Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions: What’s New For November 15th, 2022
Here are the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for November 15th, 2022.
Academics
Student gradebook includes Mastery grading details
In Gradebooks, users can select a student > See student’s gradebook to access the individual Student gradebook. If the class is associated with a school level using Mastery, the user can select to view Total score, Content-area skills, or Transferable skills in the Student Gradebook view. The available options will vary based on the skill types enabled for the school level. Transferable skills span a student’s academic career at the school, so when Transferable skills are selected, users can also choose between displaying skill details for Just this class or All years/classes.
With Content-area skills or Transferable skills selected, the student’s details for each skill display, including:
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Class average: The average of summative graded assignments (assignments not marked Formative) for all students in the class. Class average does not display when All years/classes are selected for Transferable skills.
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Evaluations: Counts of summative and formative evaluations.
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Mastery: Indicates if the student has achieved mastery for the skill
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Student average: The student’s average skill score for summative assignments in the selected marking period.
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Cumulative average: The student’s average skill score for the duration of the class across multiple marking periods.
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Trend: Indicates if the student’s evaluation scores are improving, decreasing, or staying the same.
Additionally, users can select a skill to view details for the student’s assignments associated with that skill. Assignments are separated into two sections: Evaluations for summative assignments, and Formative for assignments excluded from calculations. The Status column displays statuses applied to the assignment and the Comment column displays comments associated with that specific skill, not the assignment comments.
Billing management
Payment methods are now reusable for payers
We’ve added the ability for payers to save and reuse payment methods, speeding up making payments. Payment methods include credit and debit cards and bank accounts (US only); the options available to payers to save are based on payment methods approved by your school.
Payers create and manage payments on the new Payment methods page, accessed by payers by hovering over Billing in the navigation and selecting Payment methods. Payers store payment methods using either the Add credit card or debit card or Add bank account buttons and manage saved payment methods under the corresponding sections on the page. Saved payment methods can be modified (e.g., change whether the payment method is default or the payment method’s name) and deleted. 
Payers select and use payment methods in the Make a payment screen via their Current bill. Payers can additionally opt to save a payment method at this point in the payment process, circumventing the Payment methods page entirely.
Enable Project codes for distributions
We’ve added support for Project codes, an additional organizational dimension for distributions that integrates seamlessly with Financial Edge NXT.
Take advantage of Project codes by enabling them in Billing settings under Projects. Once enabled, Project and Project Description appear as fields when configuring the GL distribution for fees in the settings for School years. Billing clerks either manually define Project codes and Project Descriptions or select from a list of Project Codes automatically derived from Financial Edge NXT, helping to align data in Billing management with data in FENXT.
The Project fields appear in several locations throughout Billing management, such as the list of Distributions shown when expanding an Amount on the Recent charges list.
Leverage additional criteria to refine which general ledger accounts tuition posts to
We’ve added additional criteria to give billing clerks more control over which general ledger accounts tuition revenue posts to. Now, under GL distributions, when configuring Tuition & course fees, selecting a different set of GL accounts based on each student yields additional dimensions, including:
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Board type
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Classification
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Degree
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Enrollment type
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International/domestic
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Payment plan
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Program
Additionally, we’ve added a new Default GL account section, which accommodates situations where students do not match any defined distribution criteria filters.
Changes that leverage these new settings are applied to any new tuition fees and not to ones created prior.
Core
Roles & tasks update
We’ve updated the user interface that platform managers use to access roles. Instead of “podium” you’ll notice a roles list similar to other lists throughout Education Management. Find it in Core, Security, Roles.
Like other lists, you can:
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Search
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Select a column header to sort
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Drag and drop columns to rearrange the data
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Select the three dots at the start of a row to access more options for that role
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such as Manage role, which you can use to grant users that role or to change which tasks are associated with the role
Above the list, select + Create role to make a new cloned role.
For each role, the list shows:
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The role name
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Role type (such as application, employee/volunteer, or constituent)
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Whether the role is a clone of another role and if so, what its based on
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Status (active or inactive)
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Number of members
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Number of reports the role has access to
Future releases will include additional enhancements to this list and other aspects of how you manage security, tasks, user permissions, or access. Future updates include:
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List filters
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Improved descriptions for tasks
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Grouping related tasks by domain or feature area
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More clarity and information on each user’s profile to indicate what they can access
Watch this video on our YouTube channel for a sneak peek.
Enrollment management
Attendee List
Admissions managers can now add the Entering grade column to the Attendee List.
API and Integrations
(School) SKY API
For information about recently added endpoints and updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelogs.
Subscribe to “What’s New”
To receive email notifications when the What’s new update appears, make sure to subscribe to the Higher education community’s blog by logging into the community site and selecting the Subscribe button.
To manage your community subscriptions:
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Log into the community and locate your name and profile picture in the upper right corner.
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Select the drop-down arrow and select My Account.
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From the My Account page, select the Subscriptions tab and scroll down to the Blogs section.
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Locate Blackbaud Higher Education solutions Blog. If you want to be notified as soon as the What’s new content goes live on the community, select the Instant option. You can also opt for Daily and Weekly notifications.
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Scroll to the end of the page and select Save changes.
What’s Recent
Missed any of our weekly releases? You can catch up on everything in our Month in Review blog posts, which cover every feature and update Education management releases each month.
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