Hey everyone! I just wanted to clear up why this is the way it is in web view.

I'll try to keep the explanation simple, but RE NXT web view makes use of a number of read only data stores in order to optimize performance of the system. We populate some lists from this data store (as opposed to the live RE database) in order to prevent general performance of the system as a whole from slowing down. This is especially important for records with higher volume that are most frequently accessed/updated (such as constituents and gifts).

So when you load a list of Opportunities, we pull that right from RE. There are generally few of them and they aren't accessed too frequently, so the risk of that slowing down the system is very low. We give you the option to "refresh" because once you load the page, the results are essentially stale. If you're on that page for a while and someone has added one, we want you to be able to see it without reloading the entire web page. 

Constituent and Gift lists on the other hand, are pulled from our read only data store. There are generally a LOT of these records in databases and they are accessed VERY frequently for a variety of very good reasons. Pulling the data directly from the RE database would put performance of the application as a whole at risk, so instead, we regularly copy data from the RE database to another data source used precisely for this reason. We refresh that data source on an ongoing basis but there is some lag from when the record was added. So while putting a refresh button on that page would actually serve a function, it would likely cause more confusion than its worth since users (intentionally) don't have control over when that read only data store is synched.

I can assure you that we are regularly looking into ways to make this data available as close to real-time as possible without risking performance issues. If and when we get it within seconds of the record being added, we may very well go back and add a refresh button (like the ones you see on Opportunity and Action lists), but until then, we don't want to mislead or confuse anyone!

I hope this helps. I'm going to mark this idea for the time being as "Unlikely to implement" to help with visibility of other ideas that might be more immediately actionable, but if you've made it this far in my comment, you know the full story. :)

Thanks,

Jarod

I thought there was a refresh button on the Gifts Tile, but I went to test something by adding a Gift in RE:7...NXT still says "refreshed X minutes ago".  So I can't continue my testing until whenever it ends up refreshing.  At this rate, who knows how many hours it will take (or days, if this is also on a 6-hour refresh rate) to finish testing.  Frustrating.  And, this could very well produce issues if I ever get our staff to really start using NXT, I can completely see them asking why gifts haven't been entered yet, even though they have been, they're just not yet appearing in NXT.

At the very least, as a temporary measure until a faster refresh rate or a manually initiated refresh is available, can the line of text that says "List updated 8 minutes ago" include when the next refresh will happen?  Something like "List updated 8 minutes ago.  Next update in 22 minutes."

Of course, now that I'm writing this, I refreshed my browser and it says "List updated 21 minutes ago" but the test gift I entered appears in the list now.  So that's even more confusing.