Attention: Migrate Users To Blackbaud ID

Users who are “invited” are “awaiting response” and thus will not be locked out on September 27. They'll simply need to accept the invitation and convert to Blackbaud ID. Users who haven't been invited yet, risk being locked out until they are invited and converted.

Instead of pulling reports, use the “SKY” list. As a platform manager, go to Core, Security, Blackbaud ID authentication. There are tabs for each status: Registered, Awaiting response, and Unregistered. You can invite users from there, resend invites, filter, export, etc. You shouldn't need to go to Core > Reporting to get the information.

Hi Stephen.

I understand your concerns and frustration about what to do if BBID is down. Blackbaud will do everything possible to maximize data security and student safety.

I've found this user community to be a great resource for learning more about how various schools handle (un)expected issues. It's interesting how each school has unique needs and resources that must be included in their policies and procedures.

What is your school's plan if other vital services (utilities, vendors, internet) are down? What if the power to your part of town is down and your internet service goes down with it? What if the tier 2 fiber line (that provides service to “final/last mile” providers like Comcast, AT&T, etc.) goes down?

Without power, the internet may be inaccessible (no wifi) or very slow (overwhelmed cell towers). Without internet, you can't use BBID. Without the internet, you can't login to Education Management.

The user community is a great place to discuss emergency preparations and contingency plans like these.

When I was a school teacher and we chaperoned field trips, some of those field trips were to places without reliable internet access. To prepare, I had a printed roster on my person during the trips, and it included vital information about my students. When I returned from the field trip, I returned the printed roster to a secure location or destroyed it (I'd get a new one before the next trip).

Your school might determine that the school nurse should have printed medical cards like that from Education Management. If so, be sure to store them in compliance with HIPAA. That could be locked in a fire safe in the admin's office or perhaps locked in a file cabinet in the nurse's office. Your school's legal counsel can provide additional guidance about proper storage of critical documents and your school's responsibilities for emergency preparations.

My spouse and I are moving to a new city later this year. One of the items on our to do list is to empty the safety deposit box in our current city and move the contents to a safety deposit box in our new city. The contents of our box includes paper media, plus some digital media on portable devices (USB drive, SD cards, etc.). Some of the contents in the safety deposit box are also available to us in the cloud, but we like to keep a fairly recent copy at the bank's vault as backup.

When I enrolled my child in daycare, the daycare collected emergency contact and medical information for my child. The daycare also collected a copy of that same information to send to the state, as required by law. In the event of an emergency, the daycare can contact me and my child's medical providers. Likewise the state can contact me and my child's medical providers. As an anxious new mother, I hope neither one ever needs to use the information, but I'm glad it's there.

I think my weirdest internet outage locally happened in heavy rains when a snake attempted to flee rising waters by crawling into a transformer of some sort. The entire island lost power; the poor snake was literally toasted.

Another time, a lightening strike literally melted the internet cables to my entire neighborhood complex, including a cable buried under ground (where the cable was safe from falling trees). My ISP had to dig up the line and install all new ones.

When I was a virtual teacher working remotely, ongoing road construction near me accidentally cut my connection cables three different times in one week, in the middle of live webcam based lessons, before construction crews moved the lines to a safer location. I remember being very angry and frustrated about the repeated outages.

Ideally, all services, including BBID, will remain fully “up” all the time. Unfortunately, unexpected things do occasionally happen. When they happen, we fix them and review the incident to reduce future risks.

I'll continue to follow these conversations so that I can include best practices for emergencies and more in our help documentation.

Thank you,

Bryna Gleich

Hi Bryna, I saw the post from the PM but unfortunately their reply seems to indicate that data security is more important than student safety and that looking into a solution that accomplishes both goals isn't important. Hopefully Blackbaud will look at this again from more of a proactive standpoint rather than a reactive standpoint.

Hi Stephen. One of our PMs has posted a reply to the idea you've linked. View the idea and reply at https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-3315