The Month in Review: December 2022 Feature Releases
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The holidays and 2022 may be over, but we’re taking one last look back at all of the new features and releases that came to Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions during December 2022.
Happy New Year and welcome back to the Education management blog! After a few weeks of hiatus, we’re kicking off 2023 by taking one last look back at 2022!
That’s right, it’s the start of a new month which means it’s time for The Month in Review. This is the monthly series where we dive into all of the new updates and features that arrived for Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions over the past month. So, let’s take one last journey back to the holiday season of December 2022.
Academics
The biggest thing for Academics in December was the launch of the new Assessment experience for teachers and students. Enhancements include usability improvement inside the assessment builder including the ability to randomize multiple choice answers, printing the assessment, ability to edit questions after the students have begun taking the assessment, copy questions, and much more.
There’s a lot here so make sure to check out our blog post on the topic here.
Billing management
For Billing management in the month of December, the team added the ability for payers to save and reuse payment methods, speeding up the process of making payments. Payment methods include credit cards, debit cards (US only), and bank accounts (US only); the options available to payers to save are based on payment methods approved by your school.
Payers create and manage payments on the new Payment methods page, accessed by payers by hovering over Billing in the navigation and selecting Payment methods. Payers store payment methods using either the Add credit card or debit card or Add bank account buttons and manage saved payment methods under the corresponding sections on the page.
More updates in December:
For the Core team, they’ve made it so platform managers can now use the list in Core, Security, Roles to enable a new option for Blackbaud ID. When enabled for a role that does not login with a single sign on (SSO) or a “social sign in,” all users in the affected role will be required to use multi-factor authentication (MFA) with their BBID login.
Platform managers can also disable the MFA requirement for the same roles. When disabled, users in the affected roles may still be prompted to login with MFA. However, after logging in, the user can go to their individual BBID profile to opt out of MFA. When MFA is required for a school role, those users can view their BBID profile, but can’t opt out of MFA.
Also in December:
The Enrollment management team made a few updates to the Assign contract types wizard in the month of December. Specifically, Decision type is now available for admissions managers on the Assign contract types wizard. The benefit of this addition is that schools can now see all "accepted" decision types in one place, rather than having to view each one at a time.
In addition, re/enrollment managers can now see Preferred Name on the Assign contract type wizard.
Other updates this month:
For Tuition management, all new bank accounts will now go through a validation process to ensure the account is open, active, and can receive ACH transactions prior to a payment being processed. This change was made to be in compliance with NACHA regulations.
Validation is done by sending a file to the receiving institution to confirm the accuracy of the account information entered. Once the bank account passes validation, payments will be processed on the fourth business day and follow the standard remittance process. Any bank account sent back with a correction or C -Code from the payer’s bank will be voided, the bank account information will be removed from the system, and the payer will be contacted via email and/or text message, alerting them to the error.
During the validation period, payers and school users will see an Account validation in process note on the family's account stating, “The bank account has been updated on this account and is going through validation. If a payment has been submitted, please see payment history for more details."
Any payments made with a bank account during the validation period will display as On Hold in Payment History. Users can also hover over the On Hold status to see a message indicating the payment is on hold until the bank account validation is complete. Late fees are not assessed while a payment is on hold and will be assessed based on the payment submitted date once the bank account validation is complete. Late fees are only applied to an account if the payment is marked as failed or the payment was submitted after the due date.
Also this month:
That’s going to do it for the first 2023 edition of the Monthly recap! However, it’s just the start of what we have planned in the blog for this year, so don’t miss it!
As always, make sure to subscribe to stay up to date on all of the upcoming content! We hope you had a wonderful holiday season and we’ll see you right back here next week. Until then!
That’s right, it’s the start of a new month which means it’s time for The Month in Review. This is the monthly series where we dive into all of the new updates and features that arrived for Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions over the past month. So, let’s take one last journey back to the holiday season of December 2022.
Academics
The biggest thing for Academics in December was the launch of the new Assessment experience for teachers and students. Enhancements include usability improvement inside the assessment builder including the ability to randomize multiple choice answers, printing the assessment, ability to edit questions after the students have begun taking the assessment, copy questions, and much more.
There’s a lot here so make sure to check out our blog post on the topic here.
Billing management
For Billing management in the month of December, the team added the ability for payers to save and reuse payment methods, speeding up the process of making payments. Payment methods include credit cards, debit cards (US only), and bank accounts (US only); the options available to payers to save are based on payment methods approved by your school.
Payers create and manage payments on the new Payment methods page, accessed by payers by hovering over Billing in the navigation and selecting Payment methods. Payers store payment methods using either the Add credit card or debit card or Add bank account buttons and manage saved payment methods under the corresponding sections on the page.
More updates in December:
- We've added a new fee type called TRP Fee (Tuition Refund Plan) for BBBM integrated contracts. This means that the TRP Fee can now be selected when adding enrollment fees to a contract form.
- The Distribution list is a new list that compiles all distributions within one location. Billing clerks use filters to refine what appears in the list, adjust the columns to customize it further, and can export the list to a .csv file to review or analyze within another software solution.
- The Payment applications export is a new reporting feature enabling Billing clerks to compile all transpired payment applications into a .csv file based on date range and specific fee types. Use the exported data to assist payers with completing their taxes.
For the Core team, they’ve made it so platform managers can now use the list in Core, Security, Roles to enable a new option for Blackbaud ID. When enabled for a role that does not login with a single sign on (SSO) or a “social sign in,” all users in the affected role will be required to use multi-factor authentication (MFA) with their BBID login.
Platform managers can also disable the MFA requirement for the same roles. When disabled, users in the affected roles may still be prompted to login with MFA. However, after logging in, the user can go to their individual BBID profile to opt out of MFA. When MFA is required for a school role, those users can view their BBID profile, but can’t opt out of MFA.
Also in December:
- Schools leveraging integrations can now benefit from a new settings page, Integration mappings. Integration mappings enables schools to associate their custom user fields with available integration equivalents, resulting in the expected user data syncing and appearing as expected across integrated services.
- Over the next few months, users may notice small changes that improve our alignment with privacy laws and best practices. As of December 13, we now mask social security numbers in all advanced list outputs, including spreadsheet exports and API outputs. Users with permission to view SSNs can still view the information in user contact cards, the user list, the students list, and the candidates list.
The Enrollment management team made a few updates to the Assign contract types wizard in the month of December. Specifically, Decision type is now available for admissions managers on the Assign contract types wizard. The benefit of this addition is that schools can now see all "accepted" decision types in one place, rather than having to view each one at a time.
In addition, re/enrollment managers can now see Preferred Name on the Assign contract type wizard.
Other updates this month:
- Admissions managers can now filter the Financial Aid Awards list for School year, Grade level, Role, and Financial aid type. Please note that the School year defaults to the current academic year.
- Admissions managers can now add the Parent Preferred Name and Contract returned date columns to the Candidate list.
For Tuition management, all new bank accounts will now go through a validation process to ensure the account is open, active, and can receive ACH transactions prior to a payment being processed. This change was made to be in compliance with NACHA regulations.
Validation is done by sending a file to the receiving institution to confirm the accuracy of the account information entered. Once the bank account passes validation, payments will be processed on the fourth business day and follow the standard remittance process. Any bank account sent back with a correction or C -Code from the payer’s bank will be voided, the bank account information will be removed from the system, and the payer will be contacted via email and/or text message, alerting them to the error.
During the validation period, payers and school users will see an Account validation in process note on the family's account stating, “The bank account has been updated on this account and is going through validation. If a payment has been submitted, please see payment history for more details."
Any payments made with a bank account during the validation period will display as On Hold in Payment History. Users can also hover over the On Hold status to see a message indicating the payment is on hold until the bank account validation is complete. Late fees are not assessed while a payment is on hold and will be assessed based on the payment submitted date once the bank account validation is complete. Late fees are only applied to an account if the payment is marked as failed or the payment was submitted after the due date.
Also this month:
- As of December 5, school users are no longer be able to access their Tuition Management account without first creating or linking a Blackbaud ID (BBID) to log in to tuition.blackbaud.school.
That’s going to do it for the first 2023 edition of the Monthly recap! However, it’s just the start of what we have planned in the blog for this year, so don’t miss it!
As always, make sure to subscribe to stay up to date on all of the upcoming content! We hope you had a wonderful holiday season and we’ll see you right back here next week. Until then!
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Blackbaud K-12 Solutions™ Blog
01/10/2023 9:00am EST
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