The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part IV - True Integration with The Raiser's Edge

Welcome back.  We are in our fourth blog post in the series on the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard.  We have looked at some of the specifics of the dashboard application, form the high-level home page, or "Big Picture" to the drill-down capabilities to get more information.  We touched on briefly in our last post about the capabilities to truly integrate with The Raiser's Edge.   Integration can mean many different things to different people.  What I mean by "true integration" with The Raiser's Edge is hooking into the Raiser's Edge API, commonly called the RE:API.

The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard is designed in a way that the user can connect via the RE:API, and get access to the built-in Raiser's Edge forms, etc. or the user can connect directly to the SQL Server database.  In order to take advantage of the integration as described in this post, the option to use the RE:API must be selected (as seen at the right).  A benefit to not selecting this option, and using the "Connect directly to the SQL Server database" option, is that a Raiser's Edge concurrent license is not used and thus other users can access The Raiser's via the RE application while other people are accessing and using the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard application.  A quick  disclaimer: those organizations hosted by Blackbaud will likely not be able to take advantage of this type of Raiser's Edge customization due to constraints with using Blackbaud hosting.  This will affect nearly all customized products that integrate with The Raiser's Edge as well.   

When the Raiser's Edge API option is selected, and the user clicks on the Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard to launch the application, immediately the user begins to see how integration with the RE:API takes place.  They are presented with the standard login screens provided by the out-of-the-box RE application.  First there is the option to select the database to connect to and second is the username and password login form for that database selected, as seen at the left.  A user may only open the dashboard application and view the dashboards and reports when they have successfully authenticated with that database, all via the RE:API.

After successful login to The Raiser's Edge, the main dashboard page, as described in a previous posts comes up.  On the main dashboard page additionally functionality such as the drill-down capability to other reports and dashboards, as well as access to Raiser's Edge information shown in Raiser's Edge forms is available from the right-click menu on the dashboard components.  At the right is an example:  The FY Campaign Year-To-Date component allows a user to hover over a section of the chart for a specific campaign and then select to open the campaign with the out-of-the-box Raiser's Edge Campaign form.

After selecting to open the campaign from the right-click menu on the Campaign dashboard component, the out-of-the-box Raiser's Edge campaign form opens.  As seen at the left, this is the campaign form that a user sees when a campaign is opened from the Raiser's Edge application.  How cool is that?  Well, I think it is pretty powerful considering the user is not in The Raiser's Edge, but in another application.  The user can navigate this form just as they would normally, accessing other reports and links from this campaign record.

The tight integration to The Raiser's Edge does not stop at the main dashboard page.  When a user drills down into the dashboard application, eventually a user may look at a list of gifts.  This list contains some of the details for the gifts such as Gift Amount, Gift Date, Campaign(s), etc.  When one considers this specific set of information, opportunties arise for further integration with The Raiser's Edge.   As seen at the right, when the user right-clicks on a gift they may then open the gift or the constituent which gave the gift.  You could even have campaigns available, solicitors, or other links to detailed information in The Raiser's Edge.

When the user clicks on the "Open constituent <Constituent Name>" link, more magic happens.  The user is presented with the constituent form used in The Raiser's Edge application.  For those users of The Raiser's Edge, they know that the constituent form contains a wealth of information (much more than what is aggregated and summarized in the Financial Dashboard).  And when one considers that this type of functionality can be included in an application that resides outside of The Raiser's Edge, well, I would hope they would say "That is pretty cool stuff".  Now think about the possibilities of connecting The Raiser's Edge data to other data sources but providing this powerful linking capability.  The possibilities are endless.

If you want to get more information about the Tucamino Solution's Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard application, go to the product page on our website.  You can find more products listed on our website as well..  You can request a download of the product, and many more, from our website.

Check out the other posts in our series at:
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part I - The Overview
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part II - The Big Picture
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part III - Drill-Down Analysis
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part IV - True Integration with The Raiser's Edge
The Raiser's Edge Financial Dashboard Part V - How to Extend It Further