Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions: What’s New For August 15, 2023

Bob Costanzo · August 2023

Here are the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for August 15, 2023.

Academics

Competency Based Education Computation Method Settings

For schools using Competency Based Education (CBE), the Computation Method settings are no longer locked down once skill evaluations have been entered. Previously, a data fix was required to modify these settings if skill evaluations were present.

Academic Group Managers edit the Computation Method settings for both Transferable and Content-area skills in Academics > Grades > Grading Setup > Mastery Settings.

When saving changes to these settings, users are notified that changes made to the computation method will retroactively update all historical skill evaluations using the computation method and they should only update the selected computation method if they want historical evaluations to be re-calculated with the newly selected method. Users can select Confirm to proceed with their changes or Cancel to exit without impacting historical skill evaluations.

Coming Soon: Pronouns on group rosters

In an upcoming release, we will display Pronouns on the Roster tab of group pages. With this change, we are not modifying a user’s ability to view Pronouns, but surfacing pronouns in this additional area.

Currently, a user must navigate from the roster to a user’s profile to view their Pronouns.

A user’s ability to view Pronouns is based on Profile Access settings, including View/edit profile fields, Profile publish access, and Profile relationship access. In preparation for this upcoming change, you may consider reviewing your Profile Access settings in Core > Security > Profile Access.

Course Requests Redesign

With this release, the Course Requests entry page from My Day has been updated for Students and Parents.

Users now have more control over the details that appear under the Available courses section as there is a filter that can be applied, a search bar for locating something specific, and a new drop-down field that lists specific courses. Selected request is now known as My requests and the total values have moved to the top Course Requests area. Select a course from My requests to open a flyout with additional details including course descriptions, how many credits it's worth, who recommended it, which semesters have been requested, and more.

Please note that this change does not impact administrators, though they can review their Course Request policy if needed through Academics > Scheduling > Requests and Schedules > Course request setup, and then Policy.

Report card and Transcript name format options

In report card and transcript templates, all instances of “Nickname” have been replaced with “Preferred name” in the name format options. We also updated the Nickname Last name option to Preferred|First name Last name, so a student’s First name displays if they do not have a Preferred name.

Billing management (Early Availability)

Blackbaud Billing management is available to customers not currently using Blackbaud Tuition management.

“Other amount” Auto-Pay payments now prioritize past-due charges outside payment plans

Payers using the “Other amount” option to make a custom payment toward their Auto-Pay installments will now find that part of the installment is applied to due or past-due charges outside of payment plans.

For example, on July 15, a payer creates a payment of $500 with the “Other amount” option toward their Auto-Pay installment. If the payer has a charge on their account of $50 with a due date of July 15 or earlier, part of the payment (i.e., $50 of $500) is applied to cover the other charge, even if they are not included in the payment plan.

Core

Profile notices

When a user creates a profile notice, the text is limited to 500 characters. Previously, when they edited an existing notice, the limit became 250 characters.

Now, the character limit is 500 characters, even when editing. Additionally, when you create or edit a profile notice a counter now indicates the number of characters remaining to reach the limit.

This ensures desired information is retained and improves user awareness as they enter text for the profile notice.

Manage roles & tasks

Platform managers who have the User profile (53405) or Manage login (53788) task enabled can now view which roles are enabled for each user. From a user’s profile in Core, select Tasks. A list of tasks which are enabled for at least one of the user’s roles appears. To view all tasks which could be enabled for their roles, clear the filter called Hide disabled.

Additionally, in Core, Security, Roles, platform managers who have the View roles task enabled can now select to show a column called Role ID. By default, this column will appear between the Role and Status columns, but you can select a column header and then drag and drop to reorder them.

When you select a role to see its details and then select to view details for an individual task, the roles listed under “This task is also included in the following roles” are now clickable hyperlinks. By default, each link opens the role details in a new tab in your browser, so you more easily compare the first role to another role with overlapping tasks.

Blackbaud ID (BBID) Username import

When a data import manager runs the BBID Username Import, it now places the BBID into both the Blackbaud ID username field and the Username field.

This enables schools to then use the Username field for exports and integrations, even for users who never login with their BBID accounts.

This is also true for the Connect to Blackbaud ID function (User profile in Core, Access tab) and the bulk Connect function (Core, Security, Blackbaud ID, Authentication, Unregistered).

If a username existed before the data import or connection event, then the previous username is copied to the Legacy username field, but only if the Legacy username field was blank at the time of the import.

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Enrollment management

Candidate Checklists

We've updated the Candidate Checklist so that parents now see any checklist step that has been waived by the school as Waived instead of Completed.

Dashboard Homepage

For users with access to the Dashboard builder, we've added a resources tile to the Enrollment management homepage with quick access to dashboards and links to timely resources, like annual procedures.

School Forms

Admissions managers can now view any forms that have been fully declined by a recipient in a separate grouping within the submissions modal.

Financial Aid management

School Search

When searching for a school in the Financial Aid application, applicants must now enter at least three characters in the School Code field or School Name field.

API and Integrations

School API

New

Medical allergy and conditions endpoints added

We've added two new endpoints that retrieve allergies and medical conditions for a student:

GET Medical allergies/conditions for a student returns an array of allergies and conditions for a student based on the required user_id parameter included in the request.
GET Medical medications for a student returns an array of medication objects for a student based on the required user_id parameter included in the request.

Changed

Support for including medications

POST Medical allergies/conditions create now accepts an optional medications array in the request body. medications consists of a comma-separated list of student medication ids.


<span>"medications"</span><span>:</span> <span>[</span><br/>  <span>1</span><span>,</span><br/>  <span>2</span><span>,</span><br/>  <span>3</span><br/><span>]</span>

New users included in endpoint response

GET Users changed by base role(s) now includes new users added after the start_date in the endpoint response.

Game time now featured in separate object

GET Athletics schedules now includes a game_time object in the array of schedule objects. The game_time object contains date, start, end, and duration properties.


<span>{</span><br/>  <span>"game_time"</span><span>:</span> <span>{</span><br/>    <span>"date"</span><span>:</span> <span>"2021-03-20T00:00:00Z"</span><span>,</span><br/>    <span>"start"</span><span>:</span> <span>"2023-08-16"</span><span>,</span><br/>    <span>"end"</span><span>:</span> <span>"2023-08-16"</span><span>,</span><br/>    <span>"duration"</span><span>:</span> <span>"2023-08-16"</span><br/>  <span>}</span><br/><span>}</span>

School API and OneRoster API

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

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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.