With temperatures on the rise, children back home, and the beach looking more appealing than ever, it’s time for summer vacation. As schools begin to lock up their doors for a few months, we’re also planning a little hiatus of sorts from the Tips and Tricks blog. For you long timers here in the K-12 Community, you may remember we did something similar last ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in May! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Interested in joining ... more

“Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, On My! – Dorothy (Wizard of Oz)”   I think we can all agree that being lost is never fun. Just look at poor Dorothy who woke up in a strange land all by herself. Thankfully, she eventually finds some friends to help her along the way. That same sense of feeling lost definitely extends to technology. Using a new product or one that ... more

As I hinted at earlier this month, May is like a great BOGO:Two for the price of one! We’re not giving you just one release as we normally do, but we’ve got one more for you before June arrives. This time around, it’s a heavy Core and Academics release. In fact, we have a pretty cool new feature for platform managers which we’ll discuss in just a moment. Data ... more

One of the things we’ve consistently heard from you guys in the community is that there’s a need for more content designed specifically with teachers in mind. Over that span of time, we’ve been tinkering away behind the scenes to make that dream a reality. Ladies and gentlemen, I’m thrilled to finally be able to announce the Teacher Resource Page ! In an ... more

We’re constantly evolving the Report Card and Transcript Builder process for you and this past release on May 1 wasn’t an exception to this fact. We added a few subtle features that if you blink, you may just miss entirely. So, in case you missed it, here are some of the smart changes made to both the Report Card and Transcript builder processes under ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in April! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Interested in joining ... more

As you may have seen in the May 1 release, we’ve made some highly requested updates to Candidate Checklists inside of the Enrollment management product. Since this is a feature that many schools have been requesting, we wanted to go over some of the finer details on this update and provide even more details. In case you missed it in the May 1 release , we’ve ... more

May is a big month for us here working on the Education Management Suite of products at Blackbaud . We’ll have more to say in a few weeks, but for now, our first update is ready to go live tomorrow on May 1. We have a little something for everyone in this release, especially for schools using the Academics product. School website , Enrollment management , and ... more

Yes, you music fans out there may have noticed that I totally made a Daft Punk reference with this blog post. While I’m not one half of the French DJ Duo, I can offer a few suggestions to make your online help searching experience even better. So, here are a few handy tips to help you search Harder, Better, Faster, and Stronger while using the online help ... more

Images and photos are a crucial way that we can communicate with others without directly using words. As the old saying goes, pictures are worth a thousand words. In an effort to help make your pictures worth a thousand and one, we’ve been steadily updating our School Website product with new tools and quality life updates for managing photos. So, let’s ... more

Welcome back to an all new edition of Blackbaud Pro Tips , a series that aims to help you make the most of your time without a whole lot of effort. In case you missed it, the very first entry in this series took a look at a few handy shortcuts you can take to access your site faster from a mobile device as well as a few nifty browser tricks. This week, we’re ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in March! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Interested in joining ... more

April may have only just arrived, but we’re not wasting any time in updating Blackbaud’s Cloud Solution for K-12 Schools ! Release 14.04, which officially launches tomorrow on April 3, is quite the loaded update. Nearly each product is represented this month, though Academics and Core have the most to check out. Data Import is a big topic for Core in ... more

In this day and age, multitasking has become the norm for most people. Managing and balancing so many different things at the same time can really take up a good amount of our energy and time, so any opportunity to find a shortcut or easier way to handle something is a major win. With a focus on helping you in your daily activities, and maybe even lighten the ... more

Even though we’re only three months in to the year, it’s been pretty busy for all of us here working on the K-12 Solution. So far, 2019 has already seen a lot of changes and evolutions to each of the products that you use daily. That sort of evolution is something we also want to bring to our videos going forward. For the past few years, we’ve been able to ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in February! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Interested in ... more

“Into the garbage chute, flyboy!” - Leia in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope Depending on where you live, March is a weird month. Just as you’re about to set your clocks forward to welcome the longer days of Spring, the weather throws the north one final snowstorm or lingering grey skies with rain your way. Down south, trees launch pollen over every outdoor ... more

Welcome to March 2019, everyone! Believe it or not, it’s time for the next look at what’s new for Blackbaud’s Cloud Solution for K-12 Schools ! We’re now on to release 14.03, which officially launches tomorrow, March 6. This month, every product outside of Extracurricular is represented, though Core and Academics have a vastly longer list of new ... more

We've been working hard to ensure our schools have more control over constituent data. Over the summer, we released several popular imports to eliminate the need for specialty data refreshes, including imports for usernames, addresses, and email addresses. Since they were so successful, we’ve decided to increase the number of data fields that can ... more

Earlier this month, I wrote up a discussion post that highlighted a recent change to our hot fix and release letters. With a healthy community and an active discussion board, it’s understandable if you missed it. So, just in case it did happen to pass you by, I’m taking the opportunity to place the spotlight on it right here one last time. Many of you may ... more

One of our goals here on the documentation team at Blackbaud is to always strive to make your experience as informative and helpful as possible. It’s part of the reason why we’ve continued to branched out from our traditional online help center to other places including here in the Community, to the in-product help panel, and even our ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in January! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Interested in ... more

Last year I completed a 30-day clean eating challenge. And yes, I made it out alive. Thank you, thank you. Ok, ok, back to the real reason I’m expressing my success… Anytime I went out to eat, which was rare, I wished every single restaurant served only the items I wanted —or should I say only items I should eat. After all, the menus always listed A TON of ... more

We’re now into February and it’s already time to take a look at what’s new for Blackbaud’s Cloud Solution for K-12 Schools ! Update 14.02, which arrives on February 6, may not have another massive new feature addition like last month, but we’re releasing new content for nearly every product in the solution. There are a lot of new features to discuss with ... more

In our release letter for August 22, 2018, we encouraged administrators to begin using the Core view of user profiles to edit profile data because we are planning to ‘sunset’ the older Edit user profile data page. You listened and responded with your concerns. We heard you and adjusted. Although we didn’t delete  Edit User Profile Data  in the fall of ... more

As we revealed earlier this month , Committee Review is now available for all schools using Enrollment Management . With this feature, we aimed to simplify and streamline the admissions process, specifically the candidate review and decision process. Through Committee Review, we’re able to keep all relevant information in one, easy to find ... more

Welcome to 2019! Although we have lots of great work planned for this year, we're going to take a look back to highlight a few huge end-of-the-year wins that the Core team got in place late last year. Sky Reporting We know having timely and accurate data is important for decision-making, so we improved the performance of our SKY Reporting dashboards; ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in December! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Interested in ... more

Happy New Year everyone and welcome to 2019! It’s going to be another very busy year for Blackbaud’s Cloud Solution for K-12 Schools and even though it’s still very early into January, we’re not wasting any time getting started. The January 9 release, also known as 14.01 features a number of important updates for Core , Academics , and Enrollment ... more

Great New Year’s news— Blackbaud University 2019 Certification is available now! You know Education Edge inside and out. But can you prove it? Blackbaud certification in Education Edge is the best way to demonstrate your level of product mastery. If you’re ready to prove what you know, get  certified! Blackbaud University offers certified learning ... more

Great New Year’s news— Blackbaud University 2019 Certification is available now! You know Blackbaud Learning Management System (formerly onCampus) inside and out. But can you prove it? Blackbaud certification in Blackbaud Learning Management System for K – 12 is the best way to demonstrate your level of product mastery. If you’re ready to prove ... more

Great New Year’s news— Blackbaud University 2019 Certification is available now! You know Blackbaud’s education management portfolio inside and out. But can you prove it? Blackbaud certification in Blackbaud’s education management portfolio for K–12 Core is the best way to demonstrate your level of product mastery. If you’re ready to prove what ... more

We’re nearing the end of 2018 and before jumping ahead to what’s next, we’re taking a look back over the past 12 months to highlight the enhancements we've delivered to both Blackbaud’s Learning Management and Student Information Systems .   One significant change we introduced in the Summer of 2018, was combining the functionality of our LMS and SIS ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in November! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Core Stephanie ... more

As the year comes to a close, we’ve finally made it to the last product update for Blackbaud’s Cloud Solution for K-12 Schools in 2018. Inside of release 12.13, we’re adding a bunch of quality of life features, while also paving the road for what’s to come in 2019. For December, Core leads the way with six updates in total, with Lists getting a lot of ... more

With the end of 2018 rapidly approaching, we’re taking a look back at the busy year Enrollment Management has had. For this retrospective, we’re not going to delve too deep into some of the bigger added features in 2018 like the addition of  Admissions Scheduling , support for overlapping grades, being able to add miscellaneous file types to Candidate ... more

Believe it or not, it’s been nearly a year since we last discussed the Blackbaud Online Help System and all the ways we’re working to get you the information that you care about. Sure, we’ve written posts about our help panel, discussed guides we’ve created, and even embedded videos in some blog posts like our monthly releases but we need to talk about how ... more

As much as I’d love to spend today’s blog post discussing things like Oreos or chocolate chip cookies, we’re actually going to be spending time on the other types of cookies out there. You know, the less tasty, but equally important website versions. Internet cookies are small pieces of data that are sent from a website to be stored in the user’s computer ... more

We’re now halfway through November and that means it’s time for the next release for the Blackbaud School Management System . For release 13.12, four of the products are getting some new features and plenty of updates that have been in high demand from you, the community. Enrollment Management leads the pack with the most content this month, followed ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in October! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Core ... more

If you couldn’t tell, we love our community here in Blackbaud K-12 . Places like the Idea forum in Blackbaud Community are rife with wonderful ideas that help us further expand and evolve the K-12 products. One feature we’ve been hearing a lot of from the community is in regards to files and working with them on  Candidate Profiles . Following the October ... more

This month we launched our Transcript Builder Early Adopter Program (EAP). Our new Transcript Builder utilizes the same drag and drop interface as our recently revamped Report Card Builder . This interface allows schools to see a visual example of the transcript as they select what information they would like to appear on it.   Schools can easily add ... more

It’s release week for Blackbaud’s School Management System so let’s take a look at What’s New for October 17, 2018. For this month, Update 13.11 features a wide range of added features and updates to many of the K-12 products. Academics and Core once again lead the way with the most content in October, but Enrollment management is close behind with a ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in September! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Core ... more

As kids, we were always taught that sharing is a good thing. Have an extra cookie? Why not put a smile on a friend’s face and give it to them? Frankly, it’s a life lesson that still applies today. Sharing is also a concept that the Academics team wanted to really highlight within the Assignment Center  to make life easier for both teachers and students when ... more

Working with the embedded help panel included in the “ON” Products application makes finding answers to your questions easy if the question you have is related to the application page from which you accessed the help. However, outside of providing documentation, the panel help offers a lot more navigational options to help in situations where the ... more

Wake up before the sun. Cross off everything on the before-school to-do-list. Take your own kids to school. Serve in the drop-off line. Get to your classroom. Welcome students with a smile to start their day. A teacher’s job doesn’t start or stop when the bell rings. Teachers do so much more than teach their students. So, teachers need to find what they ... more

Teachers have been a big focus for the Blackbaud School Management System team over these past few months. During the summer, we made a lot of changes and updates to not only the user interface but the teacher experience as well. In case you missed it, you can have a look at everything new and fresh in this previously highlighted in a blog . To coincide with ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in August! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Core ... more

It’s time once again to have a look at What’s New inside of Blackbaud’s School Management System for September 19, 2018. Arriving tomorrow, Update 13.10 features a wide range of added features and updates to the K-12 products. Academics and Core have the most content this month, with the latter containing some handy quality of life improvements and the ... more

Do your parents ever ask you if there is an app for onCampus? When parents ask this, it’s important to understand what they really want to achieve. Is it offline access for grades or directories that they want, or is it really that they want an icon button on their phone to touch to get them into the parent portal quickly? If the answer is about quick and ... more

With fall quickly approaching and everyone settling back into the school routine, it’s important to tell your entire school community about things like athletic games, concert dates, and more. Within the “ON” Products there are many ways to communicate. For example, Resource Boards are a great place to store communications like handbooks and ... more

A question we commonly get here is how teachers can easily find and print a class roster. With a new school year just getting underway for many schools, it’s an understandable question. Thankfully, we have a very easy answer: The Course Roster report. The place to start is under the Faculty persona, the location where teachers can find everything from ... more

There’s no shortage of notable quotes from Abraham Lincoln. Indeed, a quick Google search makes one realize that there is an insightful quote for almost any situation. And without fail, I recently came across a quote that resonated with me as I thought about the amount of time schools spend carrying out a successful enrollment and re-enrollment ... more

Welcome back! We certainly hope you all had a wonderful summer break! While you were out having fun, the K-12 team has been hard at work on Blackbaud’s School Management System adding a brand-new user interface , adding new features, and continued improvements to existing ones. Many of those new improvements revolve around the teacher experience ... more

Previously, if a user who authenticates with Blackbaud ID appeared to be idle for 15 minutes, the user’s session timed out and the user had to log back in to continue working. A Keep Working? prompt appeared to warn the user at 13 minutes. Now, the idle duration has been extended to 90 minutes. A Keep Working?  prompt will appear a few minutes before the ... more

As we inch closer towards the new school year and the sounds of children once again roaming the halls of schools across the country, it’s time to take a look at What’s New in the August 22 release for Blackbaud’s K-12 Products . Tomorrow, August 22, brings with it Update 13.09 to all of Blackbaud’s School Management Solutions . As you familiarize yourself ... more

At Blackbaud K–12 , we understand the critical role that a common application plays in making the independent school application process as easy as possible. Whether schools choose to use our Enrollment management application in conjunction with a common application, or solely use a common application, our goal is to efficiently funnel all ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in July! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Core ... more

Welcome back! We hope you had a wonderful summer vacation! During these summer months we’ve been hard at work enhancing the teacher experience within the product. If you’ve recently logged in, you’ve probably noticed some of the changes we’ve made. While these navigation changes are arguably the biggest and most visible part of the summer releases, ... more

July has been a very busy month for the K-12 team. We just wrapped up our annual User Conference this past week, after having rolled out our big navigation and UI changes just a couple weeks earlier on July 9. As many of you may have already seen, not only have the product names changed, but many features now have a new home. If you need help finding where ... more

If you walked the streets of New York in the early 1900s, odds were high you would hear a “newsie” or newspaper hawker shouting the latest headline. “Hurricane claims thousands of lives” or “Queen Victoria is dead!” Newsies were known for selling newspapers by shouting the most compelling headlines throughout the streets. Today, I’ve got a headline of ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in May and June! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. ... more

Summer Navigation is finally here! And while the new navigation is definitely more intuitive, we know that changes like this can be overwhelming. So here are some tips, tools, and information to help you make the transition to the new navigation as smooth as possible for your school. Look Left! The first thing users will probably notice about the new ... more

We hope you're enjoying the bright and sunny days of Summer vacation! While we're still taking a slight break from our weekly blog posts here in the community ( more details here ), we still had a pretty big release for the K-12 "ON" Products in June. In case you missed the news, here is your recap for release 13.07, aka the June 27 update. The June release made ... more

We hope you are already aware of our ongoing early adopter program (EAP)  for  Blackbaud ID, which is Blackbaud's authentication service. In preparation for the general availability release, we need to make a change to the log in screens for all schools with the June 27, 2018 release. Even schools who are not currently enrolled in the EAP will see a ... more

“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” – Neil Armstrong “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” – Ronald Regan “We are not makers of history. We are made by history.” – Martin Luther King There are so many great quotes in history. Each quote part of a bigger historical time, but each one powerful on its own. Blackbaud University will make ... more

With schools on the verge of summer vacation, the User Education team is also planning a vacation of sorts from the Tips and Tricks blog. For the summer months of June through August, we’re going to be stepping away from our traditional weekly blog posts. Where's not complete gone, however, as you can still expect to see our monthly release recap posts for ... more

As promised earlier this month, the second May release has finally arrived! Before we jump into the summer months, let's have a closer look at what’s coming in this release for Blackbaud’s K-12 Products. May 30, also known as 13.06, brings with it many quality of life enhancements as well as a number of behind the scenes updates in advance of our big Summer ... more

In 2016, after extensive research, Blackbaud announced plans to relocate our global headquarters to a new site, since we'd outgrown our location at 2000 Daniel Island Dr. in Charleston, SC.  Recently, employees in our Research, Development, and Operations department moved to one of the new buildings (about a mile down the road). We packed up on a ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products users who became Blackbaud Certified or renewed their certification in April! Be sure to review our list and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud Community friends, and congratulating them on this significant achievement. Core Mary Anne ... more

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s almost time for our annual Blackbaud K-12 User Conference! This event always means a lot to us here in the K-12 office as it’s our way to directly meet you face to face as well as show off some cool things we’re working on behind the scenes. While this is something we’ve put on for years now, I’m guessing there’s at least a few of you ... more

We have some exciting news to share with our K-12 community members! Thanks to your feedback, we’ve completely reworked and revamped the Resources section of the K-12 Community site. While we’ve always envisioned this section as the place to go if you’re looking for documents, links, and other K-12 specific information, it could become overly ... more

Hi K-12 Community! I am thrilled to announce that the Blackbaud Community now has a K-12 Conference Community ! Since our bbcon Community has been such a hit, we wanted to bring the experience to you for the K-12 User Conference. In this new Community, you will be to: Connect with speakers & attendees Collect attendee and speaker badges  Attend virtual ... more

May is a special month for Blackbaud’s K-12 “ON” Products as we’re actually releasing two major feature updates this month instead of the traditional one. Before we get ahead of ourselves though, let’s have a closer look at the first update for the month of May. Also known as 13.05, this release contains a lot of updates for each of the “ON” products like ... more

The admissions process is an exciting time for both schools and families. Not only are candidates learning more about a potential school, but admissions managers and staff are also working hard to leave a great impression on the family. In an effort to help schools focus more on creating that VIP experience for prospective students and worry less about ... more

During a recent holiday visit, my extended family joined me in watching one of my favorite Pixar films – Ratatouille (2007). Among the movie's many charms, I especially love how the protagonist (a rat named Remy) and his conscience (the imaginary spirit of a jolly TV chef) are willing to take chances and delight in inspirational change. In tech, as in ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products Core users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in March!  Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, or just congratulating them on this significant achievement.   ... more

Ladies and gentlemen! Start your engines and open the windows to let the fresh spring breeze into your classroom! As we dust off our books from a long winter, it’s also time to set our sights on piecing together the puzzle that is the Schedule Maker process. more

Welcome to April everyone! We’re starting the month off with a bang as the monthly release is set to go live tomorrow, April 4. All of the products are represented this month with onRecord leading the way with five updates including information on its latest EAP for Report Card Builder. We’re also looking for your feedback with onCampus Rubrics, so ... more

With Smart Tuition now part of the Blackbaud family, more and more schools are embracing the new way to work with contracts and payments. As schools are discovering, the process is a little different from what they may be familiar with after working with standard onBoard contracts previously.   To help ease the transition and potential confusion for ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products Core users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in February!  Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, or just congratulating them on this significant ... more

How much money could your school save by reducing paper in the classroom? What if your teachers used half the amount of paper per-class? According to Edutopia , an average school spends about $25,000 on paper each year —and that does not include the maintenance, toner, a nd ink which add to the printing costs. With an average of 50 reams of paper used per ... more

This post is part 2 of a series. Review part 1 for information about enhancements to user profile photos in the past year, the value of using content categories to organize media content, and how content managers and page managers work can work as a team to keep your site's published media content fresh throughout the year. In this post, we'll switch gears ... more

Regardless of whether you’re newly implementing the “ON” Products, or looking to increase adoption among your constituents, there’s no doubt that trying to change established processes in a school is hard. You not only need to train your school’s community on how to use the tools, but you must also spearhead a major change in your school’s culture. ... more

A common problem folks have when searching our How-to help site is locating content specific to the ‘ON’ Product in which they are working. For example, a simple “Email” search returns results for Email Services, Pushpage, Sign In Notifications - all specific to Core - in addition to a slew of other options specific to onBoard and onMessage .  To ... more

We’re now into March and that means the latest release for the K-12 “ON” Products is finally upon us. Also known as 13.03, this release includes a number of new features for products like onBoard , onCampus , and onRecord . We’re also introducing updates to Lists as well as an important change to Blackbaud’s password policies. Here’s just a few of the big ... more

Blackbaud K12 User Education is proud to announce the release of its much anticipated onRecord Grading Guide ! more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products Core users who became  Blackbaud Certified , or renewed their certification, in January!  Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, or just congratulating them on this significant ... more

As part of the K12 User Education team, we pride ourselves on giving schools multiple ways to consume our content. The main way to reach our documentation and guides is through our full online site , though we also offer an in-product panel for when you need instant help while working. more

Remember User Profile Photos We've made several enhancements related to user profile photos in the past year. We switched avatars from a rectangular shape to a modern circular one as part of the 'ON' products update to Blackbaud Sky's "look & feel". We improved the process for uploading and realigning user profile photos in bulk to fit the new round ... more

With January now behind us, Release 13.02 for the month of February is finally here. more

As much of the world looks to the future as they ring in the New Year, many K12 schools also are beginning to prepare for tomorrow as course requests season fast approaches. more

Blackbaud ID enables each user at your school to access all of your school's Blackbaud products and services with a single email address and password. For example, users employed by your school could access the 'ON' products , Raiser's Edge NXT , Smart Tuition , and this online user community with one login.  more

What’s great about the K12 community is that it gives everyone here at Blackbaud another avenue to communicate directly with you, our end users. more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products Core users who became  Blackbaud Certified  in December!  Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, or just congratulating them on this significant achievement.   Krista Barbosa Greg Feldman ... more

Welcome to 2018! During the first few weeks of each new year, we probably all spend a little time questioning how we’re going to accomplish the resolutions we made just a few days earlier. How exactly am I going to take more time to stop and smell the roses? How exactly am I going to get organized/de-stress/spend less money/exercise more? How exactly am I ... more

Happy New Year everyone and welcome to the first product update for 2018! more

Happy New Year, everyone! We’re back a little early with some big news for onCampus schools. more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products Core users who became  Blackbaud Certified  in November!  Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, or just congratulating them on this significant achievement.   Peter Albert Hillary Beach ... more

We're often asked where's the best place to find information on how to work in the various 'ON' Product applications. We're using this blog post to discuss and address that very question. more

The clock starts ... the game begins ... and even if we need to step away from the action, we monitor the scoreboard for the next three hours. We might not get to see every play in every game we watch, but as avid fans we keep a close eye on each game’s scoreboard. Much like a football game, a lot goes on in school throughout the academic year. Students learn and ... more

It’s hard to believe but 2017 is quickly coming to a close. Just as December signifies the end of another year, Release 12.13 marks our last product update for the K12 “On” Products until the new year. Our December 13 release is focused primarily on enhancing the experience for Smart Tuition Integration users with onBoard , while also adding many highly ... more

With Part 3 of the Smart Tuition  blog series, learn how to use the integration as a payer going through a new enrollment contract with onBoard. more

With Smart Tuition already set up and data mapped with onBoard , administrators can now start creating new contracts that automatically pull in details from the Smart side. Here's everything that you need to know. more

In addition to onBoard contracts, schools can also choose to utilize Smart Tuition to manage billing and collections. Here's how to set up the Integration in onBoard and use spreadsheet enrollment to export your data to Smart Tuition. more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products Core users who became  Blackbaud Certified  in October!  Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, or just congratulating them on this significant achievement.   Kimberly Adams Heather Brown ... more

We’re deep into November and the latest update for the K12 “ON” Products has arrived. Update 12.12 brings with it plenty of new content, enhancements, and fixes for Core , onBoard , onRecord , and the Smart Tuition integration as well. Here’s a look at some of the features coming this month! more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products Core users who became  Blackbaud Certified  in September!  Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, or just congratulating them on this significant achievement.   Ann Alsfeld John ... more

Blackbaud University is committed to providing customers with classes that are relevant, valuable, and up-to-date. That’s why, in response to changing software and customer feedback, we’ve refreshed the onBoard curriculum! The following three classes now deliver enhanced  how-to and best-practice instruction on the features and tools in ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products Core users who became  Blackbaud Certified  in August!  Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, or just congratulating them on this significant achievement.   Seth Hurd Christopher Mazzoli ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products Core users who became  Blackbaud Certified  in July! Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, or just congratulating them on this significant achievement.   Dyvar Anderson Kim Ashcraft Ola Mae ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products Core users who became  Blackbaud Certified  in June!  Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, or just congratulating them on this significant achievement.   Aaron Baker Shlande Dossou Amber ... more

Blackbaud University is excited to celebrate our K–12 “ON” Products Core users who became  Blackbaud Certified  in May!  Be sure to review our listing and celebrate your colleagues by viewing their profiles, becoming Blackbaud  Community  friends, or just congratulating them on this significant achievement.   Heather Andrew Candace Chesler ... more

Here at Blackbaud we recognize that each and every private school is unique. And what makes the “ON” Products so great is that there are so many ways you can customize them to meet your school’s specific needs. But when you think about all the possibilities, you might get overwhelmed. What works for your school may not work for another, and a third school ... more

Alexander Graham Bell may have said it best: “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” So while graduation may still be a few months away, early spring is the perfect time to start thinking about what you need to do in the “ON” Products in order to close out the current school year and begin the upcoming year. Each “ON” Product – Core, ... more

Tools that allow us to complete our daily tasks in a self-serve manner are increasingly part of our lives: we fill our cars at self-serve gas stations, we make withdrawals at self-serve ATM machines, and we bathe our dogs at self-serve dog washes. In this self-serve society , we expect to encounter self-serve tools everywhere we go. When someone ... more

A new employee was asked to clean the elevators and report back to the supervisor when the task was completed. When the employee failed to appear at the end of the day the supervisor assumed that he had simply not liked the job and left. However, after four days the supervisor ran into the new employee. He was cleaning. “You surely haven't been cleaning the ... more

Does Your onCampus Academic Success Team Soar? The holiday season is here! Everyone’s making air travel plans, and the airlines are working hard to get people where they want to be, and when they want to be there. To ensure each flight’s success, every airline relies on several roles working together. We might think of those roles as a flight success team ... more

We all know it’s important for us to visit the doctor every year. But did you know it’s also important to give your database a regular checkup?    more

The November release of the Connect RE integration is now available to all hosted and on-premise Raiser's Edge users. No need to download from our website, this integration features an auto-updater that upgrades when launching the program for the first time. Take a look at the enhancements and improvements we've implemented: ... more

COURSE RELEASE – onBoard and onMessage: Event Registration.   One look at your school’s calendar will surely confirm that you are constantly planning and hosting a variety of events. And we’re curious – what events do you manage with the Event Registration features in onBoard and onMessage?   more

COURSE RELEASE - onMessage: Page Builder Get ready to test your knowledge! Take this quick quiz to see how much you know about the onMessage Page Builder tools for managing your public website. more

Change is good. No, really, it is. And, in this case, it’s very good. That is, if you’re using onBoard ®, onMessage ®, or Raiser’s Edge NXT™ with Blackbaud Merchant Services™ (BBMS). In addition to helping you simplify payment processing, Blackbaud Merchant Services now features a new, and improved, web portal — and, just in time for back to school. This ... more

We’re now at a point where Teachers are back and getting ready for the new year. You’ve completed your Master Rollover and may be working through your schedule or you’re on the ball and that’s done too! This is a great time of year to make sure everything on your to do list is checked off! Here are a few things to consider for your list:   Grading in onRecord can ... more

COURSE RELEASE - K–12 onMessage: Pushpage It’s that time of year again!  No, I’m not talking about the start of football season. I’m talking about the start of school! As summer winds down, your to-do list has likely grown exponentially with things you need to communicate to your constituents. more

The 2016-2017 school year is quickly approaching and that means it is time to do some Summer cleanup! In the past year many inquiries, applications and contracts have been submitted for your school through onBoard to track candidate and student progress. Now that the year has ended, it’s time to look at the future and start cleaning up any leftover ... more

The school year is now over (or maybe you’re just wrapping up a few last minute details) and it’s time to start getting ready for next year! After May’s blog, you should be ready to dive into setting up for the new year while avoiding those pesky pitfalls your school may have fallen into last year. When schools are looking to close out their current year and ... more

Finals are over, Seniors are graduating, and the weather is slowly getting warmer, all these signs point to one thing: the school year is coming to an end! This means you’ll finally have some time to sit back and relax a bit, right? No, we all know there is no rest for the wicked and the summer is a time to get things done. As you finish up the school year, it’s ... more

If your Raiser's Edge database is integrated with Education Edge, Student Billing, or Blackbaud Student Information System, and your database is not hosted by Blackbaud, we strongly encourage you to review the following information with all parties involved in your update process and EE-RE Integration before updating to RE version 7.95 or ... more

If you have the optional online module NetClassroom, you have the ability to publish documents such as report cards, transcripts and statements online for students and parents to view without having to print out a hard copy to send out. Not only is this convenient for both students and parents but it also saves trees, and thus helps to decrease paper ... more

Have you ever noticed that a grade was missing or incorrect on report cards or transcripts for one or multiple students? Or better yet, has a student or parent brought this to your attention after you have sent out report cards or transcripts? Missing grades are no laughing matter and it is your job to find out where the grade is and how to include it in your ... more

It's getting closer to that time to provide students with their final report card for the year! In order to create report cards and send them out, we must first get the grades from teachers’ gradebooks into The Education Edge. Let’s walk through 2 great wizards that help make this process seamless. The Update FAWeb Statuses Wizard In order to be able to ... more

Need a way to quickly check a student's marking column grade in FAWeb or find which classes are marked Not Ready to post?  You can find information quickly and easily using queries in Registrar's Office.  Here are a few examples of how you can use these queries to get you started. Say you need to a quick way to list current grades for a specific student.  You ... more

There are so many odds and ends involved when creating a statement that sometimes various little details are overlooked. The following information will show you some tips and tricks to refine your billing statements. Showing grade levels Some users like to display the student grade levels on the statements. But what if you’re creating a statement for ... more

From time to time it might be necessary to delete a student progression entry from a record.  For some records, no problem.  But for others, that big red X is grayed out.  Why might that be?  Here's a list of possibilities and what to check for each. Possible Cause #1: Student has scheduling information Scheduling information is dependent on a ... more

By this time of year, students will have most likely begun paying their tuition bills. In Student Billing, we’ve been recording the payments and getting them applied to the correct charges. Sometimes, however, we will need to refund a payment back to the student. The student may have paid a little extra, or may no longer be returning to the school. The ... more

As the school year is now back in full swing, there comes a time where schedules need to be edited. Is a student no longer attending your school and you need to remove him from the class? Or, does the student need to transfer from Honors Geometry in period 1 to Honors Geometry in period 4? Not sure how to handle these changes? Let's review the 3 different ... more

  If a holiday is missed or entered incorrectly in the Academic Year, your   cycle days can be incorrect after the holiday . It’s better to find this out sooner rather than later, so take a quick peek at your attendance when you get a chance to see if your days are showing correctly. If they aren’t, you can add or correct the holiday by going to the Academic Year, ... more

Now that school has begun, it’s time to dig up the old loafers hiding in the back of your closet, brush off those scholarly cobwebs and refresh your knowledge on how to use FAWeb! If you are new to using FAWeb, just know that it is all you will need to have in order to enter grades, assignments, conduct, and class announcements for your students to see in ... more

School has started or is about to, and a teacher contacts you to say, “Help!  All my gradebooks are missing on my FAWeb homepage!”  What do you do to resolve this issue?  First, you need to know there is more than one possible cause for this error.  If you know that, then you also know there is more than one possible solution to the problem. This article will ... more

The beginning of the new school year is fast approaching or already here and emails need to be sent to student families.  Using   NetMail , we can create an email to send to the families with information needed for the school year! NetMail works with export files, which allows you to select the group of people to whom you want the message to be sent. You can ... more

When the time comes to provide usernames and passwords to your students and parents, export is our best tool. Today we’re going to talk about exporting usernames and passwords using both a Student export and an Individual export. A few things to keep in mind: Export is used because Student and Individual Passwords are encrypted in query. (See  Faculty ... more

It’s that time of year to get new school supplies which means it is much busier at local stores. Drivers circle around the lots until they finally spot another shopper pulling out of a spot.  User licenses in The Financial Edge, The Education Edge and Blackbaud Student Information System are very similar to parking on busy days; you can’t park somewhere ... more

Have you ever logged in to FAWeb to approve comments, only to find that the option is missing? Did you know that there are 3 different types of FAWeb users other than teacher logins, and each comes with their own set of rights? Below you will find a breakdown of each type, along with instructions on how to grant those rights to a user. Supervisor The ... more

Don’t worry! This username and password are grayed out by design. When an Education Edge record is linked to NetCommunity, the username and password become grayed out and locked in The Education Edge. This helps prevent any type of disconnect between the EE record and their NetCommunity account and users don’t have to worry about updating a username ... more

Advance deposit season is upon us and payments from parents are coming into your school left and right to ensure that their children are guaranteed a spot at your school for the next year. You might think that you have the whole advance deposit thing down pat, but what about refunding or deleting them from student records? Depending on the situation, it ... more

You’ve finalized all scheduling for the New Year, and now teachers are bombarding you with questions about which students will be in their classes next year. “How can I get this information to them?” you might ask. There is a handy class report for just that purpose! This report can be found in Reports > Course/Class Reports > Class Report and will allow ... more

If you have FAWeb, you know it’s a great module that provides teachers with gradebooks that interact with the Registrar’s Office database. It contains class gradebooks, attendance, and student information! Before teachers can start setting up their gradebooks, they first need to be  set up in security and added to the FAWeb group .  This is done in ... more

There are so many odds and ends involved when creating a statement that sometimes various little details are overlooked. The following information will show you some tips and tricks to refine your billing statements. Showing grade levels Some users like to display the student grade levels on the statements. But what if you’re creating a statement for ... more

When it comes time to Enroll Students in their Classes – did you know you can let the system do most of the work for you?  The option to Generate Student Schedules is designed to help ease the workload of getting Students in the right classes.  A few things to remember before scheduling students: >   Students must have Student Requests.  Requests are used by ... more

When you want to automatically schedule students using the Generate Student Schedules wizard, you have to enter course requests for students first.  Here are some steps that will help you breeze through the process! 1.         Define Core Curriculum If you know each grade level should be taking certain classes, you can define the set of classes as a   ... more

When it comes to data entry, there’s bound to be a few mistakes or typos here or there. Sometimes these are not such a big deal, but sometimes they can lead to bigger problems. Take your billing, for instance. You just added transactions for all of your students. After this was done, you noticed the charges were added with last year’s date instead of this ... more

When deciding on how to schedule students for the next academic year, there are a couple of questions to ask: How many students are you scheduling for? Is the way you want the students to be scheduled very specific? Are you using course requests? If the answers to these questions are: A small number  Yes No Then the best option is to manually schedule the ... more

You’ve set up Course Restrictions for the new academic year, classes have been created, and now you are ready to schedule the meetings, teachers and rooms. With Generate Master Schedule you can automatically schedule this information, or you can manually schedule them, and typically you need to do both! After   creating classes   for the academic ... more

Summertime for the Business Office at your school is a busy time! You’re often finishing up details from the previous school year while preparing for the next one simultaneously. You could use a time saver and a way to automate tedious processes so you can get to the next item on the list. Using the  Generate Transactions Automatically  (GTA) parameter ... more

Why are the Advisor and Homeroom teacher fields grayed out on my student's record? And, where did the information go? No worries, David Copperfield has not been messing with your database.  Let me explain.  When today's date does not fall within an Academic Year's start and end dates  OR  the student was not given a Student Progression Entry created for ... more

Are you ready to start creating classes for the upcoming school year? There are different ways classes can be created and it is good to be aware of some of the more common ways to make the creation of classes easier! Today I wanted to focus on two useful ways to create classes: Automatically create classes via the Create Classes wizard Manually create ... more

Today we’re going to talk about Application Restrictions. Application Restrictions can be used to ensure that credits or payments apply to specific charges. As an example, you may want your advance deposit credits to only apply to tuition charges. For advance deposits or financial aid, the restrictions can be set up on the billing item to ensure the ... more

What options do you have to help automate your schedule?  What about tying Courses together?  Is there a way to ensure Classes follow each other – like a Lab?  Yes!  Using Scheduling Rules, all of these needs can be met!  To begin with, let’s take a look at how we create Scheduling Rules to use in the system.  They are created from within Configuration> ... more

Timetables and Patterns are the building blocks for creating the class schedule for the academic year. They can be seen as peanut butter and jelly on a sandwich, pretty good on their own but work best together. Timetables and Patterns can both be located in Configuration >Registrar Setup. From the list on the left, select Timetables and click New ... more

Earlier this month, we let you know about an update coming for the Education Edge. This update includes changes to integration and your contact information. These changes are only applicable to schools that are integrating Education Edge and Raiser’s Edge. These changes are the result of feedback from schools like yours, after the release of ... more

With June 30th being the end of the fical year for many of our schools, we have decided to delay deploying patch 6 to hosted clients in our Boston and Orange County datacenters until Tuesday, July 7th. Please keep an eye out for our upcoming blog on patch 6 and the included changes! more

Billing Schedules are a handy way to easily accommodate the tuition and fee billing options commonly offered by independent schools. Automatic Billing, Financial Aid, Advance Deposit, and TRP Billing Items help you accurately manage your receivables and they make it easy for families to understand what they owe your school monthly by coordinating ... more

There are a lot of building blocks that you need to have in place for scheduling and grading. For example, you need to have your cycle, timetable, and pattern(s) in place for scheduling, and you need to have your marking columns and translation tables set up for grading. However, there are two specific building blocks you need to have in place in order to ... more

While there are many ways to reconcile your bank accounts in The Financial Edge, we have a few suggestions of what reports to run in order to reconcile your Student Billing sub-ledger accounts. Suggestion #1: Run the Account Distribution report against your General Ledger report The Account Distribution report in Student Billing is recommended to ... more

Are you tired of setting up things in Education Edge from one year to the next ?  Did you know there are several ways you can copy information from one year to another?  Below you will find out how to copy Homeroom Teachers, Advisors, Academic Years, Course Restrictions 2, Course Grading, Course Billing Items, Faculty/Staff Restrictions, Room ... more

Once again the Pomp Circumstance has been played and the diplomas have been given out to students.  Now you need to convert the recently graduated students from non-constituents to constituents in the Raiser’s Edge. Luckily, with integration between Education Edge and Raiser’s Edge, it can be setup to accomplish this with a few simple steps! First, ... more

When you start your scheduling process, it’s important to do things in the correct order to ensure that setting up the foundation of your scheduling year goes smoothly. This will provide a quick overview of what needs to be done in a certain order and why. First off, you will need to create your academic year, session and terms. This might seem pretty ... more

At the end of every academic year, there comes the time to don graduation caps and progress your seniors into the next steps of their academic career. The  Promotion Schedule  in Configuration and the  End of the Year Processing  wizard in Administration> Status wizards dictates what happens with the seniors in the Education Edge.  There are 2 ways ... more

It has been a busy second semester for our schools. We know we’ve had a number of issues arise over the past few months. With that in mind, we want to ensure you are aware of an update happening this upcoming weekend to enhance our security around password management. On Sunday, June 7th for schools that have Online Campus Community/Blackbaud ... more

Congratulations on completing another successful school year!  By now, the final grades have been entered, the students have Student Progression Entries for the next academic year, and you’re ready to promote students to their next grade levels. Wouldn’t it would be nice if there was a quick and easy way to promote students all at once?  Well, there ... more

If you have the optional online module NetClassroom, you have the ability to publish documents such as report cards, transcripts and statements online for students and parents to view without having to print out a hard copy to send out. Not only is this convenient for both students and parents but it also saves trees, and thus helps to decrease paper ... more

It’s the end of the semester, and you’re working on Sally Student’s and Samuel Student’s transcripts. There is an array of problems with the transcripts – information is missing or incorrect and Sally’s transcript isn't showing up to print. Below are 5 top issues that you may run into when running transcripts. Grades or courses are missing on the ... more

Have you ever noticed that a grade was missing or incorrect on report cards or transcripts for one or multiple students? Or better yet, has a student or parent brought this to your attention after you have sent out report cards or transcripts? Missing grades are no laughing matter and  it is your job to find out where the grade is and how to include it in your ... more

At the end of a marking period, you may need to modify which marking column(s) display on your report cards. The marking columns can be modified by selecting the “Details” tab and opening the “Courses” section. Within the courses section, you can add a “New Column” or modify an existing column by highlighting the row and selecting “Open Column”. For ... more

With the end of the year rapidly approaching, students and parents are looking forward to receiving report cards. Is this your first time creating a report card? Or are you just looking to change up an existing report card? Let’s look at some of the formatting options in a report card parameter: How do you change the overall layout of the report card? On ... more

Taking and reporting on Attendance should be a seamless task every school goes through – but perhaps it’s a bit more complex than anticipated, or seems tough to decipher.  It happens!  Let’s walk through the fine points of what is involved and how the resources available to you can make these tasks easier. First, it’s important to note that the vast ... more

It's getting closer to that time to provide students with their final report card for the year! In order to create report cards and send them out, we must first get the grades from teachers’ gradebooks into The Education Edge. Let’s walk through 2 great wizards that help make this process seamless. The Update FAWeb Statuses Wizard In order to be able to ... more

Are you trying to generate charges for your students for the upcoming year and finding yourself bugging your registrar to move students up to the next grade level so you can bill them accurately? Or maybe you are on the other end, feeling like your billing office is pushing you to run the End of Year processing wizard before you're ready to do so. The ... more

With Raiser’s Edge 7.94 contact information was moved from address records to a single contact grid located on the Bio 1 tab of the constituent record. With this change, all contact information was re-located, even information that existed on the relationship records. For many organizations, this created an influx of data on the Bio 1 contact grid ... more

That time of year is fast approaching where new students will be arriving in a matter of months, current ones will be planning for next year, and all of them will need to register for classes. Registration for classes can be a seamless and swift task when done through NetClassroom.  All of the features are set up and controlled in ... more

Welcome to report card /transcript season! So you’re in the middle of setting up your report card/transcript parameters, and you want to include students’ GPAs and Performance Categories after you’ve calculated them. With just a few clicks you’ll be all set to display this information in the Education Edge. Include GPAs on Report Cards/Transcripts ... more

The end of the year can be a busy time, and you’ll need to ensure that you are ready to begin billing for the new year. First, you’ll want to create or copy your Fiscal Year in General Ledger. Next, you’ll need to copy your Products and Billing Items. The setup of the dates of the Products and Billing Items determines how they are to be copied.  To ... more

Are your performance categories not calculating correctly? Are students receiving the wrong performance levels? There are several possible causes: The Course is not marked to be included in the Performance category. The letter grade is not marked to be included in performance calculations within the translation table. Numeric and cutoff ... more

With all the vacations and graduations each summer, it’s easy to forget that a new Billing Year is probably starting!  That means you’ll most likely be copying or creating Bill Codes and Billing items.  Before you begin though, let’s talk about what they are and how using them makes your life a lot easier in the world of Student Billing. First, let’s cover ... more

Second part of the school year is fast approaching and it comes time again to recognize your students’ achievements and progress. Using Rank and Performance Categories is a great way to recognize these, and there are great tools in the system to assist you with this process! Before you can calculate Rank or Performance Categories, you first must ... more

With Raiser’s Edge 7.94, all contact information was moved from addresses to a single contact grid for constituents. The development office is now able to track multiple phone numbers or email addresses with the same contact type. They can also use new identifiers of Primary or Inactive to determine what contact information is preferred or archived ... more

As I sit to write this blog, I’m reminded of what an important time of year this is for billing offices. If they haven’t started already, tuition payments for next year will start to roll in soon.  Here in support, we receive many questions about tuition charges, advance deposits, and copying products and billing items. Ready to see that money? Let’s talk ... more

For clients that integrate Education Edge with Raiser’s Edge , the Education Edge 7.87 Patch 3 removed the concept of sharing phones. This means now you can share only the physical address across family records. Now, if a parent calls in with an updated phone number or email address, all records that share that number or email need to be updated ... more

Troubleshooting GPA Calculations Tossing and turning losing sleep due to GPA calculation nightmares? Not sure why GPA calculations aren’t coming out correctly? No need to hide under the covers, this blog can help bash those nightmares away! GPA nightmare scenario 1: Hand calculation doesn’t match Registrar’s Office calculation Is the ... more

A lot has been going on these days! In February we released Education Edge (EE) 7.87 Patch 3 to update compatibility with Raiser’s Edge (RE) 7.94 for our schools that utilize integration . We quickly learned from our clients that are hosted or downloaded RE 7.94 the changes to handling contact information were not functioning as expected and pulled the ... more

As the end of the year approaches and many of you are preparing report cards and transcripts, you may have questions about GPA’s. What is a GPA and how do I create it? How do I know if my GPA is right? A GPA is the numeric measure of a student’s average performance in all graded courses. One great resource we have on defining GPA calculations is our ... more

The Mark for Reenrollment Wizard is a very useful wizard that is used to create progression entries for the next Academic Year for student records. It can be filtered to create progression entries for one student, specific groups of students, specific grade levels, or all students in your school. Students need to have progression entries for the next ... more

Student Progression Entries may not take up very much space on a record, but they are tremendously important in the system.  While it may not seem necessary to create Student Progression Entries for a school year that hasn't even begun, adding these to records as early as February can help you get a head start on next year’s Scheduling and Billing. A ... more

Are you looking to bring new accepted Applicant records over to the Registrar’s Office?  If so, then you will want to check out the Enroll Applicants wizard. The Enroll Applicants wizard allows users to create enrollments from existing Applicant records and prepare Student records for next year’s scheduling and billing.  The Enroll Applications ... more

Advance deposit season is upon us and payments from parents are coming into your school left and right to ensure that their children are guaranteed a spot at your school for the next year. You might think that you have the whole advance deposit thing down pat, but what about refunding or deleting them from student records? Depending on the situation, it ... more

In my last post, Backstage Pass to the Advance Deposit , we reviewed the working parts of the Advance Deposit. In this post, I’d like to review the set up and use of Application Restrictions. Application Restrictions are a way to specify that specific payments, credits, advance deposit credits, or financial aid credits apply to a specific billing item. ... more

Around this time of year, we receive many questions about what an Advance Deposit is and how it works. The Advance Deposit is simple to understand if you know the working parts behind it.  Let’s go backstage and look behind the scenes of the Advance Deposit! The Advance Deposit is a billing item that allows the school to receive money at one time but ... more

As we've discussed in previous blogs , patch 3 for version 7.87 of The Education Edge includes important updates if your EE database is integrated with The Raiser's Edge. If Blackbaud hosts your data, The Education Edge will be updated on February 5th and The Raiser's Edge will be updated to version 7.94 on February 8th. If Blackbaud does not host your ... more

Thank you for your patience. We now have firm dates for the upcoming Education Edge patch and Raiser's Edge release. Reminder:  Upcoming Contact Information Changes in The Education Edge 7.87 Patch 3 The Education Edge will release a patch to hosted customers on 2/5/2015 to prepare you for The Raiser’s Edge 7.94 release on 2/8/2015. If you do not host ... more

Have you ever logged in to FAWeb to approve comments, only to find that the option is missing? Did you know that there are 3 different types of FAWeb users other than teacher logins, and each comes with their own set of rights? Below you will find a breakdown of each type, along with instructions on how to grant those rights to a user. Supervisor The ... more

In a recent blog post , I communicated a timeline for the upcoming changes to your Education Edge and Raiser’s Edge integration with the release of The Education Edge 7.87 patch 3 and The Raiser’s Edge 7.94 release. However, our timeline for these updates has changed.  During our last round of quality control, we identified a potential risk to this ... more

In December 2014, we implemented an important enhancement to www.blackbaud.com that will help us prepare the framework for single sign-on. While our Support resources haven't changed, this does change how you sign into www.blackbaud.com. The updated process will allow you to choose to sign into Blackbaud.com using either your email address or ... more

Don’t worry! This username and password are grayed out by design. When an Education Edge record is linked to NetCommunity, the username and password become grayed out and locked in The Education Edge. This helps prevent any type of disconnect between the EE record and their NetCommunity account and users don’t have to worry about updating a username ... more

As a reminder to our Education Edge customers who integrate with The Raiser's Edge, this week we're releasing a very important patch to The Education Edge. We recommend  before   you install the patch, run the integration sync before you update your software . Then, we recommend you install The Education Edge 7.87 patch 3 before you update to The ... more

Have you ever had a teacher who couldn’t remember their Faculty Access for the Web password or needed to login as a teacher and don’t know where to find their login credentials? Here are some helpful tips for resetting Faculty Access for the Web password (s) from Administration>Set up System Security in the Education Edge. Login as a Supervisor or a ... more

Just a few weeks ago, people around the country piled in their cars and bombarded stores for the best Black Friday deals they could find. Drivers circled around the lots until they finally spotted another shopper pulling out of a spot.  The lots were so full that a driver could not find a spot until another driver was leaving.  User licenses in The ... more

What’s happening? As we mentioned in our first post of the Raiser’s Edge 7.94 blog series , constituent contact information such as phone numbers and email addresses are no longer going to “live” off of an address in Raiser’s Edge as this is a dated practice.  We believe that contact information should belong to a person rather than an address. What does ... more

It’s the end of the semester, and you’re working on Sally Student’s and Samuel Student’s transcripts. There is an array of problems with the transcripts – information is missing or incorrect and Sally’s transcript isn't showing up to print. Below are 5 top issues that you may run into when running transcripts. 1.      Grades or courses are missing on ... more

If you have the optional online module NetClassroom, you have the ability to publish documents such as report cards, transcripts and statements online for students and parents to view without having to print out a hard copy to send out. Not only is this convenient for both students and parents but it also saves trees, and thus helps to decrease paper ... more

We have our September winner of the Back to School Contest. Join us in congratulating Geoffrey Goodfellow from Southwest Chicago Christian Schools in winning a $25 Staples® gift card! Once again we would also like to congratulate our other winners: Bryan Lorenzo from Belen Jesuit Preparatory School . Tammy Roberts from Hatfield Elementary School . ... more

Interim or cumulative grades can be tracked by posting to interim marking columns created in Registrar’s Office. Although teachers will not have access to the interim marking columns in their gradebooks, they can view all marking column grade information entered in Registrar's Office for the selected academic year by clicking History on the grade ... more

Need a way to quickly check a student's marking column grade in FAWeb or find which classes are marked Not Ready to post?  You can find information quickly and easily using queries in Registrar's Office.  Here are a few examples of how you can use these queries to get you started. Say you need to a quick way to list current grades for a specific student.  You ... more

Students are back in school and grades are starting to come in. Before report card season rolls around, we want to make sure that grades are setup correctly to calculate in FAWeb and in Registrar’s Office. There are two major areas that need to be checked to ensure grades are calculating in FAWeb. The first is in the gradebook setup for each class in the Edit ... more

Now that school has begun, it’s time to dig up the old loafers hiding in the back of your closet, brush off those scholarly cobwebs and refresh your knowledge on how to use FAWeb! If you are new to using FAWeb, just know that it is all you will need to have in order to enter grades, assignments, conduct, and class announcements for your students to see in ... more

The good news- the order you placed for Honor Student bumper stickers has finally arrived! The bad news- you’re not sure which students are supposed to receive a bumper sticker. We can find this out by using the Academic Achievement list Report in the Grade Reports section. Before working with this report, make sure your performance category ... more

In Faculty Access for the Web (FAWeb), comments can be entered for both assignments and marking columns. Both assignment and marking column grade comments can be viewed in NetClassroom. Assignment comments become viewable in NetClassroom when assignment grades are viewable. Marking column comments only show in NetClassroom after they have been ... more

We have a winner for the August Back to School contest! Join us in congratulating Bryan Lorenzo from Belen Jesuit Preparatory School  in winning a$25 Staples® gift card! Want a chance to win a $25 Staples® gift card? We have made a change to the contest rules where any comments submitted on September blog entries will get an entry to the drawing, the ... more

  If a holiday is missed or entered incorrectly in the Academic Year, your cycle days can be incorrect after the holiday . It’s better to find this out sooner rather than later, so take a quick peek at your attendance when you get a chance to see if your days are showing correctly. If they aren’t, you can add or correct the holiday by going to the Academic Year, ... more

Now that you’ve got Courses, Classes, and Students enrolled, how do you take Attendance?  Is there setup you have to do beforehand?  While there is some setup, it’s easy and we’ll walk through it here!  First, let’s talk about Setting up Attendance to be taken. Navigate to Configuration>Attendance Codes.  This is where you define Codes to use when ... more

We invite you to read more about the new Knowledgebase changes happening here in Support. Check it out:   New Knowledgebase Changes . If you want to be in the know, make sure to   subscribe   to our Support News blog! more

It is one week before school starts, and a teacher contacts you to say, “Help!  All my gradebooks are missing on my FAWeb homepage!”  What do you do to resolve this issue?  First, you need to know there is more than one possible cause for this error.  If you know that, then you also know there is more than one possible solution to the problem. This article ... more

If you have FAWeb, you know it’s a great module that provides teachers with gradebooks that interact with the Registrar’s Office database. It contains class gradebooks, attendance, and student information! Before teachers can start setting up their gradebooks, they first need to be  set up in security and added to the FAWeb group .  This is done in ... more

Mission impossible? Absolutely not! Grab your spy gear and let’s go edit a billing schedule . Before the mission can start, we must know if the billing schedule is un-generated, partially generated or fully generated.   How do I know if it is the billing schedule is generated, you ask? On the schedule tab of the billing schedule it states the status for ... more

We have a winner for the July Back to School contest! Join us in congratulating Tammy Roberts  in winning a$25 Staples® gift card! Want a chance to win a $25 Staples® gift card? We have made a change to the contest rules where any comments submitted on August and September blog entries will get an entry to the drawing, the comment must have the following ... more

The beginning of the new school year is fast approaching and emails need to be sent to student families.  Using NetMail , we can create an email to send to the families with information needed for the school year! NetMail works with export files, which allows you to select the group of people to whom you want the message to be sent. You can also select the ... more

By this time of year, students will have most likely begun paying their tuition bills. In Student Billing, we’ve been recording the payments and getting them applied to the correct charges. Sometimes, however, we will need to refund a payment back to the student. The student may have paid a little extra, or may no longer be returning to the school. The ... more

Fast! can be used to add transactions to a group of records more quickly than manually adding them. Fast gives you the opportunity to enter new charges or payments for records using a spreadsheet method. The specific record names or record IDs can be entered one at a time or you can use a query to load the records in the datasheet. After you click on the Fast! ... more

Are you looking for an easy way to let your students know what their user names and passwords are for NetClassroom in a letter without going through the trouble of typing each letter out? You can do this in The Education Edge by taking a simple student export and turning it into a Microsoft Simple Word Merge . If you are unfamiliar with word merges and how they ... more

Don’t miss the free  Faculty Access Tips & Tricks for Teachers  webinar! When: Noon to 12:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, August 5. Here are the details: In this 30-minute online instructor-led event, you'll get the answers to common teacher questions before you ask them!  This event is free. Register today even if your organization doesn't have a Blackbaud ... more

When the time comes to provide usernames and passwords to your students and parents, export is our best tool. Today we’re going to talk about exporting usernames and passwords using both a Student export and an Individual export. A few things to keep in mind: Export is used because Student and Individual Passwords are encrypted in query. (See Faculty ... more

Don't miss the Faculty Access for the Web Tips & Tricks   webinar! When:  Tuesday, August 5 -- 12:00 p.m. to 12:30 p.m. ET Details:  In this 30-minute online instructor-led event, you'll get the answers to common questions before you ask them! Why can't I see the current academic year? Decimal precision: How does this impact grades? Category points vs. ... more

The first day of school is just around the corner, which means teachers will soon be asking you for class rosters and students’ contact information.  If you want to be ready, then keep reading to find out how to create Class Rosters and Student/Family Directories. The Class Report (also known as Class Roster) lists classes that have been created for the ... more

You’ve finalized all scheduling for the New Year, and now teachers are bombarding you with questions about which students will be in their classes next year. “How can I get this information to them?” you might ask. There is a handy class report for just that purpose! This report can be found in Reports > Course/Class Reports > Class Report and will allow ... more

Whether you are at the beginning, middle, or completely finished with scheduling there are some great reports at your fingertips. They can be found in Reports > Scheduling Reports for you to use! The reports included are: Conflicts Report The Conflicts report is great to use when editing your master schedule and scheduling students. It provides a list ... more

When it comes time to Enroll Students in their Classes – did you know you can let the system do most of the work for you?  The option to Generate Student Schedules is designed to help ease the workload of getting Students in the right classes.  A few things to remember before scheduling students: > Students must have Student Requests.  Requests are used by ... more

Don't miss the free  Student Scheduling Tips & Tricks webinar! When: 3 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday, July 22 Details:   Learn how to expedite the scheduling process and track changes to student schedules. Use the  Select a Class  feature to determine which classes fit a student’s schedule Use the  Fill Free Time  feature to automatically enroll ... more

You’ve been working through a laundry list of steps: create your academic year, make a timetable, craft a schedule, set up your classes, pull your hair out… Now you’re ready for the students to be scheduled in their classes and then finally a break! Scheduling students manually is a simple task, and may often the better option if you have a smaller school, ... more

When you want to automatically schedule students using the Generate Student Schedules wizard, you have to enter course requests for students first.  Here are some steps that will help you breeze through the process! 1.       Define Core Curriculum If you know each grade level should be taking certain classes, you can define the set of classes as a core ... more

Are you ready to start creating classes for the upcoming school year? There are different ways classes can be created and it is good to be aware of some of the more common ways to make the creation of classes easier! Today I wanted to focus on two useful ways to create classes: 1. Automatically create classes via the Create Classes wizard 2. Manually create ... more

You’ve set up Course Restrictions for the new academic year, classes have been created, and now you are ready to schedule the meetings, teachers and rooms. With Generate Master Schedule you can automatically schedule this information, or you can manually schedule them, and typically you need to do both! After creating classes for the academic year, ... more

When deciding on how to schedule students for the next academic year, there are a couple of questions to ask: How many students are you scheduling for? Is the way you want the students to be scheduled very specific? Are you using course requests? If the answers to these questions are: A small number  Yes No Then the best option is to manually schedule the ... more

The Scheduling Calendar is a very important part of the setup process, and if you set it up at the beginning of the school year, you will save yourself a lot of time and possible frustration later on. It is used to indicate specific holidays that your school will not be in session, and it can also be used to mark specific days that you will be in session and ... more

As the school year approaches, decisions may be made to make changes to the bell schedule or order of periods. These changes may not be decided on until after you have already set up the schedule for the next academic year, or you may have not scheduled any classes yet. Instead of starting from scratch, you can edit the existing timetable. Before editing ... more

Have you ever been in charge of buying the supplies for a dinner with family and friends, spent hours at the grocery store buying all of the items, only to come home and realize that you forgot to buy a necessary ingredient? When there are a million other things going on (and there most certainly are, especially when you work in a school) sometimes important ... more

Summertime for the Business Office at your school is a busy time! You’re often finishing up details from the previous school year while preparing for the next one simultaneously. You could use a time saver and a way to automate tedious processes so you can get to the next item on the list. Using the Generate Transactions Automatically (GTA) parameter can ... more

While there are many ways to reconcile your bank accounts in The Financial Edge, we have a few suggestions of what reports to run in order to reconcile your Student Billing sub-ledger accounts. Suggestion #1: Run the Account Distribution report against your General Ledger report The Account Distribution report in Student Billing is recommended to ... more

If the upcoming school year schedule is staying the same, hopefully you’ve used the copy scheduling year function to copy everything over. In just a few clicks, the software will automatically copy everything over including class times and assigned teachers. If you’re unfamiliar with the wizard, I highly recommend it if things are more or less ... more

There are a lot of building blocks that you need to have in place for scheduling and grading. For example, you need to have your cycle, timetable, and pattern(s) in place for scheduling, and you need to have your marking columns and translation tables set up for grading. However, there are two specific building blocks you need to have in place in order to ... more

Add to your skill set by attending these great online instructor-led events. Registering is easy! Just use the links in the list below. If your organization has a Learn More or Learn Everything training subscription, you can simply request a session. No training subscription? No problem: Use the Add to Cart feature. We look forward to seeing you! Day, ... more

It may be summer time and most students are on vacation but that doesn't mean next year isn't right around the corner.  We have developed and updated some of our resources for your Back to School processes! In addition to  www.blackbaudknowhow.com  and Knowledgebase , we are proud to unveil our  Back to School  page. This is a one stop place for preparing ... more

Have you heard of the FREE scheduling training coming up for June? In this 30-minute online instructor-led event, you’ll learn great ways to save time when creating your Master Schedule. Such as creating classes directly from the Summary view of the Master Schedule and how to reschedule classes by dragging and dropping them!   Day/Date Time Tuesday, ... more

How would you like to have the resources you need for The Education Edge exactly when you need it?  As you get busy ramping up for the new school year you're likely going to need a lot of information to be successful.  In effort to get you that information when you need it, we've created a calendar chock-full of useful resources related to the tasks you will be ... more

What options do you have to help automate your schedule?  What about tying Courses together?  Is there a way to ensure Classes follow each other – like a Lab?  Yes!  Using Scheduling Rules, all of these needs can be met!  To begin with, let’s take a look at how we create Scheduling Rules to use in the system.  They are created from within Configuration, ... more

With your current school year winding to a close, we know that you are already busy preparing for the new school year! Our Education Edge team has been busy writing blogs that we hope will help with your preparations. To make things a little more fun, we’re giving you the chance to win a $25 Staples® gift card to use towards your Back to School supplies! The ... more

When you start your scheduling process, it’s important to do things in the correct order to ensure that setting up the foundation of your scheduling year goes smoothly. This will provide a quick overview of what needs to be done in a certain order and why. 1. First off, you will need to create your academic year, session and terms. This might seem pretty ... more

Once again the Pomp Circumstance has been played and the diplomas have been given out to students.  Now you need to convert the recently graduated students from non-constituents to constituents in the Raiser’s Edge. Luckily, with integration between Education Edge and Raiser’s Edge, it can be setup to accomplish this with a few simple steps! First, ... more

At the end of every academic year, there comes the time to don graduation caps and progress your seniors into the next steps of their academic career. The Promotion Schedule in Configuration and the End of the Year Processing wizard in Administration> Status wizards dictates what happens with the seniors in the Education Edge.  There are 2 ways to ... more

Congratulations on completing another successful school year!  By now, the final grades have been entered, the students have Student Progression Entries for the next academic year, and you’re ready to promote students to their next grade levels. Wouldn’t it would be nice if there was a quick and easy way to promote students all at once?  Well, there ... more

What’s new with the Education Edge team?  Blog contest is on! Each month (June, July, August, and September) you have a chance to win a $25 gift card! Details here: Back to School Contest Check out the Resource video that the Education Edge team created and starred in! Click here to watch! Free Faculty Access for the Web training in August.   Day/Date Time ... more

Timetables and Patterns are the building blocks for creating the class schedule for the academic year. They can be seen as peanut butter and jelly on a sandwich, pretty good on their own but work best together. Timetables and Patterns can both be located in Configuration >Registrar Setup. From the list on the left, select Timetables and click New ... more

Many families have unique needs for the way the statements need to be printed and which transactions should show on each one. This blog post will list a few scenarios you may have in your school and explains how to handle them. Scenario 1 – Student-Centric with divorced parents If your school is set up to be Student-Centric, students are responsible for ... more

There are so many odds and ends involved when creating a statement that sometimes various little details are overlooked. The following information will show you some tips and tricks to refine your billing statements. Showing grade levels Some users like to display the student grade levels on the statements. But what if you’re creating a statement for ... more

Today we’re going to talk about Application Restrictions. Application Restrictions can be used to ensure that credits or payments apply to specific charges. As an example, you may want your advance deposit credits to only apply to tuition charges. For advance deposits or financial aid, the restrictions can be set up on the billing item to ensure the ... more

  Billing Schedules are a handy way to easily accommodate the tuition and fee billing options commonly offered by independent schools. Automatic Billing, Financial Aid, Advance Deposit, and TRP Billing Items help you accurately manage your receivables and they make it easy for families to understand what they owe your school monthly by ... more

Are you tired of setting up things in Education Edge from one year to the next?  Did you know there are several ways you can copy information from one year to another?  Below you will find out how to copy Homeroom Teachers, Advisors, Academic Years, Course Restrictions 2, Course Grading, Course Billing Items, Faculty/Staff Restrictions, Room ... more

This time of year, schools are gearing up for returning students. As contracts are returned and deposits are made, data is flowing everywhere! Attributes are used to place additional information on a student record that the school wants to track. We like to think of it as the “other” place to add data when it doesn’t fit anywhere else. So what types of ... more

Do you have an ID card printer or ID card stock?  Do you store your pictures in The Education Edge or in Student Information Systems?  If so, then the Custom Report Writing Team can create ID cards for you.   All we need are your school logo, any additional graphics, and your ID card layout. For more information contact solutions@blackbaud.com or ... more

Are parents asking to pay tuition online? Do you routinely take credit card information over the phone or through the mail? Would your Finance office benefit from seamless bill pay integration with The Education Edge? Blackbaud Online Express Bill Pay can provide your parents and payers with a SECURE portal for paying tuition and fees online. Now that ... more

Well, not only is it 2014, but January is more than halfway over. I know, I probably should I have warned you to shield your eyes there. Even though the ball drop is behind us, it’s never too late to talk New Year’s resolutions, right?  While I’m not usually one for resolutions, I’ve made a few professional resolutions this year. Here are my short term goals ... more

Blackbaud Forms has 1098T tax forms available. They are sold individually or in a bundle. The 1098T bundle includes: federal copy A, student copy B, filer copy C and compatible self-seal envelopes. Blackbaud Forms products can now be purchased online at www.blackbaudforms.com ! You can also reach the Blackbaud Forms team through our call center at ... more

For Blackbaud Student Information System users, before you run your 1098Ts this year, we wanted to make you were aware of an important change we made in P atch 1 of 7.86 . We made an adjustment to the way we process 1098T’s for  3 rd party payments in Student Billing . Now, you don’t have to be perfect in order to make sure the right people receive a 1098T form. ... more

Advance deposits give parents the opportunity to send in a payment to reserve their child’s place for the next school year.  Once the advance deposit is paid, a credit generates in the next academic year toward tuition charges. Advance deposits can be created two ways:  as standalone charge waiting for a payment to be applied at a later date or created ... more

When the school year is coming to a close and the next one is on the horizon, one of the important steps is to progress your students from their current grade to the next grade level. Marking students for Reenrollment creates a Student Progression Entry for the next academic year. Students are unable to be scheduled for their classes without a Student ... more

While others dream of sugar plums and frosted window panes, are you dreaming of accurate reports and mailings in The Education Edge?  Have you resolved to clean up and streamline the workings in The Education Edge for the coming year?  This year, you can make your dreams come true and even keep this New Year’s resolution by learning more about data entry ... more

On behalf of all the hard working employees who work on The Education Edge here at Blackbaud, I’m happy to announce the release of 7.86.  Hosted customers were upgraded on Sunday, October 20th. Install customers can download the release from our website:  https://www.blackbaud.com/support/downloads/downloads.aspx MAJOR HIGHLIGHTS: Enhanced ... more

Can you believe we’re already in October?  I don’t know where this year has gone with all of the exciting efforts we have going on.  Coming back from BBCON , I’m especially excited about the great feedback we have heard this year from our Customer Support team.  Throughout the year, the team has continuously been reviewing processes, Knowledgebase ... more

Have you ever heard the saying “need-to-know-basis”?  In this day and age, it’s as if we are all required to know more and more!  We “need-to-know” everything…and then some!      With our busy schedules, it’s tough to find enough time to do the work you are required to do.  That’s why training is so important!  By educating yourself regularly, you keep ... more

Have you ever needed to export multiple contact types and found that the order of the contact types was different for each record? This can make the export output hard to use, especially if you need each contact type to be in a specific column. Luckily, there is an easy solution! Instead of including all 3 contact numbers in one group, we can set up separate ... more

As the school year is now back in full swing, there comes a time where schedules need to be edited. Is a student no longer attending your school and you need to remove him from the class? Or, does the student need to transfer from Honors Geometry in period 1 to Honors Geometry in period 4? Not sure how to handle these changes? Let's review the 3 different ... more

We'll be hosting a free web seminar for Online Campus Community on the setup and creation of Athletics/Team pages on Thursday, September 26, 2013 at 2:00 pm EST . Have you wanted to leverage the team pages in Online Campus Community? Did you have issues with the setup last year? Join us to learn the ins and outs of managing your Team/Athletic pages to ensure ... more

Presenting the case of the mysterious changing grade! In Faculty Access to the Web, you as the teacher have the option to keep individual assignment grades from showing until you are finished grading the papers, immediately, or for a specific date in the future… and it's a good thing too!  As a former history teacher, I remember those papers I used to ... more

Presenting the case of teachers versus the first few grades of the marking period!   Don't worry! It's not as adversarial as it sounds; however, now that parents and students have access to grades (depending on your NetClassroom configuration , of course), it is important that teachers understand how the set-up of their gradebook affects students and ... more

The leaves will soon be turning color, in some areas there’s a bit of a snap in the air.  As you’re digging out your fall sweaters, don’t forget to take some time to “put on” some training!  We have some great  instructor-led virtual classes for you for the last half of September. If you’re interested in learning about Scheduling in Registrar’s Office but ... more

We've simplified the order process. Starting October 1, you can order Blackbaud Forms online through our new website www.blackbaudforms.com . The site is designed with a fresh look, easy navigation, and the latest product information. Here's what's new: More options for placing and customizing orders Added functionality to check the status of ... more

Don't forget to let parents know about the great features in NetClassroom. The Education Edge  page on the Blackbaud website has links to numerous resources, such as: NetClassroom 101 - An Illustrated Cheat Sheet for Parents and Students Customizable Sample Information Sheet Online Express Bill Pay NetClassroom Handout more

As students head back to school, both students are parents are logging into NetClassroom to check their schedule and assignments for the upcoming year. After being distracted by a summer full of fun, they may not remember their NetClassroom password. If your school is receiving an influx of calls or emails regarding NetClassroom passwords, did you ... more

Looking for a refresher on how to change student enrollments with the  Drop, Add,  and  Transfer  features? Check out these two videos in the  Start Learning for The Education Edge  library. Dropping and Adding Classes for a Student Transferring a Student to Another Class Did you know that everyone in the office has unlimited access to the  Start ... more

It's the start of a new school year.  Looking for resources to get teachers up to speed on Faculty Access for the Web?  We're here to help. How-To Documentation and More The Faculty Access for the Web page on the Blackbaud website has links to numerous resources, such as: FAWeb Overview FAWeb Videos FAWeb FAQs Training If your organization has a Learn ... more

Did you know that faculty members can add, review, and approve course requests in  Faculty Access for the Web?   It’s true! Here’s the scoop: Teachers can approve requests for courses they will teach in the upcoming academic year. Teachers can approve  requests for students they teach in the current academic year. Advisors can approve requests for ... more

Both of our Education Solutions Product Managers - Courtney Grainger and Julia Wilson - will be at the upcoming Blackbaud Conference for Nonprofits September 29 to October 1st at the Gaylord National Harbor Hotel & Convention Center in Washington, DC. Are you curious about what's coming for The Education Edge, Online Campus Community, and Online ... more

It’s a new school year, and while you’re gearing up for all the excitement of seeing the students back at school, don’t forget to plan some time to learn new skills in The Education Edge.  We’ve got classes scheduled that can help you learn more about everything from records to export. Why take up valuable time training?  Because the best defense ... more

Hi! Last time, I filled you in on the importance of  defining scheduling restrictions for teachers . Today, let's talk about restrictions for rooms. General Restrictions On the  General  tab   of a room record, it’s important to verify the maximum room capacity and target room capacity. Additionally, be sure to: Indicate whether more than one class ... more

Part of scheduling your students for the upcoming academic year is scheduling lunch. Depending on your school’s needs, The Education Edge has a lunch option for you. When deciding which option is best for you when scheduling lunch, there are a few questions you should ask yourself: Do I use a rotating pattern where students do not have the same period ... more

On Monday, August 19 th , we released a patch of The Education Edge. Included in the patch is an updated feature for our users. We heard you had some confusion around our shared assignments option in Faculty Access for the Web. The request came for us not to delete prior year assignments when you delete a shared assignment for the current academic year. We ... more

Do you ever wish there was an EASY button for scheduling? Well, we haven't developed that button yet, but there are a few things you can do to make scheduling for your next academic year a bit more simplified. Easy Option #1:   Don't reinvent the wheel - Copy it instead! Is your schedule next year going to be pretty much the same as it was last year-- give or take ... more

A few weeks ago, we were approached to participate in a podcast for The Turn To Smith Blog ! In my mind, I was like, “me!  Podcast??!!  Yes!”  If you haven’t met me in person yet, I’m a talker, especially when I’m passionate about the topic.  So when we’re talking about non-profits evaluating, implementing, and utilizing software, it's probably in my top ... more

From time to time it might be necessary to delete a student progression entry from a record.  For some records, no problem.  But for others, that big red X is grayed out.  Why might that be?  Here's a list of possibilities and what to check for each. Possible Cause #1: Student has scheduling information Scheduling information is dependent on a ... more

As teachers and staff head back to school, many preparations take place to ensure a smooth start on the first day. Between setting up rooms and preparing lesson plans, teachers are busy! Below are a few steps that will help make the first few days easier for teachers in FAWeb. First, ensure the academic year and Marking Columns have been turned on by the ... more

Do you remember the choose your own adventure series? Many of us here do because recently when I said we should create a 'Choose Your Adventure' walkthrough of the Online Express Bill Pay set up steps, people rejoiced! Well, I may be overstating it a bit but we did have a good time reminiscing and sharing stories about the old adventures. After the ... more

Why are the Advisor and Homeroom teacher fields grayed out on my student's record? And, where did the information go? No worries, David Copperfield has not been messing with your database.  Let me explain.  When today's date does not fall within an Academic Year's start and end dates OR the student was not given a Student Progression Entry created for ... more

July is a magical month. It brings us the Fourth of July, Bastille Day, Build a Scarecrow Day, National Hot Dog Month, and last but not least, Reconciliation Time. This is the time of year where most people in the financial world start to balance their books for last year and years prior. In some cases you may have auditors pounding at your door asking you ... more

Ever find yourself scratching your head when it comes time to promote your students or generate transactions, wondering how exactly you did it last year? Or what about navigating to a report you use daily - ever wish you could get to it with one click instead of five? Favorites and Shortcuts could be your answer! Favorites and Shortcuts allow you to create ... more

In the past few weeks, we've discussed a lot of important information about scheduling: Scheduling Really Starts in Configuration How to Globally Edit Course Limits in Edit Master Schedule How to Simplify Scheduling by Defining Relationships Between Courses The Importance of Defining Course Resources Now, let's take a look at how to prepare ... more

Are you trying to generate charges for your students for the upcoming year and finding yourself bugging your registrar to move students up to the next grade level so you can bill them accurately? Or maybe you are on the other end, feeling like your billing office is chomping at the bit for you to run the End of Year processing wizard before you're ready to do ... more

Now that school is out for the year, it’s time to get to class! Say WHAT? You read correctly!  While getting ready for next school year, schedule yourself some time to learn more about the software you’re using…or pick up a few tips and tricks to help make your life easier.  That’s what Blackbaud Training can do for you. Our classes range in topic from ... more

Need a scheduling refresher or interested in learning about time-saving features you may have overlooked? Register for the instructor-led online classes we're offering in July. Note: If your organization has a   Learn More or Learn Everything training subscription , you can attend all six classes for free! Click the links below to read class ... more

Summer is here and the students are gone for break. Now it’s time for you to wrap up the end-of-year processing in Student Billing, so that your summer break can began as well. We understand that this process only happens once a year, so our goal is to make it as easy as possible to wrap up 2012-2013 and prepare for 2013-2014. The first step to get you closer to ... more

Greetings from Charleston!  Last week, we discussed how you can simplify scheduling by defining relationships between courses .  Today, our topic is course resources.  On the Resources tab of a course record, you can identify teachers and rooms that can be assigned to classes of the course. Defining course resources is an important step in the ... more

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the decision we made to add online bill payment to The Education Edge.  When we investigated online bill payment, I had many conversations with schools about tuition management. The most obvious benefit to tuition management was to move bill payments from in person transactions to online. Our team went to work and made it ... more

Welcome back to the Summer Scheduling Series. So far, we've discussed how the scheduling process really starts in Configuration and how to globally edit course limits on the Master Schedule screen . Now, let's take a look at the Rules tab on course records. The  Rules  tab is important for both automated and manual scheduling.   Why?   The Rules tab is ... more

With one academic year coming to a close, it's time to promote your students that will be returning next year and graduate the ones who are moving on.  You can do this using the End of Year Processing wizard in Registrar's Office.  Here are some answers to questions we commonly receive regarding this process. How do you run the End of Year Processing ... more

What three letters can make or break your students getting that college acceptance letter? G-P-A. Since such a seemingly tiny number can drastically affect a student's Higher Ed future, it's important to get it right! While the setup of a GPA calculation is quite simple, there are many ways that the values being calculated can still be wrong for one, ... more

Hi, it's Marianna again. Last week, we started off the summer scheduling series by talking about how scheduling really starts in Configuration . This week, let's chat about the importance of accurate course limits. The Restrictions 1  tab of course records identifies the minimum, target, and maximum numbers for classes and class sizes per term. ... more

In case you missed it the first time around, I wanted to post it here. Back before Spring Break, a group of our team members decided to give a little shout out and love to our K-12 customers! Even though it's now summer break, it's still worth a view (and a laugh at our expense)! Enjoy :)   Want to read more about our K-12 solutions? http://goo.gl/MZ1UF more

How excited are we about Online Express Bill Pay?   We're pretty much over the moon excited! Here's Courtney Grainger, our Product Manager, introducing you to our Education Edge 7.85 mascot! The Product Development team (aka Team Trapper Keeper) named him Sir Elton because he's a "rocket pig!" Not only do we believe that we can help you save money with ... more

It's scheduling season! But, before you head into the Scheduling area of Registrar's Office, don't forget that it's important to review scheduling settings in Configuration.  That's right, the scheduling process really starts in Configuration. Here's a list of components in Configuration that impact your scheduling process: * Academic Year ... more

On behalf of all the hard working employees who work on The Education Edge here at Blackbaud, I’m happy to announce the release of 7.85.  Hosted customers were upgraded on Sunday, June 09. Install customers can download the release from our website: https://www.blackbaud.com/support/downloads/downloads.aspx Major highlights: A new online ... more

How do you know what to build next?  Is it a science or an art?  I think it is a little bit of both.  I joined our team as a Product Manager in September of last year and was faced with exactly this question.  We’ve got an amazing community of users that have given us fantastic feedback and I was able to utilize this information to guide where to focus our energies ... more

When I was in high school, my school required each student to take a health class before graduation. Between my core subjects, electives, and fine arts programs, I had no room left in my schedule to complete this requirement. How would I fit this requirement in? Where I went to school, they offered some online classes and health was one of them. By taking ... more

In the latest release of The Education Edge 7.85 coming soon, we're introducing a new feature that enables you to accept student bill payments online in NetClassroom and manage those payments in Student Billing with Fast! Over the next couple blog posts, I’ll provide in detail some specifics about this great new feature but in this post I want to provide ... more

When it comes to scheduling, we want to end up with an overall best fit for students and teachers alike, but part of the challenge can be completing this, well, sometime before the end of next school year... You might be thinking, “How can we inject more efficiency into our master scheduling process?” Well, I'm glad you asked! Patterns may be just the ... more

As a member of an independent school, you know the importance of knowledge.  An educated student has a world of opportunity available for the taking. The same applies to you and your peers.  Well-trained staff is more productive, efficient, happy, and effective—Knowledge is the foundation for total success.  We have some exciting changes for ... more

For The Education Edge and Blackbaud Student Information System version 7.84.52 - patch 3, in Faculty Access for the Web , faculty can now upload Apple iWork Pages, Numbers, and Keynote files for students to download in NetClassroom . Faculty first need to update an application setting before saving files for upload to Faculty Access for the Web . Open ... more