The Month in Review: May 2020 Feature Releases
Published
With the June sun now shining, summer is right around the corner. Before we get too much further into June, let’s take one last look back at everything we released in May.
Another month down and the world continues to slowly recover. As always, I hope each and every one of you is still doing as well as possible in this unique time we find ourselves in. Stay strong, it will get better.
As we move deeper into June, our weekly product updates continue to roll on. A lot has happened over these past four weeks with plenty more to come in the months ahead. While we’re not quite ready to talk about what’s next, let’s look back at everything that arrived in May for Education management.
Academics
As expected, Academics continued a strong showing in May with a number of important updates. Group Page Access settings can now grant or restrict access to users in regards to student schedules on pages in Academics, Enrollment management, and the Parent page. This can be adjusted under Core, and then Security as needed.
Other updates include:
In May, we added a number of updates to Core.
The Contact Card manager can now view and acknowledge updated Citizenship/Residency information for a user under Core, Users, and then Handle profile changes.
Online presence information can be shown within User lists as well as used as a filter. This data can also be exported to third-party spreadsheet applications and returned in the Sky API endpoint for Get User Changed list.
You can now view or export a history of PushPage issues (newsletters) sent to any user from their user’s Core profile and then selecting View communications from the bottom of the profile header.
Preferred name is replacing Nickname throughout the Education management products. This month includes Advanced lists and when exporting data from the User export option when working with third-party spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel.
Core did a lot of work with gender values this month as well. Under User Profile settings, gender values can now be edited to create a custom set if needed. One thing to note is that Male, Female, and Other cannot be modified due to preserving backward compatibility settings. They can be marked as inactive however. List managers now have the ability to filter by Pronouns when they user User, Student, and Faculty lists. Pronoun data is now returned in the Sky API endpoints for the Get User Changed and Get User extended list. Make sure to check out the full release notes or the online help for more details on these adjustments.
Billing management
This month, we granted incoming students and their parents to the payer portal. Through it, they can pay tuition bills immediately.
If you want the full and complete details of everything we’ve added to the Education management products make sure to visit our release letter. Use the Recent option at the top of the page to view past and archived releases.
As I have mentioned in the past, make sure to bookmark these links if you haven’t already as we’re continuing to add resources over time. That’s going to do it for this month. In fact, as we head into the summer, you’ll likely find that our weekly blog posts will be slowing down. Fear not, this is our annual break as well, but I’ll be back every now and then to give you monthly release recaps and anything else that may need your attention. We’ll be back to our normal weekly schedule at the end of August.
Until next time, I wish you all the best. Hopefully, life will start to feel somewhat normal the further into 2020 we go. I, for one, can’t wait for the simple day to day things to return. We are in this together everyone. See you next time.
As we move deeper into June, our weekly product updates continue to roll on. A lot has happened over these past four weeks with plenty more to come in the months ahead. While we’re not quite ready to talk about what’s next, let’s look back at everything that arrived in May for Education management.
Academics
As expected, Academics continued a strong showing in May with a number of important updates. Group Page Access settings can now grant or restrict access to users in regards to student schedules on pages in Academics, Enrollment management, and the Parent page. This can be adjusted under Core, and then Security as needed.
Other updates include:
- While editing student enrollment in Athletics, athletic teams now display the school level with which they are associated. Keep in mind that this feature only applies to schools with multiple levels.
- The Mark late at field has been removed from online submissions. Teachers can now add a due time for online submissions instead. For online submissions created previously, the time entered into the Mark late at field will now appear in the due time field.
In May, we added a number of updates to Core.
The Contact Card manager can now view and acknowledge updated Citizenship/Residency information for a user under Core, Users, and then Handle profile changes.
Online presence information can be shown within User lists as well as used as a filter. This data can also be exported to third-party spreadsheet applications and returned in the Sky API endpoint for Get User Changed list.
You can now view or export a history of PushPage issues (newsletters) sent to any user from their user’s Core profile and then selecting View communications from the bottom of the profile header.
Preferred name is replacing Nickname throughout the Education management products. This month includes Advanced lists and when exporting data from the User export option when working with third-party spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel.
Core did a lot of work with gender values this month as well. Under User Profile settings, gender values can now be edited to create a custom set if needed. One thing to note is that Male, Female, and Other cannot be modified due to preserving backward compatibility settings. They can be marked as inactive however. List managers now have the ability to filter by Pronouns when they user User, Student, and Faculty lists. Pronoun data is now returned in the Sky API endpoints for the Get User Changed and Get User extended list. Make sure to check out the full release notes or the online help for more details on these adjustments.
Billing management
This month, we granted incoming students and their parents to the payer portal. Through it, they can pay tuition bills immediately.
If you want the full and complete details of everything we’ve added to the Education management products make sure to visit our release letter. Use the Recent option at the top of the page to view past and archived releases.
As I have mentioned in the past, make sure to bookmark these links if you haven’t already as we’re continuing to add resources over time. That’s going to do it for this month. In fact, as we head into the summer, you’ll likely find that our weekly blog posts will be slowing down. Fear not, this is our annual break as well, but I’ll be back every now and then to give you monthly release recaps and anything else that may need your attention. We’ll be back to our normal weekly schedule at the end of August.
Until next time, I wish you all the best. Hopefully, life will start to feel somewhat normal the further into 2020 we go. I, for one, can’t wait for the simple day to day things to return. We are in this together everyone. See you next time.
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Blackbaud Higher Education Solutions™ Announcements
06/02/2020 9:00am EDT
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