What's New – November 3, 2026

Blackbaud’s bi-annual Product Update Briefings are your opportunity to explore what’s new, what’s next, and how upcoming innovations can support your mission. Join us virtually November 17-19 for expert-led insights and companion resources designed to help you work with confidence. Register now to watch live or access the on-demand recording.

Last week, a new user experience was released to all schools. It enables you to manage basic and advanced lists via a single, modern SKY list, but it's more than just a fresh look and feel.

The new "list of lists" enables a List Admin to update lists in bulk. When you're ready to clean up lists your school no longer needs, consider using this to delete lists in bulk. You can also grant access for multiple lists, users, and roles in bulk; consider using this to adjust access when the academic year, grading period, department, or staffing needs change.

To see it in action, go to Core, Reporting, Manage lists, and then Manage basic and advanced lists.

Keep Manage lists tidy, even after the people who created lists have left your school. Platform managers with the new Administer Lists task can see every list in the system, including User lists, Students lists, and Candidates lists, and delete the ones your school no longer needs.

To get started, verify the Administer Lists task is enabled on the platform manager role or clone. Then go to Manage lists, open the context menu for a list, and select Delete. Deleting a list is permanent and affects all users.

Schools currently participating in the Early Adopter Program (EAP) for Blackbaud AI - Chat should consider asking the AI Chat how to create an advanced list. Our AI recently "ingested" additional data resources. This enables the AI Chat to refer to the updated data dictionary and data diagram when a user asks for help creating an advanced list. Thus, replies are more detailed and relevant to the specific query criteria you want your advanced list to handle.

Keeping track of calls, meetings, mailings, and follow-ups shouldn’t depend on which product you’re in. Actions are coming to Core, and your school can help shape them before they reach everyone by joining the early adopter program (EAP).

With Actions in Core, staff can track and manage communications and tasks tied to a constituent. Keep a history of interactions, plan future engagements, and review activity by status, date, or type.

The EAP includes:

• An Actions list, so platform managers and other authorized users can see and manage actions across all users in one place.

• An Actions tab on the Core profile, to review a constituent’s actions in context.

• Add and edit windows with action types your school defines.

If your school already uses Actions in Billing or Raiser's Edge NXT, you’ll find the same capabilities in Core, now built on a modern foundation that other Education Management products can adopt over time.

We’re currently recruiting early adopter program (EAP) participants. If you want early access and are willing to give feedback as this develops, we’d love to have you. [Sign up for the Actions EAP]

Returning families can now use the new Apply Now sign-in for a child that's already in the school's records without needing to re-enter existing information.

In addition, any child who already has an application in progress is listed with a link to that child's Admissions Progress page. Parents whose accounts were turned off automatically (for example, after an earlier candidate was inactivated or after a long period of inactivity) are signed in normally instead of being blocked, and parents whose username isn't their email address are matched to their existing account instead of getting a duplicate.

The Restrict Verified Applications to Assigned Budget setting has moved from General School Settings to budget setup. You can now enable this setting for individual budgets instead of applying it at the school level.