Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions: What’s New For September 27, 2022

Published

Here are all of the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for September 27th, 2022.

Learning resources

Early Adopter help for the 360 Profile

For schools participating in the Early Adopter Program (EAP) for the 360 User Profile, help topics are now available. These help topics will be updated as we roll out new features and improvements to the 360 profile. Visit the Help Center EAP area for more information.

Academics

Academic Performance formatting for report cards and transcripts

While editing a Report Card or Transcript template that includes an Academic Performance section, you can now edit the styling of individual columns and column headers. On the Style form, you can do one of the following:

Select the top of the Academic Performance section to set the text style for this entire area of the template. As long as the columns are set to “(inherited)” style, the text style will apply to all text in this area.
Select a column to modify the style of the header and the style of the text under the header in a column.

Previously users could edit the style of an Academic Performance grid, but the same format would apply to all text in the grid.

Core

Use longer job titles

Previously, the text for the Job title field was limited to 100 characters. Now, users can enter longer titles, up to 255 characters. This enables schools to enter the full title for employees whose occupations have highly descriptive titles, such as “Head of Academic Curriculum, Program and Project Planning, Activities, and Operations for the Liberal Arts Division.”

Blackbaud ID is now required for all users

As of Tuesday September 27, all users must sign in with Blackbaud ID.
Users who attempt to login without Blackbaud ID will see an error message preventing them from signing in. To resolve the error, a platform manager must connect the user to Blackbaud ID.

Do this from a single user’s profile in Core via the Access tab.
Alternatively, do it in bulk from Core, Security, Blackbaud Authentication.

When you connect the user to Blackbaud ID you can choose to send an email invitation. Consider customizing the text of the email invitations if you haven’t done so already.
When a user accepts the invitation, they’ll use their email address and a password to login with Blackbaud ID. Users who haven’t accepted their invitations are considered Awaiting response and you can resend invitations to them.

Your school may also enable users to login with a single sign on (SSO) for Blackbaud ID, such as with another identity provider like Microsoft Azure.
We recommend schools who limit IP addresses on campus, either expand the range of acceptable IP addresses, or enable an SSO.
We made a recent update to benefit SSO users. When a user attempts to sign in and their email is on a domain that’s claimed by the school’s SSO, reCAPTCHA is automatically bypassed. This change has already dramatically reduced the number of user logins that trigger reCAPTCHA. This helps schools whose youngest students don’t regularly access their email accounts.
We recommend you customize your school’s BBID login page branding, summary, and login help link text if you haven’t done so already.
Users who aren’t part of your SSO may prefer to use a social sign in which enables them to sign in using Google or Apple authentication.

To learn more, view the online help for Blackbaud ID.
Additionally, we’ve updated the information about Blackbaud ID that appears on the Home page in Core for platform managers. The migration countdown for Blackbaud ID no longer appears, but adoption rates remain.
Finally, we’ve removed user interface options related to the early adopter program (EAP) and legacy usernames. For example, options to Enforce or Remove authentication for Blackbaud ID no longer appear. Blackbaud ID is enforced for all users and can’t be removed. Similarly, temporary passwords and legacy usernames can no longer be enabled.
With Blackbaud ID, users can reset their own passwords when needed. Users who don’t use an SSO can also update which email they use to sign in.
We greatly appreciate the efforts of all schools in supporting this transition. With Blackbaud ID, schools benefit from increased security, social sign ins, self-service passwords, and a single login for multiple Blackbaud solutions. This also paves the way for future updates in our product roadmaps, which we hope will delight our users.

Financial Aid management

Blackbaud ID login required for school users

As of September 27, school users must sign into Blackbaud Financial Aid Management (BBFAM) with Blackbaud ID (BBID).
This change does not affect parents signing into BBFAM.
After logging in with their username and password, school users must either Create a Blackbaud ID or Sign in with an existing Blackbaud ID.

Create a Blackbaud ID – Users without a BBID account select this option to create a BBID and link it to their BBFAM user.
Sign in with an existing Blackbaud ID – Users with an existing BBID account select this option to link their BBID to their current BBFAM user.

Once a user’s accounts are linked, they sign into BBFAM with their BBID going forward.

Grant Distribution Report

The Grant Distribution Report generated when running a budget now includes Awarded Amount.

Tuition management

Blackbaud ID login required for school users

As of September 27, school users must sign in to Blackbaud Tuition Management with Blackbaud ID (BBID).
This change does not affect parents signing into Tuition Management. Parent accounts will be switched to BBID at a later date.
Some users may already have a BBID if they use other Blackbaud products, while others will need to create a BBID and link it to their existing Tuition Management account.

The next time users log in, a screen will prompt users to choose how they will log in:

Create a Blackbaud ID: Users without a BBID account select this option to create a BBID and link it to their existing Tuition Management user account.
Sign in: Users with an existing BBID account select this option to link their BBID to their existing Tuition Management user account.

School users signing into Tuition Management will have the option to Skip for now and forego the BBID linking process up to 10 times, after which they will be prompted to either choose Sign in or Create a Blackbaud ID. Users will see how many skips they have left each time they sign in.

Updates to Automatic Debit Reminder Email

In preparation for Mastercard’s recurring payments requirements that go into effect next year, the Automatic Debit Reminder email has been updated to include information on how to contact Tuition Management to stop an automatic payment.

API and Integrations

ATTN: GET Degrees by User ID to be deprecated January 1, 2023

GET Degrees by User ID, specific to Blackbaud's Education management School API, is being deprecated and will cease functioning on January 1, 2023; users are encouraged to adopt GET Degrees Student Degrees by ID instead.

(School) SKY API

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

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Log into the community and locate your name and profile picture in the upper right corner.
Select the drop-down arrow and select My Account.
From the My Account page, select the Subscriptions tab and scroll down to the Blogs section.
Locate Blackbaud K-12 Education solutions Blog. If you want to be notified as soon as the What’s new content goes live on the community, select the Instant option. You can also opt for Daily and Weekly notifications.
Scroll to the end of the page and select Save changes.

What’s Recent

Missed any of our weekly releases? You can catch up on everything in our Month in Review blog posts, which cover every feature and update Education management releases each month.

News Blackbaud K-12 Solutions™ Blog 09/26/2022 12:34pm EDT

Added by Denise Kadilak

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