Altru is hosted by Blackbaud, so you don’t install updates yourself. They arrive on Blackbaud’s schedule, and you usually find out one of two ways: someone read the announcement ahead of time, or a staff member notices on Monday morning that a screen looks different. This guide is about making sure it’s the first one.
The short version: Altru release information is spread across a few Blackbaud channels, not kept in one place. Below is where to look, how to make sure the announcements actually reach someone on your team, and what to check once an update lands.
Where Blackbaud publishes Altru update information
Release notes in the product documentation
Blackbaud posts release notes (“what’s new” content) for Altru alongside the product’s help documentation. This is the most detailed source: it lists new features, changes to existing areas, and fixed issues for each release. Blackbaud has reorganized its help and documentation sites more than once, so a bookmarked link from a few years ago may not work. The reliable approach is to search Blackbaud’s documentation site for “Altru release notes” or “Altru what’s new” and bookmark whatever comes up today.
The Blackbaud Community
Blackbaud runs an online community with product-specific groups, including one for Altru. Release announcements and upcoming-release posts often show up there, and the discussion threads are useful in a way the official notes aren’t: other administrators post what they noticed after an update, what broke for them, and what workaround they found. If you only follow one channel, this is a good one, as long as you turn on notifications for the Altru group rather than relying on remembering to check.
The knowledgebase
Blackbaud’s knowledgebase is where you’ll find articles about specific known issues, including ones introduced or fixed by a release. It’s less useful for “what’s coming” and more useful for “this started happening after the update, is it just us?” Search it with the exact error text or behavior you’re seeing.
Service status and maintenance notices
Planned maintenance and outages are typically communicated through Blackbaud’s system status page and by email. These notices tell you when Altru may be unavailable, which matters for scheduling, even if they don’t tell you what changed. Check whether your organization’s admin contacts are subscribed.
Email to your organization’s contacts
Blackbaud sends product and release communications to the contacts listed on your organization’s account. A common problem: those contacts are out of date. The person who signed the original contract left, and release emails have been going to an inbox nobody reads. If you’re not sure who’s listed, ask Blackbaud support or your account representative to confirm.
Make sure the information reaches a person
Knowing where announcements live doesn’t help if nobody looks. A few low-effort habits close the gap:
- Name one owner. Pick the Altru administrator (or a backup) who is responsible for reading release notes and summarizing anything relevant for the rest of staff.
- Use a shared address. Ask Blackbaud to send product communications to a shared inbox or distribution list instead of one person, so the information survives staff turnover.
- Subscribe, don’t bookmark. Turn on notifications in the Community group and for the status page. A bookmark only works when someone remembers to open it.
- Write a two-line summary for staff. Front-line staff don’t need the full notes. They need “the membership sale screen has a new field; here’s what to put in it.”
What to check after an update
Even a release that doesn’t touch the areas you use heavily is worth a quick check. The things most likely to affect daily operations are usually the things that face the public or feed other systems. A short checklist you run after each release might cover:
- Web forms. Buy a ticket, process a membership, and make a small donation online. Confirm the transactions post the way you expect.
- Daily sales and printing. Run a test sale at the desk and print a ticket and a receipt.
- Queries and exports that other systems depend on. If an email tool, spreadsheet, or integration pulls from an Altru query, confirm the query still returns the same columns and row counts.
- Reports staff rely on. Run your daily and end-of-day reports and compare them to a recent known-good day.
- Batches. If your finance team commits revenue in batches, have them confirm the process works before the next close.
Keep the checklist in a shared document and add to it every time an update surprises you. After a few releases, it reflects exactly where your setup is fragile.
Testing before a release reaches production
Some organizations have access to a separate test or staging environment, and some Blackbaud releases are made available for preview before they go live. Whether that applies to your account depends on your agreement with Blackbaud, so don’t assume either way. Ask your account representative or Blackbaud support whether you have a test environment and whether it receives releases early. If you do, run your post-update checklist there first.
Quick answers
Can I find out when the next Altru update is scheduled?
Sometimes. Upcoming release dates and maintenance windows are generally announced through the Community, the status page, and email to account contacts. If you can’t find a date, ask Blackbaud support directly.
Can we delay or skip an update?
Generally no. Because Altru is hosted, all customers receive releases on Blackbaud’s schedule. Plan around the release date rather than trying to avoid it.
Something changed and I can’t find it in the release notes. Now what?
Search the knowledgebase and the Altru Community group for the specific behavior, then open a support case with Blackbaud if nothing turns up. Include the date you first noticed it and the steps to reproduce it.
