top 10 Tips

Sarah's Shortcuts: Overcoming a Bad Memory