Alumni Software - What do you use?

[Ben_Stanton]

Hi guys,

We are looking at upgrading our dated access database to something a bit more modern. What are you guys using out there? You can't beat real end-user techy recomendations.

We are looking at Blackbaud Raisers Edge and WebAlumnus from WCBS at the moment.

I am not 100% happy with either so would like some real-world advice from the guys using it - or using something else.

Ta very muchly in advance

Ben

[bodminman]

WCBS are pretty good.

[Ben_Stanton]

WCBS are pretty good.

We do currently use PASS so there is a benefit there. Although, it is fairly pricey.

[flyinghaggis]

We're using Blackbaud Raiser's Edge. The software itself seems OK but the real show-stopper at the moment for us is that they still don't support Microsoft Office 2010! Because of this our RE administrators are still stuck running OfficeXP and so far, nearly a year after release, Blackbaud are unable to give us an indication of when, or even if, they'll ever fix the issues.

Taken from Blackbaud's KB :-

Is The Raiser's Edge compatible with Microsoft Office 2010 ?
Solution ID: BB710347
Product: The Raiser's Edge 7, Microsoft products
Published: 02/18/2010
Updated: 02/08/2011
Description: Microsoft Office 2010 was released in June 2010.

Answer:
Office 2010 and Office 2011 are currently not compatible with The Raiser's Edge (RE) and they no longer support the Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) functionality used by RE for Office integration. For more information about Office 2010, please review Microsoft's website regarding planning for Office 2010 desktop configurations.


We dont have any direct experiece of the Webalumnus software but our RE staff seemed to think it was somewhat limited in it's functionality compared to Blackbaud's solution the last time they looked at it.

[Voodoo]

Couldn't agree more with Flyinghaggis there.

We're going to have to seriously consider an alternative to the Raisers Edge product if Blackbaud don't come out with an Office 2010 compatible version soon.

Our entire site has been Office 2010 since last summer but we can't move our development office forward and they're still stuck on Office XP.

(Although we have their MIS product, I have nothing constructive I can say about WCBS and PASS.)

[Ben_Stanton]

Thanks chaps, exactly what I was after.

Anybody else?

[Ben_Stanton]

We're using Blackbaud Raiser's Edge. The software itself seems OK but the real show-stopper at the moment for us is that they still don't support Microsoft Office 2010! Because of this our RE administrators are still stuck running OfficeXP and so far, nearly a year after release, Blackbaud are unable to give us an indication of when, or even if, they'll ever fix the issues.

Taken from Blackbaud's KB :-

Is The Raiser's Edge compatible with Microsoft Office 2010 ?
Solution ID: BB710347
Product: The Raiser's Edge 7, Microsoft products
Published: 02/18/2010
Updated: 02/08/2011
Description: Microsoft Office 2010 was released in June 2010.

Answer:
Office 2010 and Office 2011 are currently not compatible with The Raiser's Edge (RE) and they no longer support the Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) functionality used by RE for Office integration. For more information about Office 2010, please review Microsoft's website regarding planning for Office 2010 desktop configurations.


We dont have any direct experiece of the Webalumnus software but our RE staff seemed to think it was somewhat limited in it's functionality compared to Blackbaud's solution the last time they looked at it.

It is working OK with Office 2007 though right?

[flyinghaggis]

It is working OK with Office 2007 though right?

AFAIK it works OK with Office 2007 though we use it anywhere in the school so I can't confirm this 100%.

We're still looking at options for getting it working but we literally dont have the resources availalble to have to try and purchase licenses/deploy another customised office install / and continually test future developments on the platform (for the sake of literally 2-3 PCs) so for us Office 2007 isn't an option.

At the moment the choice is looking like either make do until Blackbaud resolve the compatability issue or move to another product.

Edit: We've had no direct contact to confirm but it does look like Blackbaud are promising an imminent update which may resolve the issue. I'll update this thread if we get any further information.

http://forums.blackbaud.com/blogs/ra...ty-update.aspx

Raiser's Edge and Office 2010 Compatibility Update
Posted: Mar 09, 2011 by Caroline Howell
Filed under: The Raiser's Edge 7.91, Microsoft Office 2010
In Support, we’ve been getting lots of questions about Raiser’s Edge compatibility with Office 2010. Clients are either curious about our progress or calling in because they’re experiencing issues in merges, queries, or reports after installing Office 2010 on their workstations. These errors are due to specific changes that Microsoft made to their software which no longer uses Collaboration Data Objects (CDO.) While we’re still working on the all clear, we are getting very, very close. In the next couple of months, it should be official, and we’ll be making RE 7.91 compatible with 32-bit version of Office 2010. (There’s still a bit of work to do on 64-bit.)