Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions: What’s New For April 25, 2023

Published

Here are the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for April 25, 2023.

Academics

Changes in General Elective Requirement display

For schools using Diploma Requirements, a slight change has been made in the way credits are applied toward a General Elective Requirement. This change is visible on the Requirements tab of a student profile.
The General Elective Requirement on a diploma can be set up to accept credit overages from other requirements. For example, if a student earns 16 English credits but only needed 15 to fulfill a diploma’s English requirement, then the 1 overage credit can be applied toward a General Elective Requirement.
Previously, if a student earned more overage credits than the number of credits required for a General Elective Requirement, then all of those overage credits would be applied toward the general elective (for example, even if the student only needed 9 credits to satisfy the General Elective Requirement, the row displaying General Elective Requirement credits might display 10 credits earned). Now, the General Elective Requirement will only accept overage credits up to the amount that satisfies the requirement.

Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) 1.3 Launching Support

With this release, we are beginning to roll out LTI 1.3 as a connection type and have constructed a new landing page for setting up LTIs. In this first iteration, we support the launch of LTI tools via the new 1.3 authentication method. We do not yet support LTI Advantage, so you may encounter incompatibilities when connecting to various LTI 1.3 compliant tools. The function to allow Assignments & Grade Services 2.0 is available. Tools that require Deep Linking 2.0 or Names and Role Provisioning Services 2.0 will not yet function, though we have plans to implement both of these capabilities in the future.

Existing LTI 1.1 connections will continue to function as they have in the past.

For more information regarding the new LTI settings page, please reference our updated Help Documentation.

Billing management

Add, review, and delete credit on the Recent credits list

We've added a new Recent credits list to Billing Management. This new addition joins the existing Recent payments and Recent charges lists, providing Billing clerks with a focused and filterable list of credits.
The Recent credits list enables billing clerks to:

Add credit for one or multiple students at once by selecting Add credit or Add credit to a group.
Delete one or multiple credits simultaneously.
Filter list results based on credit date or details and add optional columns.
Export the list to a .csv file according to the chosen filters and columns.

Additionally, these changes relocate the Add Credits to Group option from under Tasks in the Billing Management Overview to the Recent credits list.

Enrollment management

Inquiry Forms

We've added a new checkbox style field called Languages Spoken at Home when creating a new Inquiry Form. Once the form is processed, the selected languages then appear correctly on the user's Contact Card under the Citizenship/Resident section.

New options for Candidates List date filters

We've added new date range filtering options for the Candidates list. The following options are available for all filters listed under Date range pickers:

Last week
Last month
Last school year
Last calendar year

Extracurricular

Athletics – Manage roster

Athletic Group Managers can now review and update team members and their details from Extracurricular > Athletics > Athletics setup > [team name] > Manage roster. Managers can add and remove team members, as well as edit member information, including Jersey numbers, Positions, player photos, and more.

Tuition management

Track opt out of targeted ads and sale of personal information preferences

With this release, we’ve added two new fields to assist schools in complying with US privacy laws. Schools can now track a payer’s request to opt out of targeted advertisements or the sale of their personal information. If your school engages in targeted advertising or in the sale or sharing of personal information, you can use these fields to identify payers who want to opt out of those practices.

Select Families > View all families.
Search for and select a family.
Hover over the blue arrow on the left to expand the menu > More Options > Update Parent & Student Info.
Select the Settings tab.
Under Privacy, select Opt Out of Targeted Ads or Opt Out of Sale.
Select Save Changes.

The Opt Out fields will be available in custom reports in an upcoming release.

School Privacy Policies

Schools can now submit a PDF of their privacy policy to Customer Support to be uploaded to the school site. Links to the privacy policy will then be displayed on the Parent site, Enrollment site, and Buy Now Give Now store fronts.

De-identify family accounts

Schools can now de-identify data upon a family’s request or in accordance with the school’s data retention policy. De-identifying an account removes all personal data from the account, including audit trails, notes, and communication history.

Select the school and school year.
Select Families > Manage Families
Select the checkbox next to the family or families to de-identify.
Under Perform Batch Action, select De-Identify.
Note the Warning message: Deidentifying a payer account is irreversible! All personally identifying information for the selected accounts will be removed and cannot be retrieved.
Select I understand this action is irreversible and agree to continue.
Enter your name.
Select Save to de-identify the selected account(s).

When de-identifying accounts, the user must enter their name before they can proceed with the de-identification. Additionally, a closed note stating the name of the user that processed the de-identification and the de-identification timestamp is added to the selected accounts.

Linking multiple school accounts with BBID

Parents can link multiple school payer accounts with their Blackbaud ID (BBID). We began rolling this feature out to all schools in late March, and now it is available to all schools that use BBID for login or using Single Sign On from Blackbaud Education Management.
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.
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.

Instructions for parents have been added to the Frequently Asked Questions for Parents and Payers under the heading “How do I link multiple school accounts with a Blackbaud ID (BBID)?”

API and Integrations

School API and OneRoster API

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

Subscribe to "What's New"

To receive email notifications when the What’s new update appears, make sure to subscribe to the K12 community’s blog by logging into the community site and selecting the Subscribe button.
To manage your community subscriptions:

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 04/24/2023 1:48pm EDT

Added by Katie Burckhalter

Check back soon!