LESSons from LESS:Batch categories

LESSons from LESS:Export Grid to Excel #blkbre

Lessons

As I mentioned in an earlier post, in many places in the Raiser’s Edge, especially on the Constituent record, what you’re actually looking at is a list of 2nd level records attached to that record, like on the Gift tab or the Relationship tab. In this post, let’s build on that concept even further by learning to think of that list as a grid….with no grid lines.

We all work with and/or for people who rely heavily on us to get information out of the Raiser’s Edge for them, usually to view in Excel. That’s a good thing in a way-job security and all that, but wouldn’t it be nice to empower them with a simple tool to let them export what they’re looking at for themselves?

The first step is to teach them how to customize what fields they want to see, based on my earlier post about columns. Then, we can teach them to export that “grid” to Excel with a simple right click! You heard me right:

From any top level record in the Raiser’s Edge, you can export what you’re looking at with a

right click, Export grid to Excel

You can export grids to Excel from top level records including:

  • Constituent (Individual and Organization, excluding Bio1/Org1)
  • Campaign (excluding General tab)
  • Fund (excluding General tab)
  • Appeal (excluding General tab)
  • Memberships (excluding Membership tab)
  • Jobs (excluding General tab)
  • Event (excluding General tab)

(The option to Export the grid is also available in limited areas on Gift and Action records.)

 

So, for people who are not experts like us,  we can help them feed their Excel obsession to their heart’s content 🙂

Of course, as experts, we know that:

a)      they can’t hurt anything because now they’re in Excel

b)      they can’t bring any changes they make in Excel back into the Raiser’s Edge because, of course, they likely don’t have any of the needed record identifiers like Import ID or Constituent ID (which can be added as a column if needed)

Still, we can easily quench their seemingly undying thirst to see things in Excel. How neat is that?

I’m all bout empowering people by sharing my knowledge and making things easier for them; how about you?

Keeping you on the Leading Edge,

SandySmile

 Blackbaud Certified Raiser’s Edge Professional