Here are the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for September 26, 2023.

Learning Resources

New Videos!

We recently added a couple of new videos for your viewing pleasure. The first covers School Forms, what they are, where to find them, and how to use them. Next up is focusing on Creating a Candidate within Enrollment management through our brand-new user interface.

Multi Factor Authentication (MFA) for Blackbaud ID (BBID)

Starting in October, faculty, staff, and admins will be required to use multi-factor authentication (MFA) if they use a Blackbaud ID (BBID) username and password. These users have security roles that are application, employee, or volunteer types.



This requirement will be enforced in waves. The first wave starts October 3, 2023. Check your emails for your specific wave and date.

To learn more, view the webinar recording (25 minutes) from Product Manager Jessi Walters.



Exemptions:

• Students, alums, and non-administrative users of Blackbaud Education Management (BBEM) will not be required to adopt MFA with BBID. These users only have security roles of the constituent or other type.
• Additionally, users who authenticate via Single Sign-on (SSO), Sign in with Google, or Sign in with Apple will not be impacted by any enforcement of MFA, regardless of their role(s) in BBEM.

Blackbaud strongly recommends establishing an SSO connection with your Identity Provider for easier management of your users, for the optimal login experience, and to avoid the MFA requirement.

Academics

Expert Mastery Skills

Schools using Competency Based Education (CBE) can now export their Transferable and Content-area skills and sub-skills in Academics, Grades, Grading Setup, Transferable skills or Content-area skills. Select Export to download the CSV file.

Name Pronunciation

Name pronunciation gives users and administrators the ability to record an audio sample of how their name is pronounced. The recording is then added to their profile page next to their name as an audio icon where anyone can select it to listen to the audio sample. Platform managers will need to first enable this feature from Core, Security, and then Profile Access. Under User fields, change Name Pronunciation to Yes, which then makes it available under General Information from a user's Contact Card.



Select Edit and then Name Pronunciation to bring up a modal, which allows the user to record an audio sample of how to say their name.



Some users may also need to grant the web browser access when prompted to use their microphone. Once the audio sample is recorded, the user can play it back, record it again, or completely delete it. The audio recording then appears on the user’s profile page as an icon after their full name. Select on the audio icon to hear the recording play.



Please note that this feature is being rolled out in waves to schools over the coming weeks. For more details, check out our online help here.

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Billing management (Limited Availability)

Blackbaud Billing management is available to customers not currently using Blackbaud Tuition management.

Add payments, credits, and charges to past students

Adding charges, payments, or credits to a group now supports including past students in the bulk process. This addition enables Billing clerks to include charges, such as unreturned books or graduation fees, for students who have graduated or otherwise left the school.

Customize direct debit surcharge fee

Schools can now customize and pass along the direct debit surcharge fee, identical to the existing approach for the credit card surcharge fee.



The direct debit fee is defined under Billing years settings as a Special fee called Direct debit surcharge fee; Billing clerks can select if the fee is a flat amount or based on a percentage of the transaction, up to a maximum of $5.

Mark in-house, offline, payments as failed

Billing clerks can now mark in-house, unposted payments as failed by selecting a new option on the payment summary, Mark payment as failed.



Mark payment as failed makes a handful of changes, including:

• Marks the payment as “Do not post”.
• Removes the payment from student balance calculations, applications, and statements.

Handled payments also feature a Processing status of Failed, enabling billing clerks to identify them in lists.

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Core

User list: View special access

To see social security numbers, users must be granted special access, in addition to their security roles. To identify which users have special access, platform managers previously had to view each user’s profile in Core individually. Now, platform managers can view a User List in Core and select to show a Column for Special Access. This helps schools quickly view which users have rights to view this data. Select a name from the list to go to the user’s profile to change their access.

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Enrollment management

Student Checklist Reminder Notifications

When an administrator makes edits to Student Checklist Step's Reminder Notification options on a date that has been configured to automatically send a notification, the system will automatically disable certain options to prevent a duplicate notification from being sent out. For example, a notification is set to go out on 9/26, but an administrator also goes in and edits the checklist step on 9/26. A warning message appears at the top to indicate that certain settings have been disabled to prevent sending duplicate notifications. Any send dates set to a past date will automatically send notifications immediately.



For those that want to override this behavior and send a new notification, select the Enable all reminder options option. Please note that there is a unique enable option for each reminder notification (both Email and Text).

API and Integrations

School API

We’ve added a new endpoint to update allergies for a student. The endpoint is in BETA and may be removed or replaced with a 90-day deprecation period:

• PATCH Medical allergies update (BETA) updates allergy records for a student with the allergy_id and accompanying request body details for the user_id.

We’ve made some changes to the response returned by GET Medications for a student:

• We’ve added a new field, notes. notes returns the comments for the medication.
• We’ve removed the field, allergies_conditions, and created two separate fields from it, allergies and conditions. allergies returns the list of allergies the medication can treat, and conditions returns the list of conditions the medication can treat.

School API and OneRoster API

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

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Subscribe to “What’s New”

To receive email notifications when the What’s new update appears, make sure to subscribe to the K12 community’s blog by logging into the community site and selecting the Subscribe button.

To manage your community subscriptions:

1. Log into the community and locate your name and profile picture in the upper right corner.
2. Select the drop-down arrow and select My Account.
3. From the My Account page, select the Subscriptions tab and scroll down to the Blogs section.
4. Locate Blackbaud K-12 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.
5. Scroll to the end of the page and select Save changes.