The Month In Review: June 2023 Feature Releases For Blackbaud's Education Management Solutions
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The summer rolls into July, and for many of you, that means warmer temperatures will be rolling in! While you enjoy the poolside, beachy sands, or inside with A/C, let us handle the June Month in Review!
Believe it or not, July is finally here! While you enjoy your time in the sun or away from the heat, we’re still cranking out new content here. If you haven’t yet, make sure to catch up on our latest blogs, including the Annual Procedures and what else we have planned in the next month or two.
However, since it’s the start of a new month, it’s time to take one last look back at all of the latest features and updates that arrived for Blackbaud's education management portfolio during the month of June. So, let’s get started!
Academics
This month, the Academics team released a new update for teachers working with assessments. Teachers can now convert assessments created with the old builder to the new experience by copying or importing the old assessments. Assessments made with the old builder can no longer be copied or imported without converting.
Teachers can convert multiple assessments at once using Import Assignments. They can also select additional class sections to add an assessment to when importing, whereas copying will only add an assessment to the original class sections. New instances of an assessment created by import will have the same name as the original assessment. While you can set the Publish status on new instances of an assessment via import, you must mark assessments Ready for taking before students can begin the assessment.
Also in June:
Billing clerks now have more flexibility regarding handling failed payments. By selecting the new Handle payment option on the Failed payments page, Billing clerks can exclude payments from balance calculations and stop them from being applied to charges; for example, Billing clerks cannot Apply charges to handled payments from the transactions record. To handle payments, go to the Overview in Billing Management and select Review failed payments under Needs attention. Choose from the list of failed payments and select Handle payment.
More updates in June:
After an admissions manager archives a checklist, they'll no longer see it in any place where they can assign or filter checklists/related checklist items. This includes areas like Process Inquiries, Needs checklist, Process applications, Process event registrations, etc. A big thank you to our community, as this feature originated from the K12 Ideas forum.
Other updates this month:
When viewing the Roster tab on Team pages, users will now see names on the roster following the format set in Core > Users > User profile settings > User name formats. With this change, Preferred name displays for all players if included in the User Name Format configured in Core.
Blackbaud Financial Aid Management™
To assist schools in complying with US privacy laws, Advanced School Users can now delete a family's information at their request. Deleting a family permanently and irreversibly removes their account, application, and documents for all years they exist in BBFAM. School users can review a family’s Special Circumstances selections on the family’sails page, inclu Application Detding these opt-out options.
In Settings > General School Settings, Advanced School Users can now enter an Award Date. This date indicates when your school will begin making financial aid awards and is used to prioritize applications during the review process. Once you’ve entered an Award Date, it will roll over each year when you create your new session year.
Also in June:
Various forms now read and store the GPC browser setting for guest visitors. This allows schools to discern the privacy preferences of visitors who interact with store, custom, giving, and event registration forms.
When GPC Enabled is set to True on a form’s detail page, the visitor is communicating that they do not want their data shared with third-party organizations.
Blackbaud Tuition Management™
With this release, we've added the Failed Bank Account Validation report to identify payers with bank accounts that fail Nacha validation. The report can be scheduled to run upon activity so it only runs when there is failed bank validation activity to include in the report.
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That’s going to do it for June 2023. We have plenty more planned! Make sure to stay up to date by subscribing so you don’t miss a thing. See you right back here next week for more of Blackbaud's education management portfolio content!
However, since it’s the start of a new month, it’s time to take one last look back at all of the latest features and updates that arrived for Blackbaud's education management portfolio during the month of June. So, let’s get started!
Academics
This month, the Academics team released a new update for teachers working with assessments. Teachers can now convert assessments created with the old builder to the new experience by copying or importing the old assessments. Assessments made with the old builder can no longer be copied or imported without converting.
Teachers can convert multiple assessments at once using Import Assignments. They can also select additional class sections to add an assessment to when importing, whereas copying will only add an assessment to the original class sections. New instances of an assessment created by import will have the same name as the original assessment. While you can set the Publish status on new instances of an assessment via import, you must mark assessments Ready for taking before students can begin the assessment.
Also in June:
- Grading Managers can now export the data used to calculate a student's GPA to Excel.
- Teachers can now resize text fields when adding or editing assignments. Select and drag the bottom border to expand a field to accommodate a long Description, Discussion prompt, or Title.
- When creating assessments, teachers now have superscript, subscript, underline, and strikethrough options to format text in the introduction, questions, and answers.
- Enabling Allow on an assessment now allows students to independently continue the assessment regardless of how their connection was interrupted. Before this change, students could only resume an assessment if they selected Close to exit.
Billing clerks now have more flexibility regarding handling failed payments. By selecting the new Handle payment option on the Failed payments page, Billing clerks can exclude payments from balance calculations and stop them from being applied to charges; for example, Billing clerks cannot Apply charges to handled payments from the transactions record. To handle payments, go to the Overview in Billing Management and select Review failed payments under Needs attention. Choose from the list of failed payments and select Handle payment.
More updates in June:
- Canadian payers can now save direct debit payment methods exclusively using the Payment Methods page in the Payer portal. Saved direct debit payment methods are eligible to be used in payments three days after being added.
- Payers can take advantage of saving direct debit information by logging in, selecting Billing in the navigation, and then selecting Payment Methods. Once on the Payment Methods page, select "Add bank account."
After an admissions manager archives a checklist, they'll no longer see it in any place where they can assign or filter checklists/related checklist items. This includes areas like Process Inquiries, Needs checklist, Process applications, Process event registrations, etc. A big thank you to our community, as this feature originated from the K12 Ideas forum.
Other updates this month:
- Admissions inquiry forms now feature a Global Privacy Control field for admissions candidates. This toggle allows schools to discern their candidates' privacy preferences. When Global Privacy Control is set to Enabled, the candidate is communicating that they do not want their data shared with third-party organizations.
When viewing the Roster tab on Team pages, users will now see names on the roster following the format set in Core > Users > User profile settings > User name formats. With this change, Preferred name displays for all players if included in the User Name Format configured in Core.
Blackbaud Financial Aid Management™
To assist schools in complying with US privacy laws, Advanced School Users can now delete a family's information at their request. Deleting a family permanently and irreversibly removes their account, application, and documents for all years they exist in BBFAM. School users can review a family’s Special Circumstances selections on the family’sails page, inclu Application Detding these opt-out options.
In Settings > General School Settings, Advanced School Users can now enter an Award Date. This date indicates when your school will begin making financial aid awards and is used to prioritize applications during the review process. Once you’ve entered an Award Date, it will roll over each year when you create your new session year.
Also in June:
- In addition, the Real Estate section of the financial aid application allows families to enter the addresses for additional properties they own.
Various forms now read and store the GPC browser setting for guest visitors. This allows schools to discern the privacy preferences of visitors who interact with store, custom, giving, and event registration forms.
When GPC Enabled is set to True on a form’s detail page, the visitor is communicating that they do not want their data shared with third-party organizations.
Blackbaud Tuition Management™
With this release, we've added the Failed Bank Account Validation report to identify payers with bank accounts that fail Nacha validation. The report can be scheduled to run upon activity so it only runs when there is failed bank validation activity to include in the report.
__________________________________________
That’s going to do it for June 2023. We have plenty more planned! Make sure to stay up to date by subscribing so you don’t miss a thing. See you right back here next week for more of Blackbaud's education management portfolio content!
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Blackbaud K-12 Solutions™ Blog
06/28/2023 3:20pm EDT
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