What's New

To provide your supporters with more ways to pay, Blackbaud’s Payment Terminal solution now supports recurring payments paid by credit and debit card. Previously, only one-time payments were supported.

Warning: Currently, Payment Terminal doesn’t support recurring payments paid by digital wallets (such as Apple Pay and Google Pay). One-time payments are still supported.

To pay for a recurring transaction, such as an auto-renewing membership, payers must authorize your organization to store their payment method by agreeing to terms shown on the Payment Terminal device. You should also communicate to the payer the terms and conditions for recurring payments. For example, you should set up and send an appeal communication to auto-renewing members.

Payment Terminal is available to organizations who process payments through Blackbaud Merchant Services. With Payment Terminal, you can:

• Accept contactless payments via cards with embedded chips and “tap to pay” technologies.

• Process payments three times faster than with a magnetic swipe device.

• Protect constituents and your organization from credit card fraud with EMV-certified card readers that offer end-to-end encryption.

• Conveniently reconcile Payment Terminal transactions with others processed through your Blackbaud Merchant Services account.

Visit Payment Terminal resources to get started!

As part of ongoing security enhancements, we upgraded web forms to use JQuery Migrate version 3.5.2 and Bootstrap version 5.3.3.

Warning: These changes may affect customizations such as those made by CSS or JavaScript. We recommend that you plan to review and test your web forms after the upgrade to ensure forms work as expected.

For those of you who integrate with Altru through Blackbaud's Infinity Web Services APIs, we made the following changes to proxy user authentication:

• To improve performance when authenticating through proxy users, we implemented caching and added changes to reduce overhead calls.

• Proxy users can now access the WSDL by specifying the database name in the URL.

• We now support proxy user authentication for the following endpoints:

  • ~/ODataQuery.ashx

  • ~/AppFxWebService.asmx

  • ~/vpp/bizops

  • ~/util/DataList.ashx

  • ~/rssfeed.ashx

  • ~/kpidashboard.aspx

  • ~/ping/dynamic.aspx

  • ~/KpiEndpoint.ashx

  • ~/diagnostics/processStats.ashx

  • ~/diagnostics/processStats.asmx

  • ~/ping/static.htm

  • ~/olap

  • ~/util

  • ~/dashboards/GetFlashDashData.ashx

  • ~/Upload/FileUpload.ashx

  • ~/Upload/CreditCardFileUpload.ashx

  • ~/Download

  • ~/catalog.ashx

  • ~/ShellFind.ashx

  • ~/KpiDashboardLanding.aspx

  • ~/HeartbeatManager.ashx

  • ~/formimage.ashx

  • ~/AdHocQuery.ashx

  • ~/webui

  • ~/uimodel

  • ~/additional_services

To improve how you interact with and consume help resources, we’ve made accessibility enhancements and updated the look and feel of Help:

• The contrast of the help icon and sub-headers in the help window now meet web accessibility requirements.

• Feedback form inputs are now labeled for screen readers.

• Icons feature a more targeted approach and contrast between notes and tips.

• Nested subheadings improve scanning and better help you understand the hierarchy of content.

We're pleased to share that the "Autofill with..." and "Use this as my billing information" features are once again available for patrons visiting your event registration web forms. In 5.31, we temporarily turned off these features and patrons needed to manually enter information for each registrant.

These features now work as they did prior to the 5.31 release while more securely storing and displaying patron information.

To provide a more secure and streamlined authentication experience for custom integrations, starting October 31, 2024, OData and SOAP API connections require a non-interactive “proxy” user and personal access token (PAT) to authenticate. After this date, you won't be able to authenticate these types of connections with your Blackbaud ID.

Note: This change doesn't impact SKY API connections or traditional Altru application users.

To avoid interruption in custom applications, reports, or other integrations, if you currently use Blackbaud ID to authenticate with OData or SOAP API connections, follow these steps before October 31:

1. Set up a proxy user and PAT for your account.

2. Update your connection to use the proxy user and PAT (instead of your Blackbaud ID).

   Note: For integrations built by a Blackbaud Partner, reach out to them for assistance updating the connection.

For more information, visit the Altru Community.

To ensure an optimal user experience for online patrons, as of the 5.32 release, Altru no longer supports non-responsive web form layouts. Only responsive layouts are available and supported.

Responsive layouts ensure your forms automatically adjust and adapt their layout and content based on the size and orientation of the patron's device or browser window. For more information, see Design Web Pages.

Note: This change only impacts a small number of organizations, as most organizations already have responsive layouts in place. If your organization was previously using a non-responsive layout, you received an email from Blackbaud in early September. If you haven't already changed to a responsive layout, your design automatically defaults to the corresponding responsive design that matches your previous layout.

To encourage donors to help you meet your fundraising goals, you can now add a goal meter to a branding card for an Optimized Form.

When you create or edit a branding card in Online Giving, under Desktop, select Include goal meter and set its color. Next, set the fundraising goal in the form that uses the branding card. For more information, see Branding Cards and Optimized Donation Forms in Online Giving Help.

To track where a gift originates, the donation form name now displays under Purpose on the contribution record. In Contributions, select the gift from All payments under Related links.

Tip: To view the form name on the payments list, under Related links, select All payments. From Columns, select Form and apply the changes.

Previously, the Total gifts over time chart only displayed the first gift in a recurring gift. Now it displays all subsequent gifts in a recurring gift to more accurately display your received funds.

From Online Giving, under Total gifts over time, select Gift type, Recurring gifts. For more information, see Performance for All Forms.

To help you manage recurring gift plans in Contributions, from Recurring gift plans, select a plan. To place payments on hold indefinitely or to skip up to ten payments, select Pause plan. You can also edit the next payment date in the plan under Gift summary. For more information, see Recurring Gifts.

To improve your reconciliation process and verify a donor's card information when they ask for a refund, the following fields now automatically populate on gift records in Altru:

• Name on card

• Credit card (last four digits)

• Expires on

• Authorization code