Make Raiser's Edge easier to deploy, upgrade and run for non-administrator users.
Raiser's Edge requires administrator rights to install, upgrade and run. Most companies that care at all about security do not allow users to be administrators on their machines. Also, larger companies manage software installation through SMS or other tools which cannot be done with Raiser's Edge due to deploys and upgrades being pushed from the Raiser's Edge server. I would suggest two major improvements: 1) A client install package that includes all necessary patches (so clients don't try to upgrade when they connect) and can be deployed via SMS. 2) Removal of the necessity for full control NTFS rights to the install directory
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Guest
- Jul 26 2012
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We have to use a cumbersome process whereby we fabricate a "master" installation of The Raiser's Edge, which we can then use to generate a deployment image. We then perform our installations manually from this deployment image. This takes a great deal of time. We cannot use the automatic update facility because of its requirement for the user to be an administrator, and we have to go through the above laborious process to retrieve the files necessary for us to do it manually.
. The software only works at all because Windows provides various compatibility fixes for "old" applications, which we have to use to work round the Raiser's Edge's expectations of being able to write to its own program directories, for example.
It is also terrible in a smaller organization with 1 part time IT, part time website person. It is worse when you don't have a domain controller running because the network is small and systems need to be able to work out of the LAN long term. It is worse yet when your trying to do progressive replacement schedules so you cant just deploy via computer images (because you aren't getting 20 at a time) and must get the installer to work on each machine.
We have run into this problem as well. In order to get updates to run properly, our IT dept has had to make RE users admins. For us it's not a big deal, but if we were a larger department or a more strict organization, it could be.