The Month In Review: March 2023 Feature Releases
Published
Springtime has finally arrived with the month of April. Alongside the weather getting a little warmer, the new month means that it’s time for the Month in Review.
Well, according to the old adage, we’re about to get a lot of showers this month to prepare for the flowers in May. However, the beginning of a new month also leads us to the Month in Review.
As you all may know by now, this series is our monthly look back at all of the new content that arrived inside of Blackbaud’s Education management products. So, let’s round up and take one final look back at everything that happened in March. Enjoy!
Academics
The biggest addition this month is the new Academic Profiles, which began rolling out in waves late in March. The 360 Profile will display when you select a student or alumnus via the People finder or via a list in Academics. It contains the same features and capabilities as the older profile but arranged in a more accessible format.
The new profile is arranged in tabs labeled Contact card, Progress, Performance, Official notes, Conduct, Schedule, Course requests, and Requirements. The tabs you are able to access and the features you are able to use depend on your role at the school, which can be managed by administrators at your school via Core.
There’s plenty more to know about the 360 Profile and thankfully, we have you covered with content. If you’re a visual learner, why not check out our walkthrough here. Otherwise, our full documentation can be found here.
Also in March:
For Billing management, we made a couple of quality of life changes. Billing clerks now see an alert for failed payments under Needs attention on the Billing management Overview page. The alert is formatted as Review X failed payments, with the X in the example aligning with the total number of failed payments. Billing clerks can select the notification link to review a list of failed payments and select Mark as reviewed to remove failed payments from the list.
Also, Payers who enroll, or are enrolled by Billing clerks, in Auto-Pay now receive an email and/or SMS confirmation notification immediately after enrolling. Billing clerks can customize the contents of the notifications, including details such as the Auto-Pay payment plan schedule and the payment method to be charged. The Auto-Pay confirmation notification is available alongside other notifications and appears as Auto-pay signup confirmation in the Notifications list. The Notifications list is accessed by heading over to Core, selecting Communication in the navigation, selecting Notifications, and then navigating to the Billing management section.
More updates in March:
School forms received new field elements in March. Users can now add Form fields to Acknowledgement/permission, Emergency Contract, and Profile update style School forms. Use this to create questions or gather custom data specific to the form. When you add a form field, you enter a label (Display as) for the recipient to see. Then for Form control, select what type of data the recipient will enter.
Also in March:
March brought a number of enhancements, changes, and updates to contracts. Thanks to ideas generated in the community, we’ve made the Assign Contracts Type wizard full screen, and it now has additional column options like Current contract and Previous contract.
Users who already have a contract for the current year can be filtered out with a new checkbox option, and there are new filters which can be utilized including Previous contract, which displays a list of all contract types from the previous year.
Finally, admissions managers now see a filter list on the second page of the Assign Contract wizard to help show what has been selected.
Other updates this month:
For Tuition management, March saw the start of a limited release for a feature that allows a parent to link multiple school payer accounts with their Blackbaud ID (BBID). Parents with students enrolled in multiple schools using Blackbaud Tuition Management can link their accounts while logged in to the parent site at one of the schools.
A parent can follow these steps to link a second account to the same BBID:
March 2023 has been officially wrapped up. Keep in touch though because we have plenty of new content coming your way this month. As always, make sure to subscribe to stay up to date on all of the upcoming content! See you right back here next week for more BBEM content!
As you all may know by now, this series is our monthly look back at all of the new content that arrived inside of Blackbaud’s Education management products. So, let’s round up and take one final look back at everything that happened in March. Enjoy!
Academics
The biggest addition this month is the new Academic Profiles, which began rolling out in waves late in March. The 360 Profile will display when you select a student or alumnus via the People finder or via a list in Academics. It contains the same features and capabilities as the older profile but arranged in a more accessible format.
The new profile is arranged in tabs labeled Contact card, Progress, Performance, Official notes, Conduct, Schedule, Course requests, and Requirements. The tabs you are able to access and the features you are able to use depend on your role at the school, which can be managed by administrators at your school via Core.
There’s plenty more to know about the 360 Profile and thankfully, we have you covered with content. If you’re a visual learner, why not check out our walkthrough here. Otherwise, our full documentation can be found here.
Also in March:
- Line breaks now display in questions when printing assessments created with the new Assessment builder.
- In the student view of Assessment results, multiple choice questions now indicate which answers the student selected, and which answers are correct.
- Teachers can now prevent students from accessing questions in their assessment results after a specific date or the end of the marking period.
- In gradebooks, teachers can now display dropped students by selecting More > Show dropped students.
- In the new assessment experience, teachers can now select Reorder questions to rearrange questions within the builder even if Randomize questions is enabled in the assessment settings.
- The Edit student enrollment screen will display a course as Previously taken if the student has a transfer course from another school that counts as an equivalent.
- From the Evaluation page in new assessments, faculty can now select Detailed breakdown to take a closer look at how their class performed as a whole. Under General statistics, teachers can view score metrics, the number of submissions, and the average time to take the assessment. Under Final score distribution, a histogram displays the number of students with scores in 10% range groups.
For Billing management, we made a couple of quality of life changes. Billing clerks now see an alert for failed payments under Needs attention on the Billing management Overview page. The alert is formatted as Review X failed payments, with the X in the example aligning with the total number of failed payments. Billing clerks can select the notification link to review a list of failed payments and select Mark as reviewed to remove failed payments from the list.
Also, Payers who enroll, or are enrolled by Billing clerks, in Auto-Pay now receive an email and/or SMS confirmation notification immediately after enrolling. Billing clerks can customize the contents of the notifications, including details such as the Auto-Pay payment plan schedule and the payment method to be charged. The Auto-Pay confirmation notification is available alongside other notifications and appears as Auto-pay signup confirmation in the Notifications list. The Notifications list is accessed by heading over to Core, selecting Communication in the navigation, selecting Notifications, and then navigating to the Billing management section.
More updates in March:
- Enrollment deposits are now included in the Recent payments list; enrollment deposits are differentiated from payments by the new and default Type column.
- Billing clerks can now post enrollment deposits that match a specific deposit number to the general ledger. To accommodate this new feature, the post to GL window now includes a new option under Enrollment deposits, Only enrollment deposits with specific deposits. Enter or search for a deposit number to filter the transactions to post to the GL.
- The following student columns have been added to the Payment application export: Student date of birth, Student role, and Student current grade level.
- Billing clerks can now export Enrollment Deposits using the Payment application export by selecting the new Enrollment Deposits toggle. To complement this, the Payment application export's previous default export type can now be accessed by selecting the Payments toggle.
- Payments and enrollment deposits made through Enrollment management contracts now have their records populated with Processing details from Blackbaud Merchant Services.
School forms received new field elements in March. Users can now add Form fields to Acknowledgement/permission, Emergency Contract, and Profile update style School forms. Use this to create questions or gather custom data specific to the form. When you add a form field, you enter a label (Display as) for the recipient to see. Then for Form control, select what type of data the recipient will enter.
Also in March:
- List managers can now use Student lists and User lists to view Accommodations fields as columns. These fields are frequently used for integration with Clever. To update these values, find the fields on a student’s Contact card within their user profile.
- List managers can now use Student lists and User lists to view Profile notices as a column. These are used to alert staff to sensitive information, such a recent death in the student’s family or custody concerns.
- When authentication managers view the lists of users who are Registered or Awaiting response for Blackbaud ID (BBID), they can select to include a Column that indicates which user accounts are Disabled. The accounts may have been disabled automatically due to inactivity or disabled manually.
March brought a number of enhancements, changes, and updates to contracts. Thanks to ideas generated in the community, we’ve made the Assign Contracts Type wizard full screen, and it now has additional column options like Current contract and Previous contract.
Users who already have a contract for the current year can be filtered out with a new checkbox option, and there are new filters which can be utilized including Previous contract, which displays a list of all contract types from the previous year.
Finally, admissions managers now see a filter list on the second page of the Assign Contract wizard to help show what has been selected.
Other updates this month:
- We've expanded the character limit when writing Official Notes from 50 to 100.
- Parents of candidates will now only see Thank You on the Confirmation tab when there is a Candidate Admissions profile to go to after submitting an admissions event form. If the button does not appear, it means the parent is not authenticated, or there is no profile to view.
- Admissions managers now see an updated and current count for Attendees when viewing an Admissions Event Detail page. This includes numbers for Attended, Cancelled, Did not Attend, and Fees raised.
For Tuition management, March saw the start of a limited release for a feature that allows a parent to link multiple school payer accounts with their Blackbaud ID (BBID). Parents with students enrolled in multiple schools using Blackbaud Tuition Management can link their accounts while logged in to the parent site at one of the schools.
A parent can follow these steps to link a second account to the same BBID:
- Select your initials in the top right corner and select Switch school account from the menu. (If initials do not appear in the top right, your school is not included in this limited release.)
- A new screen labeled Add another account will appear. Enter either an email address or a phone number (primary, secondary, or mobile) associated with the other school account you want to link.
- We will then search all of the family accounts for a match with the information you provided. If a match is found, you will see the relevant school name, most recent session, Family ID, and students on the account. Select the account you would like to connect (this must be done one at a time) and select Continue.
- You will receive a verification code via text message or email at the contact information from the new account. Enter it under Verify your account and select Continue.
- Once the accounts are linked, the next time you log in with BBID you will see a screen that lets you select any of the accounts connected with the BBID. You can also unlink school accounts or add additional school accounts from this page.
- When a school user unlinks a parent’s Blackbaud ID (BBID) account, the record of the change now appears in the audit trail. The change will be reflected under Audit Log at the bottom of the page.
- Payments in On Hold status due to Nacha validation are now included under Total Paid to Tuition Management (pending transfer) in the AR Balance report.
- ACH debit and credit files now include Blackbaud Tuition Management branding. With this change, the descriptor on a payer's bank transactions now displays BB TUITION MGMT instead of SMART LLC. Additionally, the bank identified in ACH files has been updated to Fifth Third Bank.
March 2023 has been officially wrapped up. Keep in touch though because we have plenty of new content coming your way this month. As always, make sure to subscribe to stay up to date on all of the upcoming content! See you right back here next week for more BBEM content!
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Blackbaud K-12 Solutions™ Blog
04/04/2023 9:00am EDT
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