Help Manual - Blackbaud Connection Manager

Documentation on SSIS Blackbaud Connection Manager

Setting Up a Blackbaud REST Connection Manager

The REST Connection Manager is an SSIS connection manager that can be used to establish connections and facilitate data integration with REST-based APIs and services such as Blackbaud, among many more.

Integration for Blackbaud is enabled by the following two components:

To add a new connection, right-click the Connection Manager area in your Visual Studio project, and choose "New Connection..." from the context menu. You will be prompted the "Add SSIS Connection Manager" window. Select the "REST (KingswaySoft)" item to add a new REST Connection Manager.

New SSIS Connection

Add SSIS REST Connection Manager

The REST Connection Manager contains 2 pages of configuration:

  • General
  • Advanced Settings

General Page

The General page allows you to specify connection properties and login credentials for the Blackbaud REST service:

Blackbaud Connection Manager.png

Service Name

The REST service that will be connected to.

API Throttle Rate

The API Throttling Rate will limit the number of requests that can be sent per second.

Authentication

There are three types of authentication modes that you could use:

  • Client Credentials
  • Authorization Code
Client Credentials

The Client Id, Client Secretand Scope are to be used when authenticating the Blackbaud service. This option is available when Client Credentials Mode is selected.

OAuth Authorization Code
Generate Token File

This button opens a dialogue box in order to sign in to your instance to generate a new Token.

Blackbaud Connection Manager - OAuth.png

App Type: the following two options exist for App Type
  • KingswaySoft: This is for testing purposes only and should never be used in production. It provides a sample Integration Key, Secret, and Redirect URL.
  • My Own App: This option should be used when you want to connect to your own data. Selecting this option allows you to enter the Integration Key and Secret which you get from your OAuth setup on the API side. The Redirect URL is the one that you had specified in the App settings.
Sign In & Authorize
  • Use Default Browser to Sign In: When this option is checked the Sign In and Authorize button will open your default web browser in order to complete the OAuth authentication. When this option is unchecked, the Sign In and Authorize button will complete the entire OAuth authentication process inside of the toolkit.
  • Sign In and Authorize: This button allows you to log in to the service endpoint and authorize your app to generate a token.
Path To Token File (“Authorization Code” Authentication Mode)

This option allows you to enter the path to the token file on the file system.

Token File Password (“Authorization Code” Authentication Mode)

The password to the token file.

Test Connection

After all the connection information has been provided, you may click the "Test Connection" button to test if the user credentials entered can connect to the selected REST service.

Advanced Settings Page

The Advanced Settings page has some additional options that can be configured.

Blackbaud Connection Manager - Advanced Settings.png

Proxy Mode

The Proxy Mode option allows you to specify how you want to configure the proxy server setting. There are three options available:

  • No Proxy
  • Auto-detect (Using system-configured proxy)
  • Manual
Proxy Server

Using the Proxy Server option allows you to specify the name of the proxy server for the connection.

Port

The Port option allows you to specify the port number of the proxy server for the connection.

Username (Proxy Server Authentication)

The Username option (under Proxy Server Authentication) allows you to specify the proxy user account.

Password (Proxy Server Authentication)

The Password option (under Proxy Server Authentication) allows you to specify the proxy user's password.

Note: The Proxy Password is not included in the connection manager's ConnectionString property by default. This is by design for security reasons. However, you can include it in your ConnectionString if you want to parameterize your connection manager. The format would be ProxyPassword=myProxyPassword; (make sure you have a semicolon as the last character). It can be anywhere in the ConnectionString.

Timeout

The number of seconds requests should wait before timing out.

Retry on Intermittent Errors

The retry on intermittent errors option determines if requests will be retried when there is an error. If this option is checked, requests will be retried up to 3 times.

Ignore Certificate Errors

This option can be used to ignore those SSL certificate errors when connecting to Blackbaud servers.

Warning: Enabling the "Ignore Certificate Errors" option is generally NOT recommended, particularly for production instances. Unless there is a strong reason to believe the connection is secure - such as the network communication is only happening in an internal infrastructure, this option should be unchecked for best security.