What's Recent

The new report card grade entry experience for faculty will be enabled for all schools on January 7^th. When the new experience is enabled, faculty will only have access to the old report card grade entry experience through Grading on class pages. The new experience will be available from the New Grading tab on class pages, as well as through My Day, Schedule & Performance, by selecting a grade plan on the Grading tile.

With this update, we've split Departments & Courses into separate pages. Both the Departments and Courses pages now use the SKYUX list style and have access to customizable filters and columns. Functionality is the same as it was previously, where you can create, edit, or delete courses and departments. We’ve also added the ability to copy an existing course to create a new course record. The new separate Departments and Courses pages can be found under Academics, Scheduling, then Requests and schedules.

From Courses, select a course from the list to open the record and get a more in-depth look at the course details, including Grading, Scheduling, and Skill-based grading information.

For more information, make sure to visit the help center as well as our video series.

We made an update to this section on December 10 to add additional information.

We’ve added a new tab called Recent disbursements to the Blackbaud Billing management main page to streamline the reconciliation process between Blackbaud Merchant Services and Blackbaud Billing management.

This tab provides a detailed list of payments processed with Blackbaud Merchant services once funds have been disbursed, including the gross amount, Blackbaud Merchant Services fees withheld, and the difference between the two represented as the net amount. This granularity helps Billing clerks create journal entries in their general ledger to account for the Blackbaud Merchant Services fees more easily and without needing to switch between platforms, saving time overall when reconciling.

Note: Due to Blackbaud Billing management having only recently started to track payments in disbursements, some of the first disbursements may be missing links to payments and produce a None found status in some fields.

We’ve renamed the Online payment made notification to Payment received.

Payers now see an option to Send payment received notification when making one-off payments, enabling them to receive an e-mail notification when the payment completes. Payers only see the option if the Payment received notification is configured.

Previously, when a user viewed the Core contact card of a user who is U.S. Nonresident, this information appeared in the General information tile. Now, it appears is the Citizenship/resident tile. If you need to edit this information, do so from the new location, under Residency.

Earlier this year, we expanded access to resources boards to enable schools to share content with parents of past students and parents of alums. This enables schools to choose to share information with families of students who are post-enrollment that differs from the content they might share with families whose students are currently enrolled.

Now, if a student withdraws from enrollment during the current school year and the departure date has passed, their parents will now see the resource board content for parents of past students.

Previously, they would have continued to see the resource board content for parents of current students, because they had an enrollment at some point during the current year. Thus, the parent’s resource board view is now updated to a post-enrollment view when the student departs.

When a platform manager sends an invite to a user’s email address to invite them to their Blackbaud ID account, but the user hasn’t logged in yet, then the user’s status is Awaiting response.

Previously, admins could edit the username of these users prior to them registering. Originally, usernames were populated when the user registered.

Starting last year, usernames are populated when the user is invited and is still Awaiting response.

As of this release, admins can no longer edit the usernames of users who are Awaiting response. This protects usernames from being changed while the user still has a valid invitation with that email address, which just hasn’t been accepted yet.

Admins can still edit the usernames of users who are Unregistered. Do this from the Access tab on the user’s Core profile.

With this update, we’ve cleaned up some old settings which previously appeared in Core, Security, Profile access. Settings for Email for questions about profile no longer appear.

This change has no impact on functionality for users or user privacy. This update reduces clutter from legacy code and reduces potential confusion. This setting was previously discussed in the Blackbaud User Community. We thank users, like you, for your curiosity and engagement.

Platform managers can customize the values that appear as options for custom fields. They do this from Core, Settings, General settings, Table values.

Now, if you attempt to add a value to a table, but the same value already exists, the system will prevent you from accidentally creating a duplicate value. Values are considered duplicates regardless of capitalization or (in)active status.

This helps schools maintain good data hygiene and ensures the values within a table are unique.

Users can now resend an email originally sent to a payer. This can be done from Communication History under the Family Account and then selecting Resend from the Outbound Emails list. When the button is selected, an email with the same text is sent to the current email addresses on file per the family's account settings.

Once resent, the Communication History is updated to show the new email that was just sent, who it was sent to, and a timestamp. The subject line will also now display "Resent" in front of the original text to indicate it isn't the original version.

Changed

New optional fields added to POST User create and Patch User update

We’ve updated POST User create and PATCH User update to accept three new optional string fields in their request bodies for setting the personal_bio, public_bio, and summary_note for a user.

Event_time object added to GET Athletics schedules

We’ve updated GET Athletics schedules to include a new object in its response, event_time, which returns the event time structured in a 24-hour time format.

New

We’ve added an endpoint for retrieving a list of candidate status changes:

GET Candidate status change list (Get) returns a list of candidate status changes for a year, defaulting to the current admissions year. Set the optional school_year, status_type or start_date properties to filter the results in the response.

Changed

New objects added to Inquiry list response body

We’ve updated GET Inquiry list (Get) to include the current school, referral, and financial aid as objects in the response body.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

Teachers can now recover their own assignments deleted by mistake. Recovering an assignment restores the assignment, grades, file submissions, and text submissions for any class associated with the assignment.

1. In Faculty, select My Day, then Assignment Center.

2. If you are in the grid view of the Assignment Center, select the list icon in the upper right.

3. Select More, then Recover assignment.

4. From the list of deleted assignments, select the assignments to recover. Only assignments for the current school year are available for selection.

5. Select Restore.

With this release, when transferring a student to another section of the same course, users can now select Transfer gradebook grades to copy the student’s gradebook grades to the new section along with the student’s enrollment. Gradebook grades are only transferred for assignments that are shared between the original and new class sections. Additionally, the grades are not removed from the original class section when copied to the new section.

Assignment status setting for No submission assignment statuses

Academic Group Managers and Gradebook Managers can now determine what status is applied to assignments with the No assignment submission method selected when the due date and time passes.

1. In Academics, select Grades, Grading setup, then Assignment settings.

2. Under Student and Parent defaults, select Edit.

3. Under Assignment status behavior, select a status to automatically apply to assignments that do not require a submission when the due date and time passes:

• Complete (default selection)

• Overdue

• To do

We’ve updated the color scheme for assignments in the In Progress status to allow students to better differentiate these assignments from those in the To Do status.

We’ve updated the icons that students and parents see in the new Assignment Center and the Assignment submission page to be more noticeable. The new icons are larger and more vibrant.

When editing longform text fields, the text box now expands to allow users to see more of their content without needing to scroll. The expanding text box is available for Messages, Academic Official Notes and the following content types:

• Announcements

• Audio

• Downloads

• Events

• Expectations

• Grading Rubric

• Links

• News

• Scoreboard

• Syllabus

• Text

• Videos

Switch between marking periods in new report card grade entry

In the narrative (list) view of the new report card grade entry page, teachers can now switch between marking periods using the dropdown under Gradebook history.

Third party payments now include the first and last name of the contact at the organization on journal references when First name and Last name are configured under Posting rules.

Student ID is a new field segment available under the Payments column when configuring posting rules for journal references.

Payers enrolling in Auto-Pay can now choose to use a saved payment method to complete the process. This change applies to US schools only.

We’ve added an optional Calculate late fees column to the Students list, enabling Billing clerks to identify if late fees are enabled for a student.

When user’s Blackbaud ID (BBID) is disabled for two years (such as due to inactivity), then their account is disconnected.

Additionally, the email address that’s used as their username will appear redacted. When you view the user’s profile in Core and select the Access tab, you’ll notice the original email address no longer appears. A filler which states “redacted + date as YYYYMMDD + # @redacted.com” appears instead.

This data is redacted when it is no longer relevant, in accordance with our data retention and security policies.

Platform managers can update the user’s login to use a different email address and then connect it to Blackbaud ID.

With this release, we’ve added Financial Aid Management to the omnibar. Financial Aid users with access to other Blackbaud solutions, such as Tuition Management, Financial Edge NXT, or Blackbaud’s suite of education management solutions, can now navigate to Financial Aid Management from those solutions using the top-level menu.

The Manage Fees and Discounts Fee page now features a new column for Grades Applied To. Essentially, this field displays all of the grade levels that the billing item applies to within this grid view.

When selecting Fee Report or Discount Report from Fees & Discounts, users are now re-directed to the reports page and the corresponding report will appear automatically.

We've updated the Page View so it can be extended to 500 lines in the following locations: View All Families, Pending Families, Manage Families, and View All Students.

When parents update their secondary email on file, the email will now default to mirror instead of supplemental.

Users will now see a larger dropdown menu when interacting with Select Action under Manage Families. In addition, we've also increased the dropdown selector inside of the Billing Details page for Select a Shopping Cart Fee, Select a Fee, and Select A Discount. The increased space on these dropdowns allows users to see more options without having to scroll.

New

Update student attendance

We’ve added an endpoint for updating student attendance records for the section specified in the request:

Endpoint: /school/v1/attendance/sections/{section_id}/attendance

The POST Attendance by section update endpoint uses the required section_id path parameter to update attendance for a section. The request body requires a meeting_start_time and supports an optional student_attendances array. When the student_attendances array is excluded, all students are marked as present. Populate the student_attendances array with objects containing a required student_id and execute_type_id, and an optional comment field, to record absences.

Changed

We made an update to this section on November 19 to remove a reference to a feature that will not be released.

Retrieve course scheduling and department information

We’ve added support for several new properties returned in the response body of GET Academic courses:

• schedule_settings contains an array of course scheduling information objects; each course object contains fields describing the scheduling constraints of the course, such as the min_sections, max_sections, target_sections, min_students, max_students, and target_students.

• departments contains an array of departments for the course; each department object contains information about the department, including the id, name, description, and its is_academic flag.

Retrieve enrollment type from enrollment lists

GET Academics student enrollment list now includes an enrollment_type property in its response body.

Retrieve online presence information about users

GET Users extended by role(s) and GET Users extended by user now return an online_presence array in their respective response bodies. Each object in the online_presence array contains information about the users online presence on potentially other social platforms, such as the link to the platform, a description, and more.

Changed

Households data now available from Inquiry list (Get) (PREVIEW)

Inquiry list (Get) (PREVIEW) now supports returning a households object in the response body.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

Interested in the roadmaps for your Blackbaud solutions? Join us at the upcoming Product Update Briefings, starting November 12th, to see what is planned. Register to attend the webinars.

This week in the Education Management Journal, we’re giving you a sneak peek at a trio of free upcoming webinars aimed at making your enrollment season incredibly smooth. Speak to experts, get your questions answers, and learn about some of the pitfalls during setup.

With this release, the Submit assignment and Print buttons now float at the bottom of the assignment submission page.

When users select See grade details on a student’s Progress tab, they now see Grades recently updated for any assignment type with updates since the user last viewed the page. Grades recently updated appears after the teacher commits any changes to the student’s grades, comments, or grade indicators for the assignment type.

In the student and parent view of the Assignment Center, the Missing assignments button is now red.

When students manually change an assignment status from Completed to To do or In Progress, the student’s selection is now retained. Previously, refreshing the page would revert the assignment status back to Completed.

When annotating assignments, the annotation tool now opens files in a full screen iFrame. To exit the annotation tool, teachers select Close or X. This change prevents the annotation tool from closing when users swipe down on iPads.

When exporting the RSS feed for Assignments from the persona Calendar, the feed now exports the Due date for assignments instead of the Assigned date.

The new report card grade entry experience for faculty will be enabled for all schools on January 7th. When the new experience is enabled, faculty will only have access to the old report cardgrade report grade entry experience through Grading on class pages. The new experience will be available from the New Grading tab on class pages, as well as through My Day, Schedule & Performance, by selecting a grade plan on the Grading tile.

We've updated Conduct Infractions so when an update/edit is made to an infraction within the same threshold, it will no longer retrigger when saved.

As part of our release on October 1st, we added a new basic list called Students with parents (flattened). It returns significantly more results than a similar advanced list template. It shows the information for a single student and up to 4 parents for that student. You can also use it to check parent relationships and how many times parents appear in the basic list.

With this release on November 5th, list managers can now select additional data columns for the basic list. They include:

• student’s email address,

• each parent’s email address,

• list as parent,

• parental access,

• no contact,

• resides with,

• relationship comment,

• relationship type.

You can also filter based on the columns for:

• list as parent,

• parental access,

• no contact,

• resides with,

• relationship comment,

• relationship type.

Data regarding which platform managers impersonated another user, who they impersonated, and when, is stored for two years. After two years, the impersonation data history is purged. This data is removed when it is no longer relevant, in accordance with our data retention and security policies.

We've updated the Smart Family ID column label in the Contract List to be Tuition Management Family ID. Please note that this is simply a label change, the functionality remains the same as it was.

When admissions managers select Generate under Contracts for a specific candidate or student from People Finder, a modal now appears with the ability to generate the contract for that specific candidate/student only.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

If you have access to manage logins and you view a user’s Core profile, you’ll notice the login info and options on the Access tab now appear in a more user-friendly format. The order and labels are improved; the functionality remains the same.

• The Disabled account status appears near the top, so you can easily identify whether a user’s account is disabled before you Connect them to Blackbaud ID.

• The Blackbaud ID username appears more prominently, to help you find the right email address for login troubleshooting.

• Authentication status and Login history are now consolidated, which makes the information easier to find.

Note: To view Authentication status, you must be an organization admin or solution admin, and you must not be impersonating.

Admins at schools that use single sign on (SSO) should create a new connection by October 31, 2024. This is a one-time requirement related to migrating our authentication service for Blackbaud ID (BBID).

An admin is the only user who needs to act for this migration. To update or establish an SSO connection between Blackbaud and your Identity Provider (IdP), log into https://www.blackbaud.com/ and select Admin, Security, Authentication. Then follow the instructions online for your school’s IdP. Blackbaud will then use your active directory for the corresponding Blackbaud ID accounts.

End users (including faculty and students) do not need to take action. Their login workflow will remain unchanged on the new SSO connection.

The initial migration for Blackbaud ID occurred May 8, as we previously announced. This update improves the reliability of Blackbaud ID, while also creating an easier, more intuitive sign-in page that puts your brand at the center of the user experience. At the time, we promised to provide additional details for schools that use a single sign on when the new connection became available so they could take the necessary action before October 31. These instructions are also now available via the Blackbaud ID tile on your Core home dashboard.

When initially logging into Tuition Management, school users can select the default login year they're entered in from Settings, and then Manage Accounts. From here, use the dropdown option for Default Login Session to select the year, which then becomes the default for their account. Please note that this functionality is not currently available for enterprise users.

New

Retrieve content management announcement categories

We’ve added a new endpoint for retrieving announcement categories:

Endpoint:/school/v1/contentmanagement/announcements/categories

GET Content management announcement categories retrieves an array of announcement category objects, with each object containing various fields for identifying key aspects of the announcement category.

Retrieve content management news categories

We’ve added a new endpoint for retrieving news categories:

Endpoint: /school/v1/contentmanagement/news

GET Content management news categories retrieves an array of news categories objects, with each object containing various fields for identifying key aspects of the news category.

Changed

page_size parameter added to GET Users extended by role(s)

We’ve added an optional page_size URL query parameter to GET Users extended by role(s). Leverage the page_size parameter to control the exact number of results returned in each request. The default and max page_size value is 1000.

Additionally, when provided, the next_link property includes the page_size.

Room object now returned in GET Dorm rosters (BETA)

GET Dorm rosters (BETA) now returns a section.roster.room object in its response. The section.roster.room object contains fields that contain data about the room, such as the room number, name, code, capacity, and its id.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view changelog.

This week in the Education Management Journal, we’re taking a closer look at some of the biggest and best enhancements made to the EMS Homepage over the past couple months. Read about all of the tweaks, improvements, and new additions here.

The new report card grade entry experience for faculty will be enabled for all schools on January 7th. When the new experience is enabled, faculty will only have access to the old report card grade entry experience through Grading on class pages. The new experience will be available from New Grading on class pages, as well as through My Day, Schedule & Performance, by selecting a grade plan on the Grading tile.

For schools utilizing grade review, once a Grading Manager marks a student’s grades, skills, and comments as “Reviewed,” the grade, comment, and skill entry fields are disabled for that student. Additionally, the grade calculation, bulk comment, and bulk skill entry tools cannot override the existing entries for a student once they are marked “Reviewed.”

Teachers can now select the paste as text icon to paste plain text when entering comments in grid view, list view, the bulk comment editor, and the bulk skill editor.

• In the new Assignment Center experience, students and parents can now select Reports to access and run their available reports. Reports are not available in mobile view.

• The new Assignment Center experience now has a Print option for students and parents. In mobile view, users can print by selecting the ellipsis icon, then Print.

  

With this release, we’ve added a new Learning Profile Edit task to the Learning Profile Manager and Learning Profile Staff roles. The task is enabled by default for the Learning Profile Manager role. It is disabled by default for Learning Profile Staff and clones of both the staff and manager roles.

With the task enabled, Learning Profile Managers and Staff can edit a student’s existing learning profile by going to Academics, People finder, selecting a student and then the Performance tab. Under Learning profiles, select the context menu next to a learning profile, then Edit.

We’ve also added auditing for learning profiles, which users can view by selecting the context menu next to a student’s learning profile, then See change history.

Additionally, Learning Profile Managers can now edit existing learning fields on learning profile forms, as well as add new fields. Previously, learning fields could not be edited or added after a form was in use on student profiles.

1. In Academics, select Grades, then Grading setup.

2. Select Learning profile forms.

3. Locate the form and select Edit.

4. On the Learning Fields tab, edit the Label, Format example, Required, and Sort order as needed. To add fields to the form, select Add Additional Field.

5. When finished, select Save or Save & Exit.

The Attendance Status column from the Class Attendance page now shows the date and time that attendance was taken. Not Taken continues to appear otherwise.

Payers responsible for multiple students will now be able to filter the Statements page in the payer portal by each student. Once filtered, the Statement summary and Activity sections update with the details for the specified student, providing a quick view of their remaining amount due.

If a platform manager uses a smart phone or other mobile device to view the details of a security role, the user interface now adjusts for a more responsive experience. This enables managers to more easily view and manage the tasks associated with a role, even while on the go.

When a platform manager views the list of users they’ve recently impersonated, such as to select to impersonate someone again, the list shows the names of the 20 most recent unique users.

Admins at schools that use single sign on (SSO) should create a new connection by October 31, 2024. This is a one-time requirement related to migrating our authentication service for Blackbaud ID (BBID).

An admin is the only user who needs to act for this migration. To update or establish an SSO connection between Blackbaud and your Identity Provider (IdP), log into https://www.blackbaud.com/ and select Admin, Security, Authentication. Then follow the instructions online for your school’s IdP. Blackbaud will then use your active directory for the corresponding Blackbaud ID accounts.

End users (including faculty and students) do not need to take action. Their login workflow will remain unchanged on the new SSO connection.

The initial migration for Blackbaud ID occurred May 8, as we previously announced. This update improves the reliability of Blackbaud ID, while also creating an easier, more intuitive sign-in page that puts your brand at the center of the user experience. At the time, we promised to provide additional details for schools that use a single sign on when the new connection became available so they could take the necessary action before October 31. These instructions are also now available via the Blackbaud ID tile on your Core home dashboard.

We've enhanced the Internal Notes field on a Candidateprofile. When adding a new one, you can now associate a Note type to help you better categories your notes. By default, this field has one option called Internal Note but this can be customized further to add new options as needed.

If you want to customize your types, go to Admissions Setup, Candidate profile settings and then edit the Internal Note Types section to create your own. You can also deactivate, delete, and reorder them around as well.

With this release, Advanced School Users can now manage the housing expense amounts their school allows annually for homeowners and home renters. Previously, schools had to contact Customer Support to update this setting on the school's behalf.

The default housing expense amounts are based on regional data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. A school in an area with high housing costs, for example, may want to increase the maximum housing expenses they allow for families applying for aid.

Note: Housing expense settings are based on a family of four. The Household Contribution to Education (HCE) calculation will adjust the allowed housing expense amounts accordingly for the applicant family’s household size.

1. Under Settings, select Custom Calculation Settings.

2. Select Housing expenses.

3. Under Percentage of change, enter the percentages of the default amounts that you want to allow for homeowners and home renters. To allow the default amounts, enter 100 for both homeowners and renters.

   Example: If the default allowed expense for homeowners in your region is $14,553 and you want to allow $16,000, set the percentage to 110.

4. Review the Calculated home owner and Calculated home renter amounts.

5. When finished, select Save.

6. Run the Family Report for a family of four to assess how the updated allowed housing expense amounts affect the Household Contribution to Education (HCE) calculation result.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the changelog.

Contract season is fast on approach and for some of you, it may already be happening. This week in the Education Journal, we’re highlighting some tips and tricks that you can take advantage of to help ensure a smoother experience this year. This is a three-part series, so keep an eye out for more in the future.

Assignments marked as missing now display “Missing” instead of the assignment status. This helps alleviate confusion around missing assignments displaying “Graded” or “Complete” status because a grade of zero is entered. If the teacher removes the missing indicator, the assignment status will display. Additionally, on the assignment submission page, assignments marked “Missing” will always display a red status bar.

Assignments now display as “Overdue” once the due time has passed on the due date. Previously, assignments did not display as “Overdue” until the day after the due date.

In the calendar view of the student Assignment Center, we’ve increased the size of the event tiles and increased the space allowed for assignment titles to three rows of text.

We’ve added two new default gradebook settings for Gradebook Managers to configure.

1. In Academics, Grades, Grading setup, select Gradebook settings.

2. Under Default gradebook settings, select the context menu next to a school level, then Edit defaults.

3. Under Gradebook cumulative display defaults, there are two Student gradebook display defaults. Both are enabled by default.

· Display assignment type percentage shows the percentage next to each assignment type under the Assignment type breakdown in the student gradebook.

· Display assignment percentage grade shows the % Grade column when viewing an assignment type in the student gradebook.

• Comments in the student gradebook now display with their formatting intact.

• When teachers access the Student gradebook from within a class gradebook, they can now navigate between students by selecting Previous or Next.

For Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) tools set up to display in an iFrame, we've increased the height for the iFrame display. Previously, the default height was too short, requiring users to scroll to view all content.

When an LTI tool is configured to use Preferred name, if available, the Full name endpoint now uses Preferred name as the Given name endpoint does.

Billing clerks can now reattempt to process failed Auto-Pay transactions on behalf of payers via the Review failed payments list. Select any failed auto-pay payment in the list and then select Retry payment to reattempt to process the payment.

Auto-Pay payments that fail to process no longer immediately send an automatic notification to payers at the time of failure, providing Billing clerks time to either handle or retry the failed payment. The notification is now sent to payers when the Billing clerk selects ‘Handle payment’.

The Current bill page now shows payers the last 60 days’ worth of transactions by default.

When a manager customizes the user name format for the school, they can now use three new placeholders:

• preferredlastname|lastname} - If no preferred last name, then last name

• {preferredname|firstname} - If no preferred name, then first name

• {preferredname} - Preferred (first) name

Consider including these new placeholders in your school’s custom user format to ensure members of your community are addressed correctly.

This update extends the functionality of preferred first and last names, which was released earlier this year.

Note: Old placeholders related to nicknames no longer appear. Preferred (first) name replaced them.

When a platform manager edits a user’s employment with the school and saves the changes, the user profile tiles which show information for

• log in information,

• roles,

• and personas

now automatically refreshes to reflect the changes to the user. Previously, platform managers had to manually refresh their browser’s view of the entire page to show the most recent information.

As of this release, platform managers must use the new interface to manage security roles, role membership, and tasks. All menu options only lead to the new version.

Last year we introduced a completely updated user interface to help platform managers manage security roles, role membership, and tasks. Since then, both the new and old user interfaces have been available to admins. The old version is no longer available.

To use the new version now, select Core, Security, and Roles. Find the role in the list, select (...), then Manage roles – NEW.

For information about the new roles and tasks experience, see the online help.

Admins at schools that use single sign on (SSO) should create a new connection by October 31, 2024. This is a one-time requirement related to migrating our authentication service for Blackbaud ID (BBID).

An admin is the only user who needs to act for this migration. To update or establish an SSO connection between Blackbaud and your Identity Provider (IdP), login to https://www.blackbaud.com/ and select Admin, Security, Authentication. Then follow the instructions online for your school’s IdP. Blackbaud will then use your active directory for the corresponding Blackbaud ID accounts.

End users (including faculty and students) do not need to take action. Their login workflow will remain unchanged on the new SSO connection.

The initial migration for Blackbaud ID occurred May 8, as we previously announced. At the time, we promised to provide additional details for schools that use a single sign on when the new connection became available so they could take the necessary action before October 31. These instructions are also now available via the Blackbaud ID tile on your Core home dashboard, along with a count down.

This update improves the reliability of Blackbaud ID, while also creating an easier, more intuitive sign-in page that puts your brand at the center of the user experience.

New

Retrieve content news categories

We’ve added a new endpoint for retrieving information about news categories:

Endpoint: /school/v1/contentmanagement/news/categories

GET Content management news categories returns an array of admin news category objects, with each object containing details about the news category.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view changelog.

In the student Assignment Center, assignment details now indicate whether an assignment requires an Online submission or an On paper submission. If no submission is required, no submission method is displayed.

In the mobile view of the student Assignment Center calendar, we’ve made the following updates. Additional updates will be made in upcoming releases.

• The calendar always displays Day view.

• Selecting the date opens the date selector.

• The +Add task button is relabeled +.

• The ...More button now displays only the ellipsis.

• The Missing Assignments button is in the ellipsis button dropdown.

The assignment annotation tool has been updated so annotations display in the location where they are placed within assignment files.

We’ve made the following updates to the new report card grade entry experience for faculty:

• When selecting Show previous grades, the selected grade plans are now sorted by the grade plan start date, then by the sort order of the Grade Plan Grades or Skill.

• In grid view, the left to right scroll bar now floats so users no longer need to scroll to the bottom of the grid to access it.

When working with Class Attendance inside of the Attendance Hub, we've added a new Attendance of Record filter. While it defaults to All, you can change it to Yes or No as needed.

Billing management now automatically saves the state of Add charges to group sessions, protecting Billing clerks against data loss scenarios. Each incomplete session is automatically saved whenever a new row is added. Saved sessions are available to be resumed on the Process history tab.

Additionally, a new Save draft button, available at the bottom of the Add charges to group form, enables Billing clerks to manually save drafts as needed.

Billing clerks can now include alumni and past students in the Add payments to group process.

To help payers better identify payments that fail, we’ve made some adjustments to their Current bill page. We’ve removed the Status column and added the information from that column into the Payment amount field. In the same field, payers will also see why the payment failed.

The failed payment email and SMS notification now features a Failed payment reason merge field; embed the merge field into your notification to help payers understand what went wrong with their payment.

A new security task, called Impersonation history, is now enabled by default for users with the platform manager role. This enables platform managers to view a history of

• which users have impersonated other users,

• who they have impersonated,

• and when they impersonated the other users.

Filter the history by time and search by name. Then use it to review impersonation activity for security or managerial purposes. For example, identify users who may need their roles and tasks adjusted (to grant them access to features), investigate whether an important action could have been completed by an impersonator, and more.

To view the history, navigate to Core, select Security, then select Impersonation history.

Previously, if a user customized which profile content they published to other users, but then the user’s security roles or tasks changed, some of the settings which control this publishing process could become unintuitive, or the user would be unable to return the setting to their defaults.

This update makes the profile publish settings more user friendly and ensures they follow user expectations.

From your name’s drop-down menu, select Settings, Privacy, then in general settings select Reset to default. This new option clears any options the user previously selected to customize and returns their settings to the school’s defaults. Additionally, settings which apply to roles that the user no longer has will likewise no longer appear.

To configure the defaults for each role-to-role combination at the school, a manager should go to Core, Security, Profile access, and then Profile publish access.

Tip: When you change a user’s security roles, any profile publish settings that no longer apply will be removed from the user’s view during an overnight refresh. So if a user sees a setting for a role you recently removed, ask the user to re-check their profile privacy settings the next day.

Last year we introduced a completely updated user interface to help platform managers manage security roles, role membership, and tasks.

Since then, both the new and old user interfaces have been available to admins. On October 15, 2024, the old version will no longer be available and all menu options will lead to the new version only.

To use the new version now, select Core, Security, and Roles. Find the role in the list and select (...) and then Manage roles – NEW.

For information about the new roles and tasks experience, see the online help.

Admins at schools that use single sign on (SSO) should create a new connection by October 31, 2024. This is a one-time requirement related to migrating our authentication service for Blackbaud ID (BBID).

An admin is the only user who needs to act for this migration. To update or establish an SSO connection between Blackbaud and your Identity Provider (IdP), login to https://www.blackbaud.com/ and select Admin, Security, Authentication. Then follow the instructions online for your school’s IdP. Blackbaud will then use your active directory for the corresponding Blackbaud ID accounts.

End users (including faculty and students) do not need to take action. Their login workflow will remain unchanged on the new SSO connection.

The initial migration for Blackbaud ID occurred May 8, as we previously announced. At the time, we promised to provide additional details for schools that use a single sign on when the new connection became available so they could take the necessary action before October 31. These instructions are also now available via the Blackbaud ID tile on your Core home dashboard, along with a count down.

This update improves the reliability of Blackbaud ID, while also creating an easier, more intuitive sign-in page that puts your brand at the center of the user experience.

Admissions managers now have access to helplets that appear when creating an online transcript request checklist step. The helplets provide additional information about what sort of details are needed in fields like the Recipient Title, or E-mail Subject.

When using Recommendation, Online Recommendation and Online Transcript Request checklist steps, admissions managers now have the option to select Resend Request when the status is set to Requested. Resent Request also allows the admin to pick whether to resend the request to the same recipient/email, same recipient/different email or different recipient/email.

The columns a user selects to display in Manage Families are now “sticky” and remain selected even after the user navigates away from the page.

Changes

Candidate List (Get) now supports pagination

GET candidate list (Get) now supports pagination. Include the optional size or page parameters in the request body to impact the results returned in the request. By default, the default size is set to 3000.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

Over the Summer, we made some big changes to the Assignment Center. To help you find the information you need faster, we’ve created a series of videos and collected them together in this week’s Journal entry. They’re focused on the Student, Faculty, and Admin experience to help you find the information you need much faster and easier than before.

With this release, we’ve updated the submission methods available for teachers to select when creating assignments. These changes alleviate confusion that may arise for an assignment that shows as “Overdue” when, in fact, there is no submission required for the assignment.

In addition to the existing In-system submission and Third party submission options, teachers have two new submission methods to choose from:

• No assignment submission: The assignment has no physical or online submission component. When the assignment due date passes, the assignment status updates to Complete. Students and teachers don't have to take additional steps to prevent the assignment from displaying as Overdue after the due date, making this option ideal for task-based assignments, such as assigned reading or presentations.

• On paper submission only: Students submit a physical assignment. When the due date passes, the assignment status updates to Overdue until the assignment is graded or marked Collected. If students can choose between submitting their assignment on paper or uploading their assignment files online, teachers must select In-system submission so the file upload options are available to students.

For students and parents accessing the list view of the Assignment Center, the Missing or overdue section is now collapsed by default and users can select the section to expand it. Additionally, the Assignment Center filters are now hidden by default in both list view and calendar view. Users can access them by selecting Show filters.

When an assessment is shared across multiple class sections, teachersfaculty can now compare the results across those sections in the Detailed breakdown. From the Assignment Center, select the assessment name, then Detailed breakdown and use Select section results to choose the class sections to include in the reports below.

General statistics displays aggregate data from all sections.

Question insights includes the Most incorrect question and Most correct question for each included class section.

The Final score distribution displays a stacked bar graph with each color representing a different class section.

• Teachers can select a section name to toggle that class section on/off in the graph.

• Selecting a question under Final score distribution opens a flyout with additional details for each class section. The details displayed vary by question type.

Question breakdown displays Incorrect, Partial, Correct, and Not graded data points for all selected sections combined.

Students can no longer manually update the status of an assignment with the In-system submission method selected. To change the status to Complete, the student must submit the assignment or the teacher member can mark it Collected.

Dorm Supervisors and Coaches can no longer select See grade details on a student’s Progress tab when they do not have access to the student’s grades. Previously, See grade details displayed, but when selected, Dorm Supervisor without access to the student’s grades encountered an error.

Previously, if list managers wanted to view a list of Students with parents (flattened), they had to use an advanced list template. This advanced list limited results to a maximum of 100,00 users or 50,000 relationships for parents and children.

Now, they can run a basic list instead. This update enables schools to report on significantly more students and parents. To learn how many users your school has, review the count in Core, Users, User list.

The new basic list shows the information for a single student and up to 4 parents for that student. You can also use it to check parent relationships and how many times parents appear in the new basic list.

Find the new basic list in Core, Reporting, Manage lists, Manage basic and advances lists, Add, and select Create basic list. Then, from the Student information category, select Students (role based) with parents (flattened).

Tip: Looking for the inverse? Use the basic list for Parent & students family information (from the Parent information category) to show parents 1 and 2 with up to 5 students instead.

Last year we introduced a completely updated user interface to help platform managers manage security roles, role membership, and tasks.

Since then, both the new and old user interfaces have been available to admins. On October 15, 2024, the old version will no longer be available and all menu options will lead to the new version only.

To use the new version now, select Core, Security, and Roles. Find the role in the list and select (...) and then Manage roles – NEW.

For information about the new roles and tasks experience, see the online help.

Admissions managers now have more control over Name Formatting within Name Tags for events. Specifically, they can choose whether titles are always included by default as well as other options like Pronouns, Entering year, Entering grade, Preferred name, and more. These options can be found by selecting Sign Ups from the Event and then selecting Nametags.

To support this change, we've also switched the formatting options to a multiselect instead of a drop down so schools can now select the options they want.

With this update, we've updated the links for recommendations and transcript requests to now expire after 90 days instead of 60.

New

Retrieve announcements

We’ve added a new endpoint for retrieving announcements for the user calling the endpoint:

Endpoint: /school/v1/content/announcements

GET Content announcements returns an array of content announcement objects, containing properties such as headline, author, description, and a categories array; the categories array contains objects with properties such as content_type, name, primary, publish_date, and expire_date. By default, the endpoint returns all announcements for the user, but the optional category property can be passed as a URL query parameter to limit results in the response to those matching the category.

Retrieve announcement categories

We’ve added a new endpoint for retrieving announcement categories for the user calling the endpoint:

Endpoint: /school/v1/content/announcements/categories

GET Content announcements returns an array of content announcement categories, each containing an id and description property.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view our changelog.

Over the Summer, we made some big changes to the Assignment Center. To help you find the information you need faster, we’ve created a series of videos and collected them together in this week’s Journal entry. They’re focused on the Student, Faculty, and Admin experience to help you find the information you need much faster and easier than before.

With this release, we’ve made the following updates to the new Student Assignment Center experience.

Calendar and list views

• When students select Hide filters, the setting is now “sticky.” They can display filters again by selecting Show filters.

• The filter to display Major assignments is renamed Only display Major assignments.

• For a consistent experience across assignments and student-created tasks, students can now select the status of a task to open the task editing modal.

Calendar view

• Long task names are now truncated with an ellipsis. Previously, only an ellipsis displayed without any of the task name text.

• Updating the status of an assignment now automatically updates the assignment tile color without refreshing the page.

List view

• The assignment details now include the Assigned date and time.

This release includes the following enhancements to the Student gradebook that students, parents, and teachers access by selecting See grade details on the student’s Progress tab.

• After selecting See grade details, students and parents can now navigate between classes by selecting Previous or Next. Before this change, users had to close the grade detail for one class and select See grade details again to access another class.

When viewing assignments by Assignment type:

• Assignments are sorted by due date with the most recent assignments first.

• Exclude from cumulative grade displays under any assignments that the teacher has not configured to be included in the cumulative grade calculation.

• The html entity for non-breaking spaces ( ) is no longer visible under Comments.

This week, we're excited to release the new integration functionality between Financial Aid Management (BBFAM) and Blackbaud Enrollment Management (EMS). This integration makes it possible for schools with Enrollment Management to efficiently send student awards from BBFAM budgets to EMS where the award information is recorded as financial aid on student or candidate records.

Before sending award information to EMS, the BBFAM budget must be mapped to Enrollment Management to establish the EMS financial aid type that will be assigned to award information received from the budget. Additionally, students in BBFAM must be matched to their student or candidate record in EMS.

For more information, see Send to Enrollment Management in Budgets.

As part of the BBFAM to EMS integration, we’ve upgraded the Budget workflow for all schools. Administrators can now add new budgets and manage existing budgets in an updated modal that divides the settings into three distinct sections: General, for basic setup options; Eligibility criteria, where you can set parameters for which students to include in a budget; and Mapping, to link a budget to Enrollment Management or Blackbaud Tuition Management, if applicable.

The columns a user selects to display in Manage Families are now “sticky” and remain selected even after the user navigates away from the page.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

With schools now back into a new year, we’re catching you up on all of the biggest features that arrived within Blackbaud’s Education management products over the summer months of June, July, and August.

Gradebook managers can now edit gradebook settings within individual gradebooks, even if teachers are restricted from editing the settings. While teachers will continue to see restricted settings as grayed out, Gradebook managers can edit the settings as needed.

For example, a Gradebook manager may set the default Calculation method to Total points for all gradebooks and restrict teachers from changing this setting. If there are a handful of classes that should use a different calculation method, the Gradebook manager can now select the alternative calculation method within those individual gradebooks.

Gradebook managers access individual gradebook settings from the Gradebooks list.

1. In Academics, select Grades, then Gradebooks.

2. Locate the gradebook and select the class under Gradebook.

3. Select More, then Settings.

4. Update the settings as needed, then select Save.

For teachers, the Assignment Center calendar view now follows the default display setting selected in Assignment settings. Previously, the calendar view always defaulted to displaying assignments by the Assigned date.

When a teacher marks an assignment “Collected”, the status now updates to “Completed” in the student’s view of the class Assignments tab. Previously, the status displayed as “Completed” in the student’s Assignment Center, but displayed as “Overdue” on the class Assignments tab.

The student view of the Assignment details page now displays a blue status bar when the assignment status is “To do” or “In progress”. Previously, the bar was beige.

We’ve separated the New Assignment Center video into three shorter videos that highlight the new features that impact specific personas.

• Student experience

• Faculty updates

• Admin updates

Admins at schools that use single sign on (SSO) should create a new connection by October 31, 2024. This is a one-time requirement related to migrating our authentication service for Blackbaud ID (BBID).

An admin is the only user who needs to act for this migration. To update or establish an SSO connection between Blackbaud and your Identity Provider (IdP), login to https://www.blackbaud.com/ and select Admin, Security, Authentication. Then follow the instructions online for your school’s IdP. Blackbaud will then use your active directory for the corresponding Blackbaud ID accounts.

End users (including faculty and students) do not need to take action. Their login workflow will remain unchanged on the new SSO connection.

The initial migration for Blackbaud ID occurred May 8, as we previously announced. At the time, we promised to provide additional details for schools that use a single sign on when the new connection became available so they could take the necessary action before October 31. These instructions are also now available via the Blackbaud ID tile on your Core home dashboard, along with a count down.

This update improves the reliability of Blackbaud ID, while also creating an easier, more intuitive sign-in page that puts your brand at the center of the user experience.

When a platform manager configures general settings for school directories, the dropdown menu for name formats now indicates “preferred name” instead of “nickname.” The functionality of the options remains unchanged. The labels were updated to improve consistency throughout the user interface. The nickname field used here already pulled data from the preferred name field.

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Tip: If your import file contains a blank or null value for a field on a record, but the matching record already contains data for that field, the field value is retained and doesn’t become null.

When processing applications, admissions managers now see the applicant's Entering year and Entering grade in the summary. This change aligns applications with the process that is currently used for inquiries.

Students now see an alert banner when they've been assigned a Student Checklist. Previously, only parents would see a banner when a checklist was assigned.

With this release, we’ve added an email notification that is sent to families when their application moves into “Verified” status.

When submitting documents for their financial aid application, families can preview sample documents to confirm that they are uploading the correct document. Currently, sample documents are available for Parent 1 W2 and Parent 2 W2. Additional sample documents will be added in future releases.

New

Retrieve test score results

We’ve added an endpoint for returning test scores for candidates:

Endpoint: /enrollmentmanagement/v1/tests

GET Test list (GET) provides a list of all test scores for enrollment candidates. The test score results in the response can be filtered by defining any of several optional parameters in the endpoint URL, including test_type, start_date, end_date, and last_modified.

Retrieve candidate history

We’ve added an endpoint for retrieving a list of candidate status changes for a single candidate:

Endpoint: /enrollmentmanagement/v1/candidatestatuses/{candidate_id}

GET Candidate status change list – single candidate (Get) provides a list of changes to the candidate’s history corresponding to the candidate_id defined as a URL parameter. By default, the response results are specific to the current admissions year, but by defining a school_year as an optional URL parameter, the response results can be refined.

New

Add custom fields to a course

We’ve added an endpoint for creating custom course fields:

Endpoint: /school/v1/academics/courses/{course_id}/customfields/list

POST Academics course custom fields list create uses the data from the custom_field object provided in the request body to add a custom field to the course corresponding to the course_id property defined as a URL parameter.

Update custom fields for an academic section

We’ve added an endpoint for updating the custom field data for an academic section:

Endpoint: /school/v1/academics/sections/{section_id}/customfields/list

PATCH Academics section custom fields list update uses the data from the custom_field object provided in the request body to update a custom field for the section corresponding to the section_id property defined as a URL query parameter.

Update custom fields for a course

We’ve added an endpoint for updating the custom field data for a course

Endpoint: /school/v1/academics/courses/{course_id}/customfields/list

PATCH Academics courses custom fields list update uses the data from the custom_field object provided in the request body to update a custom field for the course corresponding to the course_id property defined as a URL query parameter.

Changed

Various field names deprecated

We’ve deprecated three fields previously featured in the response returned by the GET Users employment by role(s) (BETA) endpoint. This change is made in accordance with our deprecation notice issued on August 1, 2024. The change includes:

The Deprecated Field Names are no longer featured in the response data returned by the endpoint and are meant to be replaced by the New Field Names referenced above.

At the beginning of August, we’re planning to introduce the Attendance Hub, which is the go-to spot for Attendance managers and clerks to handle all day-to-day tasks related to class attendance. The new experience completely replaces the old menu after going to Academics, and then Attendance. Please note that all previous menu options can now be found under Related Links, and we’ve added a few additional shortcuts to Reports and Student Statuses list as well.

From the Attendance Hub, you have a couple of different options for recording attendance for a single student or group, which opens the modal you’d see if you selected the option from the Academics home page. Alternatively, you can also use the search feature to open a specific student record attendance detail page, displaying information like their daily schedule, emergency contact information, and attendance summaries for the current school year.

The Needs attention panel displays tasks that attendance managers need to focus on, such as unrecorded attendance or early dismissal. What’s going on showcases an attendance breakdown based on the reason code given. Finally, the Late attendance tile displays how many reminder emails were sent on a given day, per week, as well as the previous week. If notifications are not yet setup, it’ll feature links that will take the user to the notification setup for the selected school level.

For more on the Attendance Hub, make sure to check out our help documentation.

When a student creates an Associated task for an assignment, that task is now displayed as its own entry in the Assignment Center. Prior to this update, Associated tasks only displayed nested underneath the related assignment. This change makes it easier for students to track and keep up with the tasks they create for their assignments.

Admissions managers now have additional fields within the Candidate header. With this update, we've added a Boarding/Day indicator, which only shows if there's a selection from the student's contact card for Boarding or Day. In addition, we've added an indicator if there is at least one Profile Notice on their record. Keep in mind that this indicator is just visual, it's not a link or selectable.

New

Update employee information

We’ve added a new endpoint for updating information about employees:

Endpoint: PATCH /school/v1/users/{user_id}/employment

PATCH Users employment update uses the user_id parameter to identify which employee’s information to update with the data provided in the request body.

The new endpoint provides you with the ability to define a start and end date for the employee, whether their account is disabled or not, the school levels, grade levels, sports, and department they are associated with, and more.

New

ChecklistSteps array added to GET Student checklist type (Get)

We’ve updated the GET Student Checklist type (Get) endpoint to include a ChecklistSteps array. Use the data from the ChecklistSteps array to learn more about the steps associated with a checklist.

In case you missed it, this week’s journal is all about our upcoming changes to grade details and Student Progress. You can check out what the new experience will look like, as well as how we’re solving some key issues with the old experience and how you consume data.

When gradebook calculations are set by marking period, teachers can now copy their calculation settings from the first marking period to subsequent marking periods. Settings can also be copied to additional class sections.

1. From Faculty, select Classes and choose a class.

2. Select Launch gradebook.

3. Select More, then Settings.

4. Select Grade calculation.

5. Under Set calculation by, select Marking period. Your school may require all gradebooks to use the same Set calculation by setting. If so, you cannot change the selection.

6. For the first marking period, set up the calculation as needed, including the Calculation method, Assignment types, Weight (if applicable), Letter grade scales, and Number to drop per marking period.

7. (Optional) Under Other sections to apply, select any of your other courses these settings should apply to. You cannot apply settings to courses that are already set up.

8. Select Copy to all marking periods to copy the settings for the first marking period to all subsequent marking periods for the current class and any other sections selected under Other sections to apply for the first marking period.

All settings are copied, including the Calculation method, Assignment types, Weights, Letter grade scales, and Number to drop per marking period.

With this release, the old Assessment experience is removed. Teachers no longer have the option to create assessments with the old builder. Assessments created with the old builder are still accessible for historical data and teachers can still convert old assessments to the new experience.

Check out the Assessment video series for more information.

In this release, the new student Assignment Center experience, which has been available for schools to activate since December 2023, is enabled for all schools. The old experience will no longer be accessible.

The new Student Assignment experience includes the following updates:

• Custom color coding for classes: Students can assign a color to each of their classes, and the colors are used in the list and calendar views of the new Assignment Center.

• Color coded assignment statuses: In calendar view, background colors indicate assignment statuses:

  • Blue: In progress, To do, or Paused

  • Green: Complete or Graded

  • Red: Overdue or Missing

• Enhanced settings and filters: Students have more filters to identify their actionable assignments and settings to manage the information displayed for their assignments.

• Maximum points for assignments are visible to students.

• Assignment and Class tasks: Students can create tasks for a specific class or tasks for a specific assignment, which is particularly helpful if they want to track milestones for long term or multi-part assignments. Previously, students could only create General tasks that were not linked to a class or assignment.

• Separate Assignment Center defaults: In Assignment settings, Academic Group Managers and Gradebook Managers can now configure Assignment Center defaults for faculty and separate defaults for students and parents.

• Default assignment due time: Previously, all assignments defaulted to an 11:59 PM due time. With the new experience, Academic Group Managers and Gradebook Managers can set a global default due time that better suits the school.

• Enhanced Student Assignment Preview: Teachers can access an assignment preview that mirrors the student view. The previous assignment preview was not an accurate reflection of the student view.

• New Student Assignment Details page: Students have an updated Assignment Details page where they can view all information for an assignment and upload online file submissions.

• SKY UX: The new experience utilizes SKY UX for improved usability on mobile devices.

• Parent view: The updated Assignment Center is visible to parents via the Assignments tab on their child’s profile. As with the old Assignment Center, parents can view assignments but cannot edit them.

We also have a few more enhancements planned for the coming weeks, including the addition of a Major assignments filter that will make it easier for students to identify key assignments, and updates to the way student-created tasks are displayed in the Assignment Center calendar and list views.

Watch the New Assignment Center video for more information.

At the end of July, we’re planning to introduce the Attendance Hub, which is the go-to spot for Attendance managers and clerks to handle all day-to-day tasks related to class attendance. The new experience completely replaces the old menu after going to Academics, and then Attendance. Please note that all previous menu options can now be found under Related Links, and we’ve added a few additional shortcuts to Reports and Student Statuses list as well.

From the Attendance Hub, you have a couple of different options for recording attendance for a single student or group, which opens the modal you’d see if you selected the option from the Academics home page. Alternatively, you can also use the search feature to open a specific student record attendance detail page, displaying information like their daily schedule, emergency contact information, and attendance summaries for the current school year.

The Needs attention panel displays tasks that attendance managers need to focus on such as unrecorded attendance or early dismissal. What’s going on showcases information such as the number of absences, visits, and other specific events that are taking place on a given day. Finally, the Late attendance tile displays how many reminder emails were sent on a given day, per week, as well as the previous week. If notifications are not yet setup, it’ll feature links that will take the user to the notification setup for the selected school level

The parent view now appears by default when a resource board manager goes to Core, Content and views Resource boards. Previously, the alum view showed by default. This saves time and reduces clicks since managers typically update content for parents more often than for alums.

After the resource board manager changes their view to another persona, the view is “sticky” to that selected persona for the rest of their browser session. When they log out and back in, the default view reappears.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

Back in December, we implemented a new student and parent Assignment Center experience for schools to opt into at a time of their choosing. With the July 23 release, that new experience will be enabled for all schools and the old Assignment Center experience will be removed.

With the July 23 release we are also removing the old Assessment experience for teachers. Assessments created with the old builder will still be available, but teachers will no longer be able to create new assessments using the old builder.

Check out our recent journal for a closer look at these changes.

Teachers can now associate rubrics with assignments evaluated with the Mastery and total score method. Prior to this release, rubrics could only be associated with assignments evaluated with the Total score only method, requiring teachers to create multiple assignments or create rubrics outside of Blackbaud's Learning Management System.

In the coming weeks, we’re upgrading the way students and parents consume assignment grades in the See grade details experience. Keep an eye on the What’s New for details on a go-live date.

The new experience aims to offer more transparency in how cumulative grades are calculated, including which assignments are dropped from calculations and which assignments are marked as extra credit. It also provides more customizable options for how grades are displayed on a class-by-class basis. Administrators can configure default settings at the school lovel and teachersfaculty can further customize their class settings within their gradebooks.

See the Student Gradebook journal for more details on these upcoming changes.

When gradebook calculations are set by marking period, teachers can now copy their calculation settings from the first marking period to subsequent marking periods. Settings can also be copied to additional class sections.

1. From Faculty, select Classes and choose a class.

2. Select Launch gradebook.

3. Select More, then Settings.

4. Select Grade calculation.

5. Under Set calculation by, select Marking period.

   Note: Your school may require all gradebooks to use the same Set calculation by setting. If so, you cannot change the selection.

6. For the first marking period, set up the calculation as needed, including the Calculation method, Assignment types, Weights (if applicable), Letter grade scales, and Number to drop per marking period.

7. (Optional) Under Other sections to apply, select any of your other courses these settings should apply to. You cannot apply settings to courses that are already set up.

8. Select Copy to all marking periods to copy the settings for the first marking period to all subsequent marking periods for the current class and any other sections selected under Other sections to apply for the first marking period.

All settings are copied, including the Calculation method, Assignment types, Weights (if applicable), Letter grade scales, and Number to drop per marking period.

Schools can now use resource boards to share content with:

• candidates,

• parents of candidates,

• parents of alums,

• and parents of past students.

These roles now have task 53128 to view resource boards enabled by default, which enables the Resources menu item to appear. A platform manager should review each role in Core to ensure the task is enabled or disabled as desired for your community.

Tip: The Incoming Studentand Parents of Incoming Studentroles already have task 53128 which enables access to resources according to the school level the student is entering.

There are also 2 new levels to which resource boards can be published:

• Pre-enrollment (candidates and parents of candidates),

• Post-enrollment (parents of alums, and parents of past students).

Review and edit your resource boards for the Student and Parent personas, and consider using resource boards to inform these new segments of users about seasonal requirements, policies, news, events, and more. Use the page filters for Pre-enrollment and Post-Enrollment to reflect what these users will see when they access resources. A resource board manager can do this from Core, Content, Resource boards.

Additionally, when a resource board admin views the boards, they’ll now see the boards for the persona they last visited. Previously, they always landed on the Alumni view by default. This additional “stickiness” reduces the number of times admins need to select the persona filter when viewing boards for frequently accessed personas. It is “sticky” for the current browser session, but resets when the admin logs out.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

Back in December, we implemented a new student and parent Assignment Center experience for schools to opt into at a time of their choosing. With the July 23 release, that new experience will be enabled for all schools and the old Assignment Center experience will be removed.

With the July 23 release we are also removing the old Assessment experience for teachers. Assessments created with the old builder will still be available, but teachers will no longer be able to create new assessments using the old builder.

Check out our recent journal for a closer look at these changes.

Teachers can now associate rubrics with assignments evaluated with the Mastery and total score method. Prior to this release, rubrics could only be associated with assignments evaluated with the Total score only method, requiring teachers to create multiple assignments or create rubrics outside of Blackbaud's Learning Management System.

In graded assessments, unanswered questions now display a message stating that the student did not submit an answer. Previously, unanswered questions were marked Incorrect, but it was not clear that no answer was submitted.

In the new faculty grade entry experience, the auto-save feature no longer displays a "loading" indicator as teachers compose grade comments. The "loading" indicator interrupted the text entry process, and it has been replaced by a Last saved timestamp.

We've updated the Make a payment experience for payers with a new repayment option and guidance around how each option impacts their balance.

• The Minimum due now illustrates how the amount due is composed by showing the difference between the current balance and the next Auto-Pay installment amount.

• Past due balance is a new option for directly paying off charges unpaid by their due dates.

• Each option contains helpful information below the selection.

New payment processing gateways now exclusively default to BBMS (Blackbaud Merchant Services) when first being created. This does not impact existing payment gateways.

Payment processing is set up by navigating to Core, selecting Settings in the navigation, and then choosing Payment settings in the drop-down. On the new page, select the Payment processing tab.

Schools can now manually update applications to Verified status if they do not need to go through Blackbaud's standard application review process. This may occur if

• the school decides to grant or deny an award for a family without a review of their application.

• the family will no longer attend the school.

• the school wants to stop sending reminder emails to a family with an application that is not in Verified status.

To manually set an application to Verified

1. In Families, Manage Families, select at least one family with an application in Submitted, Documents Received, or On Hold status.

2. Select Verify Applications.

3. To proceed with removing the selected applications from the review process and updating them to Verified, select Yes, verify it!

New

Return a list of non-academic departments

We've added a new optional request parameter to return non-academic departments from the GET Academics departments endpoint:

• Include the Boolean property include_nonacademic in the request parameter and set its value to true to return non-academic departments in the response.

We've added four new properties returned in the response for the GET Academics departments endpoint:

• is_academic, Boolean, returns True if the department is academic.

• description, string, the description of the department.

• school_levels, array, an array of school level objects for the department.

• school_level , object, an object nested within the school_levels array containing school level information, exemplified as:

{

"id": 1,

"description": "Upper School",

"abbreviation": "US"

}

The responses returned by various Academics endpoints now includes a custom_fields array of objects; each object contains data about an individual custom field associated with the section or course.

The endpoints now featuring custom_fields in their responses include:

• GET Academics sections by school level

• GET Academics sections by teacher

• GET Academics student enrollment list

• GET Academics courses

The property preferred_last_name is now included in the responses of the following endpoints:

GET Users extended by role(s)

GET Users extended byuser

GET Users changed by base role(s)

GET User by ID

GET Users by role(s)

GET Users Children of Parent

GET Users custom fields list by base role(s)

GET Users Enrollments by year

GET Users employment by role(s)

POST User create

PATCH User update

The permission requirements for retrieving non-sensitive tables via the GET Types table values endpoint have been eased. For example, users no longer need to be a Platform Manager to request the Relationship table from the endpoint.

The property global_id was deprecated on July 1, 2024. The following endpoints are impacted:

• GET Users extended by role(s)
• GET Users extended by user

This notification is a follow-up to our original announcement made on March 28.

Changed

Marking period now identified when not included in request body for PUT LineItem

PUT LineItem now identifies the correct Marking Period when its left undefined in the request body by using the value of the assignDate property.

The items referenced in this notification are always compiled and available to view via School API and OneRoster API changelog.

Missed any of our recent journal entries? You can catch up on everything you missed within our Online Help Center right here.

The bbcon 2024 sessions list is now live! That’s 150+ breakout sessions carefully designed to help you tackle any challenge.

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• Early-bird pricing ends June 26. Register now and save $300 on your conference pass!

• Elevate your bbcon experience with an all-access pass that includes a main conference pass, Blackbaud University Day, and pre-conference workshops, all bundled into one all-inclusive price.

• Secure your special bbcon hotel rate through our exclusive bbcon room blocks. This prime accommodation won’t last long, so don’t wait to secure yours.

The Aged accounts receivable report now features a Billing year filter, enabling billing clerks to specify the year the report data reflects. For schools leveraging Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT, use the Billing year filter to aid in the end-of-year audit to reconcile against the general ledger in Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT.

Previously, when a platform manager configured settings in Core, Security, Profile access, Profile relationship access, you could select Do not restrict access. Default settings will be used.

This option has been combined into Use the following custom settings. First and last name settings now appear in these custom settings.

In other words, the privacy access settings for users remain the same as they were before the update. However, this update makes it easier for platform managers to review and compare the access settings for names for each relationship type. The change improves clarity but doesn’t change functionality.

You can Edit the profile access settings for each combination of relationship types, such as to control which information users see when they view your school’s directories.

We’ve upgraded calendars throughout Blackbaud Education Management to improve performance and security. Most of the appearance, functionality, and workflow remains unchanged for users, including views, filters, search, and more. However, you may notice slight differences. These changes include:

• Word wrap – The icon for this button has changed. Now, you’ll select . Previously, you would have selected .

• Print – When you select to print a calendar, the Print option now triggers your internet browser’s print function.

  • Use your browser’s settings to adjust how the results should appear, such as whether to print in:

    • color vs greyscale.

    • portrait vs landscape.

  • You can still adjust the font size of the printed results; however, you’ll now use the Scale option from your browser’s printing settings to do so.

  • To include event details, select Show event detailson the calendar, before you select Print.

    • When you print event details, the results are now a “cleaner” view which omits buttons that aren’t clickable in printed output. Previously, buttons for add, edit, and delete were shown in the printed results.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

This week’s journal looks closer at the upcoming Assignment and Assessment experience changes and confirms an official end of life date for the old version.

You can find new Journal entries within our Online Help Center right here.

We've recently finished rolling out a new update for Attendance Notifications. Now, administrators can set up notifications that automatically remind faculty to take attendance if they haven't taken it after a set period of time. From Academics, admins should head to Attendance, Attendance setup, then Attendance notifications to add, edit, and view them as needed. One notification is added per school level, and administrators have a variety of settings to modify such as adding specific recipient roles, providing a way to Opt Out, as well as if a notification should be sent for all classes or as an Attendance of record only.

We hope this update reduces the amount of time administrators need to devote to manually messaging or emailing teachers to remind them about attendance.

When viewing the class schedule, we've made a change to how canceled classes are displayed. When teachers view the calendar, they'll now see a red danger icon with text that says Cancelled.

For non-teacher roles, the danger icon appears if the class is canceled, if section records attendance and no attendance is recorded. If there is attendance recorded, a success indicator, in the form of a green checkmark icon, appears with an Attendance link that opens the record class attendance modal when selected. Ultimately, these icons should make it easier to scan the calendar for class updates rather than needing to select each one individually.

When evaluating assignments, teachers can now access the assignment editing modal by selecting More, then Edit assignment.

In the new Assignment details page, students can now upload files by dragging and dropping them into the Drag a file here tile. Previously, students only had the option to browse and select files for upload.

Deceased individuals are now excluded from emails sent through group rosters when selecting Send communication to, choosing group members, then selecting send via e-mail.

Selecting multiple accounts on the Past due balances list now reveals a new Add hold option. When selected, Billing clerks can apply a hold to just the selected accounts with the same Hold code, Reason, and date range.

Selecting multiple accounts on the Past due balances list now reveals a new Add late charge option. When selected, Billing clerks can generate late charges for just the selected accounts at the same time.

This feature joins the existing Generate late charges option found under More actions on the Past due balances list, but with more granular control

The Past due balances list now features a new Hold code filter. Use the filter to quickly refine the list to only see accounts with active holds.

Billing year is a new optional filter available on the Aged accounts receivables list, enabling Billing clerks to refine the list to only include records within a specific billing year.

Note: This feature was originally communicated as released as of last Tuesday, June 11. We apologize for the mistake.

When you attempt to delete a user’s address but that address is shared with other users, a warning appears. Select whether to remove the address from only that user or from all users who share the address.

This helps ensure information isn’t accidentally removed from other users. For example, an older sibling might move out of the family home while the rest of the family continues to reside there.

Previously, only Core user profiles provided this safeguard. Now, 360 profiles also include it.

When an organization administrator attempts to create a new user who is an environmental admin for Blackbaud Education Management, via the Education area (instead of Core), but the user’s Blackbaud ID already exists for Core, then the user accounts are now linked. Previously, the system created a duplicate user, even though the Blackbaud ID account already existed in Core.

When Has the student previously attended school? is set to No, the Application form no longer requires parents to fill out the associated school information. This should help families and students proceed on the form who have not previously attended the school.

In addition, admissions managers will now see that the Has the student previously attended school? field is now on the Sample Application and set to Required and Show by default.

Admissions managers can now enable a column for Added by in the Financial aid awards list. This column shows if an awarded was added via BBFAM integration, Billing Management or if it was manually added.

To avoid delays in the application review process, if a family marks a required document as Document cannot be provided in their financial aid application, a Special Circumstances Letter is now automatically required in lieu of the document. The family can explain why they cannot provide the requested document in a typed or handwritten letter and upload it to the Special Circumstances Letter document type.

value[i].events, value[i].interviews, and value[i].visits are three new arrays returned by the GET Admissions candidates endpoint. Each array contains corresponding event, interview, and visit objects, respectively.

• Use value[i].events to determine information about the admissions event, such as name, start_time, and type, and whether the candidate is_registered, attended, left a comment, and more.

• Use value[i].interviews to determine information about the interview for each admissions candidate, including start_time and end_time, the interviewer, whether the candidate did_not_show, and more.

• Use value[i].vists to determine information about candidate visits, such as the start_time and end_time, the user who was the guide, accompanying adults, and more.

For a complete list of fields, reference the Response: 200 OK section of the GET Admissions candidates endpoint documentation.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

In April, we launched a new Journal help feature, which highlights new features, best practices, and everything else related to Blackbaud's Education Management products. This week’s journal discusses how we’re approaching the summer months, now that vacation is here for schools.

You can find new Journal entries within our Online Help Center right here.

When students upload files for assignments, non-ascii characters are now removed from filenames. Previously, users received errors when attempting to open files including non-ascii characters in the filenames.

Changed

Photo support added to GET Athletics team roster endpoint

players.value[i].photos is a new object returned by the GET Athletics team roster endpoint. The photos object contains two string properties, large_filename_url and thumb_filename_url. The value of each property is a direct HTTP link to either the full image or the thumbnail of the image, respectively.

Additionally, the following Boolean properties are now returned as part of players.value[i]:

• publish_name

• publish_height

• publish_weight

• publish_photo

Determine if a user is a department chair using GET Users employment by role(s) (BETA)

roles.departments[i].is_chair is a new Boolean property returned by the GET Users employment by role(s) (BETA). Use the property to determine whether the user is a chair of the respective department.

In April, we launched a new Journal help feature, which highlights new features, best practices, and everything else related to Blackbaud's Education Management products. This week’s journal highlights the recent changes to Username formatting, moving to Preferred Name instead.

You can find new Journal entries within our Online Help Center right here.

When a teacher selects Filter in the list views of the Assignment Center and Assignments tab on class pages, the Publish status filter now defaults to Null. Previously, this filter defaulted to Not Published when updating the filters and users had to set it to Null to continue displaying published assignments.

BBMS Transaction ID is a new optional column available in the Recent payments, Transaction, and Work with transaction lists, containing the ID of the Blackbaud Merchant Services transaction. Leverage the BBMS Transaction ID column to aid in reconciliation.

Preferred last name has been added as a new field to the Contact Card in the General information area - as available in the 360 profile in Academics and Billing Management, and in the Contact Cards of Enrollment Management, Core, and any school Directory. If your school has enabled users to edit their Preferred last name via Profile access, they can now do so under My Profile.

This benefits individuals who use a last name for social settings that differs from their legal last name. For example, users with long or hyphenated names may socially use a shorter, unhyphenated name. Likewise, faculty who marry after earning a PhD may prefer to use the name from their professional degree instead of their marriage certificate.

Today, platform managers can configure access and publish settings for Preferred last name and other contact card fields from Core, Security, Profile access. Later this year, Preferred last name will be available for use in User name format as well.

When a list manager views the Household & address list, the names of students, parents, other household members, and household contacts are now shown with their preferred first name, if known, and otherwise their first name is shown instead. This benefits individuals whose preferred first name differs from their legal first name.

Typically, when Potential duplicate users are merged into a single record, they’re students or relatives of students, not employees. However, occasionally a duplicate employee account needs to be merged, and the employee may own some Basic and Advanced lists. Previously, when you merged users with access to these lists, the lists associated with the deleted user were not transferred to the newly merged user account, sometimes rendering them inaccessible by any admin at the school. With this release, users’ lists and lists access are now included when the users are merged.

If your organization’s primary contact or site administrator resets your passwords for Blackbaud Payment Services or Blackbaud Merchant Services by following the online instructions for BBMS and BBPS, you must remember to also update Core to use the new credentials. Otherwise, credit card and ACH (direct debit) transactions will fail to process.

Schools can now create a new checklist step type for name pronunciation. Adding it allows the candidate or the parent of the candidate to record their name directly from their checklist. The recording will be saved to their profile and be available throughout the system, not just in admissions.

For candidates to record their own name, the Candidate role must have Edit access for Name Pronunciation under Core, Security, Profile access, View/edit profile fields. For a parent to record a candidate's name, the Parent of Candidate role must have Name Pronunciation Edit access for the Candidate role under Core, Security, Profile access, Profile relationships access.

To assist schools in complying with US privacy laws, Buy Now Give Now pages now automatically recognize and record universal opt-out signals, such as Global Privacy Control (GPC) .

View a Buy Now Give Now payer’s opt-out signal preference

1. At the bottom of the page, select Manage Transactions under Buy Now Give Now.

2. Select Click To Select Columns To Display In Grid.

3. Select the Opt Out of Sale and Opt Out of Targeted Ads to add those columns to the grid.

4. Review the Opt Out of Sale and Opt Out of Targeted Ads columns for each payer’s preferences.

PATCH Athletic requirements update (BETA) has been renamed to PATCH Medical athletic requirements update.

The following medical endpoints have transitioned from BETA status to stable:

• PATCH Medical athletic requirements update

• POST Medical allergies create

• DELETE Medical allergies delete

• GET Medical allergies for a student

• PATCH Medical allergies update

• GET Medical athletic requirements for a student

• POST Medical conditions create

• DELETE Medical conditions delete

• GET Medical conditions for a student

• PATCH Medical conditions update

• GET Medical immunizations for a student

• PATCH Medical immunizations update

• PATCH Medical medication update

• POST Medical medications create

• DELETE Medical medications delete

• GET Medical medications for a student

• GET Medical Security Roles

The following endpoints will be deprecated on August 1, 2024:

• POST Medical allergies/conditions create (DEPRECATED)

• GET Medical allergies/conditions for a student (DEPRECATED)

The following endpoints are available as an alternative:

• POST Medical allergies create

• POST Medical conditions create

• GET Medical conditions for a student

• GET Medical allergies for a student

The property global_id will be deprecated on July 1, 2024. The following endpoints are impacted:

• GET Users extended by role(s)

• GET Users extended by user

In April, we launched a new Journal help feature, which highlights new features, best practices, and everything else related to Blackbaud's Education Management products. This week’s journal focus on School Forms, where to find them, how to use them as the school year comes to a close, and also shedding some light on commonly asked questions.

You can find new Journal entries within our Online Help Center right here.

With this release, we've added a "dropped" grade indicator to gradebooks. This new indicator enables teachers to quickly identify a student’s grades that are excluded from calculations based on the teacher’s gradebook calculation settings.

This update continues to be released in waves between 05/07-05/21. To help get your faculty prepared for this update, we’ve created a short video outlining the new features linked below.

A couple of enhancements to look forward to when this update is made available to your school:

• Student names will display per User Name Format settings, allowing preferred names to display more prominently.

• Take attendance from a seating chart view.

• Enable teachers who prefer a checklist-type workflow by not having your schools equivalent of “Present” automatically defaulting for each student. Though, when the modal is saved, students who do not have an attendance code listed will automatically be assigned the “Present” equivalent.

When posting to Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT, the journal reference for the summary line now includes the Summary Deposit # for each deposit, if available.

To access the new feature, select Post to GL when on the Blackbaud Billing management Overview page.

The Distribution list now features a search field; enter a search term based on the column data in the Distribution list and the results in the list will filter through all fields, except for journal reference, to only include matches.

To access the new feature, hover over Lists in the navigation and select Distribution list.

Previously, usernames were formatted by default as:

• prefix + first name + “preferred first name” + middle name + (maiden name) + last name + suffix + graduation year abbreviation

• For example:

  • Dr. John “Jay" Jacob Schmidt III '24

  • Dr. Joy Janet (Jingleheimer) Schmidt '24

For many readers, the quotation marks in this previous format implied that a user’s preferred first name was less important than their legal first name. Historically, these quotation marks were used when this field was used to denote nicknames, rather than preferred first names.

With this release, we’ve updated the default format for user names to both streamline the information and prioritize the user’s preferred first name. The new default format is:

• prefix + preferred first name if one exists otherwise use first name + (maiden name) + last name + suffix + graduation year abbreviation

• For example:

  • Dr. Jay Schmidt III '24

  • Dr. Joy (Jingleheimer) Schmidt '24

Notice the new default now omits:

• First name when a preferred name is set,

• Quotation marks around the user’s preferred first name,

• Middle name,

Customized formats for user names remain unchanged. If your school prefers the original format, set up a custom format to replicate the original. Platform managers can do this from Core by selecting Users, User profile settings, User name formats, and Edit. Then enter the format using the placeholders provided and Save the changes. To review formatted user names in bulk, a list manager can use the Users List in Core.

Tip: Preferred last name will appear on Contact cards soon. To prepare, remember to configure access settings for this new field before it’s enabled. To do so, platform managers should go Core, Security, Profile access.

Record the user reporting attendance

We’ve updated the POST Attendance record create endpoint to support a new field for specifying the user reporting attendance, reported_by.

Include the new reported_by property in your request body along with the user ID of the user to record as having reported attendance. If you exclude the property, the value defaults to the user calling the endpoint.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

We've launched a new Journal help feature, highlighting new features, best practices, and everything else related to Blackbaud's Education Management products. With the academic year quickly coming to a close, this week's Journal entry discusses Annual Procedures, providing tips, tricks, and gotchas to keep a lookout for.

You can find new Journal entries within our Online Help Center right here, but we'll be sure to keep you updated with our latest post each week as well.

With this release, we've updated student profiles in the Faculty, Parent, and Student portals to consistently display student names in the same format on all profile tabs. Student names now follow the format set in Core, Users, User profile settings, User name formats.

This update will now be releasing in waves between 05/07-05/21, this is one week later than the originally announced timeline. In the meantime, to help get your faculty prepared for this update, we’ve created a short video outlining the new features linked below.

A couple of enhancements to look forward to when this update is made available to your school:

• Student names will display per User Name Format settings, allowing preferred names to display more prominently.

• Take attendance from a seating chart view.

• Enable teachers who prefer a checklist-type workflow by not having your schools equivalent of Present automatically defaulting for each student. Though, when the modal is saved, students who do not have an attendance code listed will automatically be assigned the Present equivalent.

Transactions listed on the flyout summary after selecting Total charges or Applied payments on the Open items report now feature Transaction IDs that are hyperlinks. When selected, a new tab opens with additional information about the transaction.

To open a transaction from the Open items report, hover over Reporting in the navigation and select Open items. On the page, select any amount under Total charges or Applied payments. On the flyout that opens, select a Transaction ID to learn more about the transaction or modify it.

When a user has an employee/volunteer role (such as Teacher,Non-Teaching Staff,Coach, etc.) and their employment is withdrawn, their user is automatically assigned a “Past” version of the role, even if their login access is disabled. Now, schools can select to remove “Past” employee/volunteer roles. This benefits schools that need to correct the Employment history or to remove access that might be lingering from the “Past” employee/volunteer roles’ tasks. These changes are commonly needed during onboarding and offboarding of employees, when troubleshooting or testing, or while performing data cleanup.

Platform managers (and other users with access to manage roles) can do this from Core, Security, Roles. Find the “Past” role in the list and select the # of members on its row. Next, select Members and find the user in the list. Then select More (...), Remove, and confirm the change.

Unlike using the previous Undo button, when you remove a user’s membership from a “Past” employee/volunteer role, a record of their previous access is saved to the user’s role history. This also enables an admin to change a specific part of the employment without undoing all the employment changes.

With this release, the Financial Aid Management parent site automatically recognizes and records universal opt-out signals like the Global Privacy Control (GPC). Once an enabled GPC is recorded for a family, it cannot be changed.

To view a family’s universal opt-out signal preference:

1. Select Families > Manage Families.

2. Search for the family and select their name under Family Name.

3. Select Application Details from the menu on the left.

4. Review the Opt-out Settings . If the family has engaged browser settings to enable universal opt-out signals, a message states Parent opted out of Sale of information and targeted advertisements.

To assist schools in complying with US privacy laws, the Tuition Management parent site and enrollment site now automatically recognize and record universal opt-out signals, such as Global Privacy Control (GPC).

View a family's universal opt-out preferences

1. Select Families, View all families.

2. Search for and select the family.

3. Hover over the blue arrow on the left to expand the menu, then select More Options, Update Parent & Student Info.

4. Select the Settings tab to view the opt-out preferences under Privacy.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

We recently launched a new Journal help feature, highlighting new features, best practices, and everything else related to Blackbaud's Education Management products. This week's Journal entry discusses our Monthly Release recap feature and where you can find it inside of the help center. You can find new Journal entries within our Online Help Center right here, but we'll be sure to keep you updated with our latest post each week as well.

This update will now be releasing in waves between 05/07-05/21, this is one week later than the originally announced timeline. In the meantime, to help get your faculty prepared for this update, we’ve created a short video outlining the new features linked below.

A couple of enhancements to look forward to when this update is made available to your school:

• Student names will display per User Name Format settings, allowing preferred names to display more prominently.

• Take attendance from a seating chart view.

• Enable teachers who prefer a checklist-type workflow by not having your schools equivalent of Present automatically defaulting for each student. Though, when the modal is saved, students who do not have an attendance code listed will automatically be assigned the Present equivalent.

Platform Managers can now enable a new end of term grade entry experience for faculty in Core, Settings, Activate new features. Resources, including help documentation and a Getting started video, are available in the feature tile. The old experience will remain available until fall of 2024 when the new experience will be activated and required for all institutions.

Grade translation review

Before enabling the new end of term grade entry experience, Grading managers should review their school's Grade translations in Academics, Grades, Grading setup. To include all grade values in grade calculations, the number of decimal places used for the Maximum values in Grade translations should match the number of decimal places your school uses when calculating grades. Using 5 decimal places ensures that all grade values are included in grade calculations, regardless of the selected decimal precision.

Show previous grades

When entering grades, faculty can now select Show previous grades to easily view previously recorded grade plan grades in the grade entry grid. With this change, faculty no longer need to run lists or reports to view student progress throughout the year.

Narrative view

New narrative grade entry view designed with long-form comment entry in mind. Comments are now auto-saved and faculty have more data points available as they compose their grade comments.

Additional enhancements include:

• Bulk comment entry allows faculty to specify which students a bulk comment applies to, and a comment icon indicates which students already have comments present.

• Auto-save for all comment entry.

• Simplified calculation setup wizard for faculty.

• The New grading tab is available on all group types, including Athletics.

Map Assessment skills to Mastery skills

The new grade entry experience also includes a major enhancement for schools utilizing Mastery skills. Schools can now map Assessment skills to Mastery skill equivalents so that Mastery skill information can be included on report cards and transcripts without having to manually re-enter the information under Assessment skills.

Grading managers map Assessment skills to Mastery skill equivalents in Academics, Grades, Grading setup, New assessment skills. Data managers can also import Assessment skills and link them to Mastery skills with the new Assessment skills import. For more details, see Assessment skills.

• An Assessment skill can only be mapped to one Mastery skill and a Mastery skill can only be mapped to one Assessment skill.

• An Assessment skill can be mapped to either a Transferable skill or sub-skill or a Content-are skill or sub-skill, but not both.

• Parent Mastery skills mapped to an Assessment skill will use an average of the sub-skills under the parent skill.

Once skills are mapped, faculty can select Calculate for those skills in New grading to pull Mastery skill ratings from their gradebook into Assessment skills as marking period averages or year-to-date averages. Calculate is only available for Assessment skills that are mapped to Mastery skills.

The Distribution list now features sortable columns to organize results and a set of default filters to expedite the list’s loading time.

By default, the initial filter applied when you load the list is the Post date for the current month, and results are sorted by transaction ID. Select a column header to sort the list based on the selected category.

The Open items report now features a search field that enables Billing clerks to filter records based on matched results amongst all open items. For example, a Billing clerk could enter a student’s name to find all open items associated with that record.

We’ve added a new billing year filter when calculating balances on the Open items report. With the filter applied, the calculated balances will only include transactions applied "as of" the selected date and within the selected billing year.

When a platform manager, with the Impersonate User task enabled, chooses to impersonate another user, a blue “banner” appears across the top of the user interface. This reminds the manager that they are acting as someone else, highlights the navigational areas which “belong” to the impersonated user versus to themselves, and makes it easier to stop impersonating.

Tip: Need to take a screenshot or record a video? When you select an area to capture with your recording tool, select the area below the banner or crop the banner out when you edit.

The migration for Blackbaud ID (BBID) for education solutions will occur this Wednesday, May 8.

This update improves the reliability of Blackbaud ID, while also creating an easier, more intuitive sign-in page that puts your brand at the center of the user experience.

• Users who land on the Blackbaud ID sign in page will see an improved look, which places your school’s organization’s logo more prominently and centrally on the page.

• Users who sign in with a Blackbaud ID email and password, who also have multi-factor authentication (MFA) enabled via Blackbaud ID, will be prompted to recreate a new MFA connection. The options and steps to set up MFA remain unchanged. See our BBID MFA documentation for additional details.

• Users who log in with a “social sign-in,” such as Sign in with Google or Sign in with Apple, will be prompted to reauthorize Blackbaud to access their name and email. (Google and Apple manage the sign-in steps between the Blackbaud ID sign in page and the point when the user lands in Education Management again.)

• Those who log in via single sign-on (SSO) are unaffected - their login workflow will not change. SSO admins will need to create a new SSO connection with Blackbaud between May and October; additional details will be shared when the new setup is available.

Tip: Although this update was originally scheduled for April, it was temporarily delayed to ensure an optimal experience for users of Blackbaud's education solutions. May 8th was carefully chosen to avoid a common tuition payment day, to allow other significant product enhancements to release on Tuesday, to minimize disruption to the end-of-year season, and to provide you with at least a full business day of notice. The new Blackbaud ID experience will be enabled during business hours on Wednesday morning to ensure our award-winning support team is available for you. Users who are already logged in will not be interrupted by the release; they will simply see the new Blackbaud ID experience the next time they log in again.

Looking for more information?

• View the Blackbaud ID documentation.

• Follow the K-12 user community blog.

Last week’s release included enhancements to how users select and adjust photos for their 360 user profiles. Now, those adjusted images appear in 360 profile headers, People Finder (Core and Academics), My children (for parents), Affinity membership, messaging, and Find me now.

Remember to configure access settings for Preferred last name. To do so, a platform manager should go to Core, Security, Profile access. We recently enabled schools to control access to this field. Soon, Preferred last name will appear on Contact cards. Be sure to configure the access settings for the field so you’re prepared when it is released in May.

This benefits individuals who use a last name for social settings that differs from their legal last name. For example, users with long or hyphenated names may socially use a shorter, unhyphenated name. Likewise, faculty who marry after earning a PhD may prefer to use the name from their professional degree instead of their marriage certificate.

When using the Form submissions list, admissions managers will now see the current school name as a column. This should make things easier as the Form submissions list will no longer display a number when a registrant adds a name for a school that's currently not on the list.

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Blackbaud regularly precents virtual webinars to showcase recent innovations and future roadmap direction in our leading-edge software solutions, including Education Managment, Raiser’s Edge NXT, and Financial Edge NXT. Register to join us for sessions April 30 – May 2 and to stay current with Blackbaud solution updates and industry trends.

This update will now be releasing in waves between 05/07-05/21, this is one week later than the originally announced timeline. In the meantime, to help get your faculty prepared for this update, we’ve created a short video outlining the new features linked below.

A couple of enhancements to look forward to when this update is made available to your school:

• Student names will display per User Name Format settings, allowing preferred names to display more prominently.

• Take attendance from a seating chart view.

• Enable teachers who prefer a checklist-type workflow by not having your schools equivalent of Present automatically defaulting for each student. Though, when the modal is saved, students who do not have an attendance code listed will automatically be assigned the Present equivalent.

Previously, schools could only re-position profile photos which were uploaded in bulk via Core’s System tools.

Now, they can also adjust profile photos updated via an individual’s 360 user profile. To do so, select Contact card. Under General information, select Edit. Then choose Profile photo. Drag and drop a photo from your local computer into the placeholder image’s location. Alternatively, select the placeholder image and then browse to and select an image from your local computer. Use the circular arrow under the preview image to rotate the photo 90 degrees. Then drag the edges of the selection area to resize or recenter the circle that crops the image for use as a profile image. Select Save.

Tip: In a future release, you’ll also see these enhancements in other profile photo areas.

When a platform manager goes to Core, Security, Profile access, you’ll notice access to the field for Preferred last name can now be controlled. Soon, Preferred last name will appear on Contact cards. Be sure to configure the access settings for the field, so you’re prepared when it's released in May.

This benefits individuals who use a last name for social settings that differs from their legal last name. For example, users with long or hyphenated names may socially use a shorter, unhyphenated name. Likewise, faculty who marry after earning a PhD may prefer to use the name from their professional degree instead of their marriage certificate.

Previously, schools could only access the year settings for alums via the menu in School Website or via a workaround from customer support if they didn’t use School Website. Now, schools who don’t use School Website can access these settings by selecting Core, Content, Alumni.

When an admin views a user’s Access tab on the Core user profile, they can view the Authentication status link. Previously, admins with access to the Login information tile could view this window, but it was blank for those who lacked the Solution admin or equivalent blackbaud.com administrative access that enabled it. Now, admins without Solution admin access will instead see help text prompting them to request or establish the needed permissions to view the authentication details for Registered users.

When a user attempts to log into your school’s site, their email address is validated to check for proper formatting before they're directed to the Blackbaud ID login screen. This update helps increase security.

As part of our commitment to the privacy and security of user data, Blackbaud Education Management now "listens" for "global opt out" user settings. Users enable this setting via their internet browser, rather than via your school's education solution.

When a user enables this setting in their internet browser, the browser tells online websites that they don't want their information sold (nor shared) with third parties, nor used for targeted advertizing. As required by United States privacy law, Core tracks when we've "heard" this setting.

Note: Students and other “end users” won’t see any indication that we’ve heard their browser’s global opt out. Detecting the global opt out happens silently and “under the hood” from the end user's experience.

You can view an individual's global out settings from the Settings tab of their user profile in Core. List managers can also generate a list or export of users who want to opt-out. From the Users list in Core, select to include:

• Sale of information

• Targeted advertising

as columns to show. Changes to a user's settings also appear in Handle Profile Changes for your school to review and are labeled as a "Blackbaud system" update.

If your school engages in the sale (or sharing) of user date to third parties or if you use their data in targeted advertizing, then it is your responsibility to use this information to help ensure you respect the user's preferences and that you comply with privacy laws for the United States of America.

Tip: Most schools don't engage in these sorts of sales, sharing, nor targeted ads. Blackbaud doesn't sell (or share) user data to third parties either and doesn't engage in targeted advertising. Even if the user has indicated that they don't object to the use of their data for sale, share, or ads, Blackbaud still prioritizes privacy and doesn't use the data in those ways.

Learn more:

• User privacy settings on the Core user profile.

• Blackbaud Privacy Resource Center for Education Management

• Blackbaud Privacy Resource Center (all solutions)

• Global Privacy Control (GPC)

With this release, we’ve added Financial Aid Management to the omnibar. Financial Aid users with access to other Blackbaud solutions, such as Tuition Management, Financial Edge NXT, or Blackbaud’s suite of education management solutions, can now navigate between those solutions and Financial Aid Management using the top-level menu.

With this update, we've added a Weekly option for schools so an attendance clerk can set up a recurring attendance event that occurs over a set period of time. When adding attendance, there will be a Weekly option, with fields available to set a start and end date, selectable days, and how many weeks the change is happening.

For example, this option would be beneficial for a student who may have an activity that occurs every other Tuesday from 10am to 11am for the next two months. Please note that this feature is launching later this week.

The modal faculty use when taking attendance is getting a SKY UX update. The update will be rolling out in waves between 04/30-05/14. To help get your faculty prepared for this update, we’ve created a short video outlining the new features linked below.

A couple of enhancements to look forward to when this update is made available to your school:

• Student names will display per User Name Format settings, allowing preferred names to display more prominently.

• Take attendance from a seating chart view.

• Enable teachers who prefer a checklist-type workflow by not having your schools equivalent of Present automatically defaulting for each student. Though, when the modal is saved, students who do not have an attendance code listed will automatically be assigned the Present equivalent.

  

Billing clerks can now specify a Cash account and Cash account description when adding single payments or payments to a group, enabling them to override the existing default cash account defined in Billing settings. Schools integrated with Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT can click into the field to reference a list of existing cash accounts.

As part of our commitment to the privacy and security of user data, Blackbaud Education Management now "listens" for "global opt out" user settings. Users enable this setting via their internet browser, rather than via your school's education solution.

When a user enables this setting in their internet browser, the browser tells online websites that they don't want their information sold (nor shared) with third parties, nor used for targeted advertizing. As required by United States privacy law, Core tracks when we've "heard" this setting.

Note: Students and other “end users” won’t see any indication that we’ve heard their browser’s global opt out. Detecting the global opt out happens silently and “under the hood” from the end user's experience.

You can view an individual's global out settings from the Settings tab of their user profile in Core. List managers can also generate a list or export of users who want to opt-out. From the Users list in Core, select to include:

• Sale of information

• Targeted advertising

as columns to show. Changes to a user's settings also appear in Handle Profile Changes for your school to review and are labeled as a "Blackbaud system" update.

If your school engages in the sale (or sharing) of user date to third parties or if you use their data in targeted advertizing, then it is your responsibility to use this information to help ensure you respect the user's preferences and that you comply with privacy laws for the United States of America.

Tip: Most schools don't engage in these sorts of sales, sharing, nor targeted ads. Blackbaud doesn't sell (or share) user data to third parties either and doesn't engage in targeted advertising. Even if the user has indicated that they don't object to the use of their data for sale, share, or ads, Blackbaud still prioritizes privacy and doesn't use the data in those ways.

Learn more:

• User privacy settings on the Core user profile.

• Blackbaud Privacy Resource Center for Education Management

• Blackbaud Privacy Resource Center (all solutions)

• Global Privacy Control (GPC)

When a user views their login settings, they’ll notice the user interface has been rearranged to show information in a more intuitive order. Users find this by selecting their name (top right corner), then Settings, and then Login Settings. The data shown and actions available remain unchanged, so the general workflow for users also remains very similar. The new order makes the information and options easier to find.

For example, if a faculty user wants to change which page they start on when they log in to their school’s application (such as My Day – Assignment Center instead of My Day – Schedule & Performance), they’ll now find these options in the section called Starting page(s). Previously, these settings appeared in the History section of the same screen. Similarly, the section previously called History is now titled Login history, and it now shows the most recent history by default. To view the whole history or the history for a specific date range, users will still select View login history.

Admissions managers can now change registration options for an attendee from the Attendee Options list. Select Edit attendee options to bring up a new modal that allows the admissions manager to change event options for all those attending. Each multiselect option also displays the date and time, as well as the ability to add another attendee if needed. This change should make it easier for admissions managers to quickly change or add event details for attendees.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

In the New Assignment Center, students can now select Missing assignments to review a list of their missing assignments with due dates and class information. Missing assignments only displays for students with assignments missing for the current term.

In the new assignment experience, students now have additional options when entering text, including resizing the Text box and the ability to copy and paste from Microsoft Word while retaining formatting.

Towards the end of April, we will be making an update to the Record attendance modal. The experience will remain the same with one key workflow change as Present will not be selected by default for all students. Instead, Faculty will now have the choice to either manually select Present or if they leave an attendance field blank for a student upon saving, the system will insert a Present attendance code automatically. An in-system notification displays on the modal to act as a reminder of this change.

Recently, Blackbaud Billing Management released a direct integration with Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT, enabling Billing clerks to synchronize transaction data between the two platforms and post to the general ledger in Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT. To further jump start you on that journey, we’ve released a new video that walks you through the steps of getting started.

Schools can copy existing posts to create new ones on the same resource board. Select the copy button, enter a title, and save the new post. Scroll to the bottom of the resource board to find the new post. Then edit the copy to update the information. Consider using copies to help create “fresh” content for the next academic year.

When a user attempts to login on your school’s page, but they enter an invalid email address, they won’t be redirected to the Blackbaud ID (BBID) login page. They must first enter a valid email address to proceed.

When a user views their login history, data in the action column now differentiates between logins and “BBID still active” (session renewals). This increases clarity for users as they review the data for potentially suspicious authentication activity. To view your login history, select your name (top right corner), and then Settings, Login settings, view Login history.

School Administrator and School Finance users can now manage essential enrollment settings and invoice preferences in Settings, Manage School Settings. Previously, updating these settings required contacting Support.

For more details on each of the available settings, including the Default enrollment session and managing payment plans under Parent enrollment options, review our help documentation.

Previously, we announced this would occur April 16. It is now delayed 1 week later and will occur Tuesday April 23, 2024.

This affects:

• Blackbaud Billing Management™

• Blackbaud Enrollment Management System™

• Blackbaud Financial Aid Management™

• Blackbaud Learning Management System™

• Blackbaud School Website System™

• Blackbaud Student Information System™

• Blackbaud Tuition Management™

• These upcoming enhancements to Blackbaud ID (BBID) will benefit your organization, including via an improved user experience and increased reliability of your BBID. View the BBID Migration page, for details, a webinar recording, and communication templates.

We acknowledge that there is never a perfect time to implement changes that impact your users, and we appreciate your patience and the work you do to support your organization. We’ve taken extra due diligence with this development, to ensure a smooth transition by mitigating risk and maintaining availability of your solutions. This includes synthetic testing of high BBID login volume before release. We’re also implementing the change for users of Blackbaud’s business solutions, before education solution users (including your students, staff, and K-12 parents) to ensure all is working as designed and to address any unlikely issues.

Thank you for your understanding and partnership.

Teachers can now create and manage their own question banks for use with assessments. They can organize questions into banks and sub-banks by course, topic, or another category of their choosing.

Questions banks streamline the assessment building process by eliminating the need to recreate previously used questions from scratch. For example, a teacher member may create multiple assessment quizzes over the course of a term and bank their questions as they go. When it's time to create a cumulative exam, they can save time by adding their banked questions to the assessment.

Teachers access question banks by selecting My Day, then Question banks. For more information, please review our help documentation and this feature video.

In gradebooks, performance summaries now display Grade stats for assignments using letter grade scales. Previously, Grade stats only displayed for assignments using numeric grades. With this change, teachers have more insight into how their class performed on assignments evaluated with letter grade scales.

Platform managers will see updated information about Blackbaud ID and the migration, including for single sign on (SSO) when they view the Blackbaud ID tile on their home dashboards in Core. For more information about Blackbaud ID, see the General section of this What’s New release letter.

As a reminder, the home dashboard in Core also includes a link to help documentation about annual procedures that you’ll likely need for the end of the academic year.

Schools with BrightArrow Mass Communication (currently in EAP) now see the menu option Go to Mass communication under the Send Communication to drop-down on the Roster tab for courses. Users must also have the Faculty Mass Communication security task enabled to see the option.

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On class pages, the calendar view on Assignments now loads for students, parents, and faculty.

Towards the end of April, we will be making an update to the Record attendance modal. The experience will remain the same with one key workflow change as Present will not be selected by default for all students. Instead, Faculty will now have the choice to either manually select Present or if they leave an attendance field blank for a student upon saving, the system will insert a Present attendance code automatically. An in-system notification displays on the modal to act as a reminder of this change.

With this update, we’re introducing a couple of small enhancements as well. The names of students that appear in the modal will now follow Username format and teachers will be able to easily swap to a view of their seating chart to take attendance.

The legacy page for managing WISEdata integration settings has been removed. Schools can continue to use the modern existing equivalent to configure their integration with WISEdata found by navigating to Core, selecting System Tools, and then selecting Integrations.

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.