Summer Recap 2019: Enrollment Management
Published
With the children roaming the halls, the buses once again making the rounds, and the homework starting to pile up, the summer season has officially ended. The months of June, July, and August kept us plenty busy here in the Blackbaud offices as we continued to create new content for the Education management system.
So, in case you missed any of our release notes this past summer, we’re introducing our annual blog series devotes to getting you caught up on everything you may have missed in an easy to digest blog post product by product. Today we’re taking a look at the Enrollment management system.
Just like the Learning Management team, the EMS developers also spent a lot of time behind the scenes working on content that all of you will be seeing at a later date. We’ll get to that in a bit, but let’s first look at the stuff that did arrive for everyone this summer.
Custom Candidate Fields and Questions
Inquiry and application form layouts now support a Custom Candidate Fields block. What’s nice about this content type is that you can select which customized questions to include on it and where they should appear on both inquiry forms and application forms by going into the block settings.
If the block is used multiple times on the same form layout, it retains which fields have already been enabled on the other Custom Candidate Field blocks to help prevent duplication.
eSignature Block Update
When using an eSignature block on a school form, you now have the option to enable the Require signers to agree before reviewing contract from Block Settings.
When this setting is enabled, you can completely customize the agreement text that displays when a signer first accesses the form. If they agree to the terms, the contract is displayed. If they decline the terms, the form automatically closes.
Display Current Grade in a profile
One of the more requested features from our community is finally here! The candidate or student profile header now displays their current grade alongside other data like the Entering Grade, Current Age, and Entering Year.
Essentially, the current grade that candidates enter into the inquiry form is displayed at first. Then, once they officially become a student it displays the value entered into their current grade.
In order to get this to appear for candidates, make sure that they have an assigned school with the School Type set to Current and that the grade setting for the school has a set value as well. Students will automatically display the Current Grade setting by default.
A Glimpse of the Future
Behind the scenes, we’ve also been hard at work with Online Recommendations and Ratings, which is currently in a closed EAP session. Unfortunately, I can’t say too much about these upcoming features due to their constant evolving nature. The basic Online Recommendation form process starts with a candidate when the send a request to the teacher or faculty member of their choosing from their checklist. A notification is received by that person who selects the link to be taken to the form and then starts filling in the information. Once finished, the form is submitted behind the scenes to the assigned admissions manager for review and final confirmation.
Ratings are another piece to the Online Recommendation process as they can be added to Recommendation forms to help the assigned faculty member to better define the candidate's skill set for the admissions manager once the form is submitted.
We’ll have plenty more to say on both of these anticipated features are development slows down and the EAP session ends. Stay tuned!
That’s going to wrap up today’s post. If you have any EMS related questions or comments, feel free to post them below. Excited for what was released and what’s coming? Make sure to hit the like button below to let us know!
While we usually make you wait a week, we’re ditching that schedule for these recap posts. Mark your calendars for this Thursday as we take an in-depth look at the next product and what they accomplished over the summer months while you were out. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here on Thursday!
So, in case you missed any of our release notes this past summer, we’re introducing our annual blog series devotes to getting you caught up on everything you may have missed in an easy to digest blog post product by product. Today we’re taking a look at the Enrollment management system.
Just like the Learning Management team, the EMS developers also spent a lot of time behind the scenes working on content that all of you will be seeing at a later date. We’ll get to that in a bit, but let’s first look at the stuff that did arrive for everyone this summer.
Custom Candidate Fields and Questions
Inquiry and application form layouts now support a Custom Candidate Fields block. What’s nice about this content type is that you can select which customized questions to include on it and where they should appear on both inquiry forms and application forms by going into the block settings.
If the block is used multiple times on the same form layout, it retains which fields have already been enabled on the other Custom Candidate Field blocks to help prevent duplication.
When using an eSignature block on a school form, you now have the option to enable the Require signers to agree before reviewing contract from Block Settings.
When this setting is enabled, you can completely customize the agreement text that displays when a signer first accesses the form. If they agree to the terms, the contract is displayed. If they decline the terms, the form automatically closes.
Display Current Grade in a profile
One of the more requested features from our community is finally here! The candidate or student profile header now displays their current grade alongside other data like the Entering Grade, Current Age, and Entering Year.
Essentially, the current grade that candidates enter into the inquiry form is displayed at first. Then, once they officially become a student it displays the value entered into their current grade.
In order to get this to appear for candidates, make sure that they have an assigned school with the School Type set to Current and that the grade setting for the school has a set value as well. Students will automatically display the Current Grade setting by default.
A Glimpse of the Future
Behind the scenes, we’ve also been hard at work with Online Recommendations and Ratings, which is currently in a closed EAP session. Unfortunately, I can’t say too much about these upcoming features due to their constant evolving nature. The basic Online Recommendation form process starts with a candidate when the send a request to the teacher or faculty member of their choosing from their checklist. A notification is received by that person who selects the link to be taken to the form and then starts filling in the information. Once finished, the form is submitted behind the scenes to the assigned admissions manager for review and final confirmation.
Ratings are another piece to the Online Recommendation process as they can be added to Recommendation forms to help the assigned faculty member to better define the candidate's skill set for the admissions manager once the form is submitted.
We’ll have plenty more to say on both of these anticipated features are development slows down and the EAP session ends. Stay tuned!
That’s going to wrap up today’s post. If you have any EMS related questions or comments, feel free to post them below. Excited for what was released and what’s coming? Make sure to hit the like button below to let us know!
While we usually make you wait a week, we’re ditching that schedule for these recap posts. Mark your calendars for this Thursday as we take an in-depth look at the next product and what they accomplished over the summer months while you were out. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here on Thursday!
News
Blackbaud K-12 Solutions™ Blog
09/03/2019 9:30am EDT
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Also, I thought I heard we can (now or in the future?) set up automatic visit email reminders ( a canned message that can include directions and dress code, for ex). Do you know when that is coming? Or if it is already available, I can't find it. Thanks!!