The Month in Review: May 2020 Feature Releases
Published
With the June sun now shining, summer is right around the corner. Before we get too much further into June, let’s take one last look back at everything we released in May.
Another month down and the world continues to slowly recover. As always, I hope each and every one of you is still doing as well as possible in this unique time we find ourselves in. Stay strong, it will get better.
As we move deeper into June, our weekly product updates continue to roll on. A lot has happened over these past four weeks with plenty more to come in the months ahead. While we’re not quite ready to talk about what’s next, let’s look back at everything that arrived in May for Education management.
Academics
As expected, Academics continued a strong showing in May with a number of important updates.
Group Page Access settings can now grant or restrict access to users in regards to student schedules on pages in Academics, Enrollment management, and the Parent page. This can be adjusted under Core, and then Security as needed.
Other updates include:
In May, we added a number of updates to Core.
The Contact Card manager can now view and acknowledge updated Citizenship/Residency information for a user under Core, Users, and then Handle profile changes.
Online presence information can be shown within User lists as well as used as a filter. This data can also be exported to third-party spreadsheet applications and returned in the Sky API endpoint for Get User Changed list.
You can now view or export a history of PushPage issues (newsletters) sent to any user from their user’s Core profile and then selecting View communications from the bottom of the profile header.
Preferred name is replacing Nickname throughout the Education management products. This month includes Advanced lists and when exporting data from the User export option when working with third-party spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel.
Core did a lot of work with gender values this month as well. Under User Profile settings, gender values can now be edited to create a custom set if needed. One thing to note is that Male, Female, and Other cannot be modified due to preserving backward compatibility settings. They can be marked as inactive however. List managers now have the ability to Filter by Pronouns when they work with User, Student, and Faculty lists. Pronoun data is now returned in the Sky API endpoints for the Get User Changed and Get User extended list. Make sure to check out the full release notes or the online help for more details on these adjustments.
Finally, if your school submits data for the Wisconsin Information System for Education (WISE), gender values that are not Male or Female at set to None in reports.
Enrollment management
The EMS team has some exciting things in the work for this summer. While they’ve been heads down on that project, a few solid additions were added this month as well. Admissions managers can now see staff that are assigned to candidates right from the Process file submissions section. In addition, the Admissions Officer value can be modified from the candidate header as well.
Similar to the work done in Core, the nickname field has been updated to preferred name on the Candidate list as well as the candidate's General Information.
School Website and Extracurricular
There are more athletics related updates this month from the School website team. The roster widget now shows the Captain icon to prevent users from having to actually drill down into the roster tab to find it.
Coaches and athletic managers can also now create general events right from the team group page.
Finally, Extracurricular received a new update. Coaches now can create Topics within their Teams. Topics are a dynamic way to organize and share learning resources. They support responsive layouts and multiple content types including Text, Downloads, Photos, Audio, Video, and Embeds. Coaches can create Discussions within their Topics as well.
If you want the full and complete details of everything we’ve added to the Education management products make sure to visit our release letter. Use the Recent option at the top of the page to view past and archived releases.
As I have mentioned in the past, make sure to bookmark these links if you haven’t already as we’re continuing to add resources over time.
Until next time, I wish you all the best. Hopefully, life will start to feel somewhat normal the further into 2020 we go. I, for one, can’t wait for the simple day to day things to return. We are in this together everyone. See you next time.
As we move deeper into June, our weekly product updates continue to roll on. A lot has happened over these past four weeks with plenty more to come in the months ahead. While we’re not quite ready to talk about what’s next, let’s look back at everything that arrived in May for Education management.
Academics
As expected, Academics continued a strong showing in May with a number of important updates.
Group Page Access settings can now grant or restrict access to users in regards to student schedules on pages in Academics, Enrollment management, and the Parent page. This can be adjusted under Core, and then Security as needed.
Other updates include:
- While editing student enrollment in Athletics, athletic teams now display the school level with which they are associated. Keep in mind that this feature only applies to schools with multiple levels.
- The Mark late at field has been removed from online submissions. Teachers can now add a due time for online submissions instead. For online submissions created previously, the time entered into the Mark late at field will now appear in the due time field.
In May, we added a number of updates to Core.
The Contact Card manager can now view and acknowledge updated Citizenship/Residency information for a user under Core, Users, and then Handle profile changes.
Online presence information can be shown within User lists as well as used as a filter. This data can also be exported to third-party spreadsheet applications and returned in the Sky API endpoint for Get User Changed list.
You can now view or export a history of PushPage issues (newsletters) sent to any user from their user’s Core profile and then selecting View communications from the bottom of the profile header.
Preferred name is replacing Nickname throughout the Education management products. This month includes Advanced lists and when exporting data from the User export option when working with third-party spreadsheet applications like Microsoft Excel.
Core did a lot of work with gender values this month as well. Under User Profile settings, gender values can now be edited to create a custom set if needed. One thing to note is that Male, Female, and Other cannot be modified due to preserving backward compatibility settings. They can be marked as inactive however. List managers now have the ability to Filter by Pronouns when they work with User, Student, and Faculty lists. Pronoun data is now returned in the Sky API endpoints for the Get User Changed and Get User extended list. Make sure to check out the full release notes or the online help for more details on these adjustments.
Finally, if your school submits data for the Wisconsin Information System for Education (WISE), gender values that are not Male or Female at set to None in reports.
Enrollment management
The EMS team has some exciting things in the work for this summer. While they’ve been heads down on that project, a few solid additions were added this month as well. Admissions managers can now see staff that are assigned to candidates right from the Process file submissions section. In addition, the Admissions Officer value can be modified from the candidate header as well.
Similar to the work done in Core, the nickname field has been updated to preferred name on the Candidate list as well as the candidate's General Information.
School Website and Extracurricular
There are more athletics related updates this month from the School website team. The roster widget now shows the Captain icon to prevent users from having to actually drill down into the roster tab to find it.
Coaches and athletic managers can also now create general events right from the team group page.
Finally, Extracurricular received a new update. Coaches now can create Topics within their Teams. Topics are a dynamic way to organize and share learning resources. They support responsive layouts and multiple content types including Text, Downloads, Photos, Audio, Video, and Embeds. Coaches can create Discussions within their Topics as well.
If you want the full and complete details of everything we’ve added to the Education management products make sure to visit our release letter. Use the Recent option at the top of the page to view past and archived releases.
As I have mentioned in the past, make sure to bookmark these links if you haven’t already as we’re continuing to add resources over time.
- Distance Learning Video Playlist
- Resources and Links Blog
- Teacher Specific Remote Learning Online Help
- Parent Specific Remote Learning Resources
Until next time, I wish you all the best. Hopefully, life will start to feel somewhat normal the further into 2020 we go. I, for one, can’t wait for the simple day to day things to return. We are in this together everyone. See you next time.
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Blackbaud K-12 Solutions™ Blog
06/02/2020 9:00am EDT
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