RaiseNow continiously ships improvements to all areas of our offering. This includes improvements to our touchpoints, such as the tamaro donation widget, our payment platform and our Salesforce integration. 

Release strategy and policy

The RaiseNow integration for Salesforce consists of two components.

1. On the RaiseNow side an integration layer transfers and translates records between RaiseNow and Salesforce. For example a payment notification is converted to the Salesforce data model and transferred to Salesforce. We refer to this component as the backend or serverside component. 
2. Within Salesforce, our RaiseNow FundraisingKit for Salesforce extends the NPC & NPSP data model and adds additional functionality to Salesforce. We refer to this component as the RaiseNow managed package. 

In order for data to be pocessed correctly the backend component on the side of RaiseNow and the Salesforce managed package must use compatible versions. Customers can choose which version they want to run and when to perform an upgrade. Please note that upgrades to the backend component must be scheduled with RaiseNow support. 

We differentiate minor and major releases. A major release is every upgrade that requires a new version of the RaiseNow managed package. This usually entails changes to the data model or adds/changes business logic in Salesforce. In our release notes major releases are denoted by a new version of the managed package and a major release of our backend component. For example:

If you are currently using version v1.31 of our managed package and backend version V1.14.X any upgrade to version v1.32 of the managed package would require an upgrade of the backend component to V1.15.Y.

Though we try never to force upgrade on our customers, please note that improvements and bugfixes are always only shipped based on the latest release. We advice that you update frequently to as changes across multiple major releases may entail complex changes which are hard to keep track of.  

Upgrading major releases

To perform a major ugprade please scheudle a session with RaiseNow support so that we can upgrade the backend component for you and guide you through any configuration changes that might be required. During the backend upgrde the connection with Salesforce will be interrupted. During the interruption all data will be collected for automatic processing once the upgrade has been completed. 

Upgrading major releses requires you (the customer or SI) to install the latest version of the managed package. You can either install this via the AppExchange or request the installation link from RaiseNow support. We recommend that you execute this upgrade shortly before the scheduled session with RaiseNow to upgrade the backend component. The installation process takes about 10 minutes.

Installing on a Sandbox

RaiseNow support my provide you with an installtion link for our managed package. The URL provided will look something like this: 

https://login.salesforce.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=[SOME-ID]

If you need to install this on a Sandbox:

• login to your Sandbox
• Modify the link so that you replace login.salesforce.com with your Salesforce domain copied from your browser. For example:

https://your-domain.lightning.force.com/packaging/installPackage.apexp?p0=[SOME-ID]

Review configuration

During the session with our customer support team, you will be asked to finalize the configuration by visiting a provided configuration link and reauthorizing the connection. In this step a check will be automatically performed to verify that your Salesforce configuration satisfies all requirements for the given release. 

Initiate OAuth authorization procedure: 

Confirm authorization:

Review configuration results and adjust configuration in Salesforce accordingly. Usually these sort of problems concern missing picklist values in Salesforce fields which RaiseNow cannot automatically update. 

If this is the case, visit the specified field in the Salesforce object manager and add the required fields. Note that you can add multiple values at the same time. For major releases RaiseNow will also add upgrade instructions in the relase notes. See this example. 

If the verification is successful you will see a success page: