Here are the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for September 5th, 2023.

Billing management (Limited Availability)

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

Billing management

Payment plan “Total” due added to Plan info in Payer portal

Payers visiting the Payment plans page in the Payer portal now see Total under Plan info; Total is the difference between the sum of all Included charges and the sum of all Included financial aid.

Experience feedback survey now available

A survey is now available for schools using Billing management to provide us with their feedback; please take several minutes to complete the survey to help guide us as we tailor fit Billing management to you.

The survey is also available in Billing management on the Overview page.

Core

View user’s current employment

Users with rights to view the Access tab of the Core profile will notice a new Employment tile, which shows the user’s employment at a glance, rather than needing to load a new page.

This tile also includes the Employment button (which previously appeared in the Personas tile on the Access tab).

In a future release, this button will enable users to edit employment from the Employment tile via an updated user interface. Until then, the relocated button leads to the same interface as the previous location.

October 3, 2023 – Blackbaud ID requires Multi-factor Authentication

Starting October 2023, Blackbaud will begin to require faculty and staff users of Blackbaud Education Management (BBEM) to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on their Blackbaud ID (BBID) username and password. These users have roles with Application or Employee/Volunteer types.

The requirement will be enforced in “waves.” The first wave of schools will require MFA as of October 3, 2023. If, by this summer, your organization has not yet established an SSO connection, then we will send you an email with the exact date on which your users will be required to use MFA.

Exemptions

The following users are exempt from Blackbaud’s MFA requirement for BBID and their login experiences will not be affected:

• Users who login with a single sign on (SSO),
• Users who login with Sign in with Google,
• Users who login with Sign in with Apple,
• Students, alumni, parents, and non-administrative users of Blackbaud Education Management. These users have only Constituent or Other role types.

What is MFA?

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires a user to successfully validate at least two of three factors to authenticate before gaining access to your solution and data. Blackbaud ID will require MFA using your password (what you use today) and a unique, time-based, one-time code accessed on a secondary device. We are proactively making this change, following industry-standard security measures, to help protect your organization and your data.

Try MFA early

We recommend testing MFA with a cloned role at your school’s convenience. For example, require users who have the nurse role to login with MFA and BBID. The nurse could complete the login using a numeric code sent to their phone for additional security.

As a platform manager, go to Core, Security, Roles, and search for a role. On the role’s row, select more (…) and then select to Enforce MFA.

Platform managers can also Remove MFA enforcement from here (during your testing phase). When you disable the MFA requirement for a role, 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.

Encourage your users to act now by enabling MFA on their Blackbaud ID if they have not already done so.

Miscellaneous

Please note:

• Users who login with single sign on (SSO), Sign in with Google, or Sign in with Apple, will not be prompted to use Blackbaud’s MFA, even if the school enforces MFA for one of their roles.
• Users who use Sign in with Google or Sign in with Apple may be prompted to use an MFA that is managed by Google or Apple, even when Blackbaud doesn’t require MFA. These “social sign ins” are subject to the third party’s authentication processes, instead of Blackbaud’s process.
• Users who are already required to use MFA because they also use their BBID for other Blackbaud applications, such as Raiser’s Edge NXT, will still require MFA, regardless of their MFA settings for their roles in Education Management.

To learn more about multi-factor authentication for Blackbaud ID and to prepare for this change:

• view the online help,
• this Knowledgebase article,
• view the webinar recording.

Please contact Support or your Customer Success Manager with any questions.

Extracurricular

View more athletics

In Manage teams, Athletic Group Managers now see additional information for each team, including Games published, Practices published, and School Level.

Financial Aid management

Set up your 2024-2025 application session

With the new multi-year functionality that we released last year, an administrator must log in and set up your school’s 2024-2025 application year with open and close dates for it to be available to families completing the application. Multi-year functionality enables your school to decide which application years are open and when they are available. You have the flexibility to keep either the 23-24, 24-25, or both years open during the date ranges of your choosing.

• The 24-25 session will be available for you to set up by September 5, 2023.
• When you create a new year, your settings from the previous year roll forward into the new year. Please take a moment to review your settings and make any necessary changes, such as updating your custom questions, before families begin applying.

Set up the 24-25 application year

1. Select Settings, then Manage School Years.
2. Select Add.
3. Under Session, select 2024-2025.
4. Select the Open Date and Close Date.
5. Select Save.

Tuition management

Help links to Tuition Management Help Center

School users can now access the Tuition Management Help Center by selecting Help > Help from the top navigation menu.

In the Help Center, help files are available via search or the topics menu across the top of the page. The most recent What's New post is available under Latest News or users can select the What's New tile to access the Blackbaud K-12 Education Solutions Tips and Tricks blog where the What's New and other blogs are posted.

API and Integrations

School API

New

Additional fields available in POST users create PATCH users update request body

POST Users create, and PATCH Users update now accept additional fields in the request body, including:

Additional fields available in POST users create PATCH users update request body

POST Users create, and PATCH Users update now accept additional fields in the request body, including:

• boarding_or_day
• birth_place
• citizenship
• deceased_date
• ethnicity
• in_state
  • county
  • from_date
  • resident
• is_abroad
• is_international
• is_responsible_signer
• living_status
• locker
  • combo
  • number
• mailbox
  • combo
  • number
• passport
  • expire_date
  • number
• primary_language
• pronouns
• relationship
  • comment
• religion
• school_program
• state_id
• student_id
• visa
  • expire_date
  • number
  • status
  • type

Note that the relationship between parent-child entries in the list correspond to their relationship in the JSON of the request body.

Field deprecated from POST users create PATCH users update request body

Changed

The following field is no longer available in the request body for POST Users create and PATCH Users update:

• nick_name

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:

1. Log into the community and locate your name and profile picture in the upper right corner.
2. Select the drop-down arrow and select My Account.
3. From the My Account page, select the Subscriptions tab and scroll down to the Blogs section.
4. 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.
5. 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.

• July 2023
• June 2023
• May 2023
• April 2023
• March 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023