Overview Video
Note: For a step-by-step getting started, see Set up Configuration Manager or watch a video.
Overview
The Configuration Manager utility for Blackbaud CRM is meant to help reduce the amount of time and effort required to manually configure Blackbaud CRM, Altru and other Blackbaud Infinity-based products. It allows you to configure items in one database and automatically apply those configurations to other databases.
Configuration Manager focuses on the manual setup tasks that are usually done by business analysts and consultants. These setup tasks usually involve point and click activities such as defining an Ad-hoc Query, defining a new constituent Attribute Category or adding a user to the system.
For a comprehensive list of tasks that Configuration Manager can help with, see Processors.
Within Configuration Manager users can:
Establish connections to the database instances you regularly work with
Create configuration “packages” to organize and group configurations
Apply configuration packages from one database instance to another
See the history of packages and configuration items that have been applied to various database instances
What Configuration Manager Is Not
While Configuration Manager is meant to move setup information between environments, it was not designed to handle customizations built with the Blackbaud Infinity SDK or data conversions (e.g. constituents, appeals, revenue, etc.).
Design
While Configuration Manager is powerful, our goal was to make it as simple as possible for non-technical users to use. It is specifically geared toward power users who configure the product, not toward developers.
Configuration Manager was designed as a Windows Desktop client application which can connect to a Blackbaud Infinity database wherever it lives. Whether the instance is hosted in Blackbaud’s hosting center, on-premise or in a co-location facility, if you have access to the environment from your PC, you can connect to that environment with Configuration Manager.
This was an important design consideration for Configuration Manager which makes it useful across a large number of deployment scenarios (especially for Blackbaud CRM customers who may have environments spread across a number of physical locations).
Installation
Today, there are some manual steps involved with the initial setup of the utility which will require a technical resource. However, in a future version we plan to implement a “silent update” feature which greatly reduces the installation effort required. For more information on installation, please see Set up Configuration Manager.
Compatibility Note
To make the biggest impact possible for our existing customers with the first release, Configuration Manager is compatible with and supported for version 2.91 (of Blackbaud CRM) up to the current generally available release. In the future we will move to a “current release - 2” support policy, but we will provide prior notice of that change.
Extensibility
Configuration Manager can be extended by writing additional configuration “processors.” Processors handle specific types of configurations, such as Ad-hoc Queries or User-defined Data Lists. The Blackbaud Infinity SDK includes Visual Studio template projects and items which allow customers, partners, and other 3rd parties to extend the utility as necessary. For more information about how to create new processors, see Blackbaud Configuration Manager for Developers.
How to Use Video
Additional Information
Configuration Manager is a utility that enables you to move configuration information to and from Blackbaud Infinity application databases. From Configuration Manager, you can create projects which hold connection information for databases. For information about managing projects, see Manage Projects.
Connection information helps you manage which databases to configure and package information helps you manage what configuration information to share between databases. For information about connecting to databases, see Databases. For more information about packages, see Packages.
Package information is held in the application databases. When you set up Configuration Manager for a Blackbaud Infinity application database, you add catalog items to maintain package information. There is no user interface for package information in the Blackbaud Infinity application. That is handled by Configuration Manager. But you can query the tables which contain the information.
Packages contain items to share. Those items are handled by processors. Configuration Manager ships with processors for items such as Ad-hoc Query, Attribute Category, and Code Table. Over time, additional processors may be added. Also, developers can create their own custom processors. For more information about processors, see Processors.