The (SKY)’s The Limit For Blackbaud’s Education Management Products

See what I did there? It’s time for a bit of spring cleaning…just in the Fall, I guess. Out with the old and in with the new is the theme of this journal entry as the Education management teams have been doing extensive work on the visuals over the Summer.

Today, we’re taking a look at some of the bigger visual changes the teams have made, taking various features and pages out of Podium and giving it a glow up using SKY.

Managing Official Notes

Alright, this one may be cheating a bit since the rollout began back in April, so you’re likely well aware, but it’s still worth highlighting because it was a big update! Wrapping up in June, everyone was finally able to see the new SKY list style that has appeared in many spots across the Education management products.

You're still able to access it from Academics, Communications, Official Notes, and then Manage official notes (formerly Approve official notes). In addition, the Official notes ready to approve and Official Notes No approval required links from the Academics Home page will also load here.

Admissions Progress

The Parent Portal’s Admissions Progress and Candidate Progress Settings in Enrollment management both got major glow ups this summer. First and foremost, the Admissions Progress page is now mobile friendly as the candidate progress text box can be collapsed so that it doesn't take up space in the mobile view.

However, the biggest change is the banner at the top of the page, which is completely customizable from Admissions setup, then Candidate Progress Settings and allows you to bring your branding to the portal, so there's increased continuity when the family switches from your website to the portal for the admissions process. From Candidate progress settings, you can edit the admissions portal welcome text or upload a full width banner image as well as a mobile specific version, if needed. The images can even be previewed before they’re published to ensure their look and feel prior to going live.

If you want to learn more, definitely check our dedicated blog post on the subject.

Transportation

From Extracurricular, head on over to Athletics, and then Athletics setup. When an Athletic Group Manager selects Transportation, a list displaying the Transportation and Number of Seats by default will appear.

Select +New to create a new transportation entry and then add the description and how many seats are available. You can also use the search option to find a specific entry in this list, sort either column, or apply filters to change which data is being displayed.

Honorable Mention: Billing Profiles Payment Plans

More of a “redesign” than a full-scale switch to SKY, the Billing management team made some major improvements to the Payment Plans area on Billing profiles.

For example, they added a school year date picker that refreshes the section to reflect the selected year. There’s a statement recipient drop-down that filters the data in the section to reflect the selected statement recipient for profiles where the family situation is set to People cannot see each other’s activity. There are also visual indicators that show whether Auto-Pay is active or if payment is past due, and you can easily see key plan details for the selected year like the total amount, total paid, and more.

But that’s not all! We have more planned visual updates on the way, including another big one for Extracurricular with managing coaches, so stay tuned to our What's New release letter each week for more! We hope these updates have helped make your life much easier and more efficient when working inside of Blackbaud’s Education management products. We’ll see you next time!