Category: Programing

  • My process to programming with Blackbaud Sky API (and really any API)

    In preparing for the panel session “APIs and the Art of the Possible” for the 2024 ATLIS Conference, I spent some time thinking about my process for developing solutions using APIs. I have recently been working on something to send gift acknowledgment letters via Google based on data in Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge and thought it…

  • Using Google Apps Scripts to distribute files to users

    While it is easiest to use Google Classroom or your LMS to distribute files to users, sometimes I need to handle it myself via Apps Script as part of a larger solution. The challenge: I have a folder full of PDFs that I generated for each student. I’d need to place these unique files in…

  • Using PHP with the Blackbaud K12 API

    In an earlier post, I showed how to use the Blackbaud K12 API interface for their “ON” products using PowerShell. Now, I’ll show you how to use PHP to do the same thing. I use PHP for all of my web applications. There are a lot of ways to access a REST based API using…

  • PowerShell and REST APIs

    I really like being able to use the PowerShell ISE to debug my PowerShell scripts.  By default, it splits the screen showing my script and an interactive shell that I can directly type commands into.  In my previous post, I had a simple script that used the Blackbaud API to retrieve a large list of…

  • Blackbaud K12 “ON” API

    On Thursday, I’m co-presenting at the Blackbaud K12 User Conference on using their API. Simply put, an API (Application Programing Interface) is a way for code to interact with something—in this case the website my school uses. One does not need particularly advanced knowledge of how to code in order to write useful solutions. Recently, I…