Have you decided to use the Blackbaud CRM™ Data Warehouse (BBDW) for reporting to reduce the number of reports running against the transactional database? You may have previously built smart fields and have a number of attributes in Blackbaud CRM™ that already contain your business logic. Instead of recreating that same calculations in the BBDW and maintaining the calculation in two different places, Blackbaud CRM™ allows you to bring those smart fields and attributes into the warehouse automatically.
In Blackbaud CRM™ go to Administration➔Data Warehouses➔Blackbaud Data Warehouses™ . This will bring you to the Blackbaud Data Warehouse screen in CRM. To the left under Configuration there are the controls for what to manage into the warehouse with one being Manage smart fields. Click on Manage smart fields or Manage attribute categories and you will be able to choose which smart fields or attributes to add to the data warehouse.
There are a couple considerations to remember:
The smart field needs to be processed prior to syncing to the datawarehouse. Tables are moved, but data is not recalculated as part of the transfer process.
To ensure data is up to date, it is recommended that you schedule the ETL process to run after all smart fields have been recalculated or refreshed.
Stay tuned to the BrightVine Solutions blog for more tips and tricks on how to make Blackbaud CRM and the data warehouse work for you.