Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions: What’s New for November 7, 2023

Katie Burckhalter · November 2023

Here are the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for November 7, 2023.

Academics

Advisories Update

With this update, we've taken the Advisories page off of the bridge. When navigating to Academics, Scheduling, Requests and Schedules, and then switching to Advisory, the Advisories page no longer uses Podium and instead has a more modern SKY look and feel.

Delete assignments when grades exist

Teachers can now delete an assignment even if grades and evaluations exist for the assignment. Previously, grades and evaluations had to be removed before deleting was possible. If an assignment is included in gradebook calculations, the results are recalculated upon deleting the assignment.

Auto-complete addresses in 360 profile and Academics

With our October 17 release, we introduced an address auto complete feature which helps users as they add or edit addresses on user profiles in Core. It helps platform managers keep data clean and consistently formatted, such as by ensuring addresses have standardized capitalization, spelling, and more (such as “Street” instead of “St.”).

With this release, the address auto-complete suggestions now also appear in the “360 profile,” which includes the contact card in Academics.

Additionally, it also defaults to the country from User profile settings.

Send first name or preferred name through Learning Tools (LTI)

Integration Managers can now configure Learning Tool Interoperability (LTI) providers to send first or preferred names.

In Core, select Settings, then Integration settings.
Select Learning tools.
Add a new learning tool provider or update an existing provider by selecting the context menu, then Edit.
Under Give name, select Preferred name, if available or select First name, always.
Select Save.

When Preferred name, if available is selected and no preferred name exists for a user, their first name is sent instead.

Core

View preferred or first name in User List & Students List

When list managers view a user list or students list, they can now select to show a new column called Preferred else First name. Find it in the Contact Card category. When a list shows this column, the data shows each student or user’s preferred name. If the user doesn’t have a preferred name on their record, then it’ll show their first name. This makes it easier for schools to communicate with students and users in the manner they expect.

Access resources and the Education Area

Previously, when platform managers wanted to access

Sky reporting dashboards,
Security groups for the grey “omnibar” experience,
Or Admin > branding settings for their school’s Blackbaud ID login screen,

They'd go to their Home dashboard in Core, find the Tasks tile, and then select Go to Education area.

Now, the Go to Education area option appears on a new tile called Education Area. The functionality of this button remains unchanged. The Tasks tile remains too and still includes the other options you’d expect to find there, such as to Add a new user or Manage potential duplicate users.

The Education Area tile also includes links to relevant help resources. It appears to all platform managers, even when they don’t currently have access to “omibar” or other “education area” features. Although the tile won’t grant these users access to those features, it will inform them that the features exist and help them get set up when necessary.

Tuition management

Updates for California resident donation processing due to Assembly Bill 488

The State of California recently enacted legislation, California Assembly Bill 488 (CA AB488), which regulates online charitable fundraising in the state. Beginning January 1, 2024, Blackbaud will be prohibited from assisting organizations not in “good standing” in California with making charitable solicitations to and receiving funds from California residents. As a result, Blackbaud has made the following changes:

Beginning in November 2023, Blackbaud will notify charitable organizations that we believe may not be in “good standing” in California based on government data. To help you navigate the regulations and check your status, see California Assembly Bill 488: Impact to Charitable Organizations.
Beginning January 1, 2024, donations made through Blackbaud solutions by California residents to organizations that are not in “good standing” will no longer be accepted. To suppress California residents from upcoming email solicitations or view failed transactions due to California Assembly Bill 488, see our help documentation.

Note: Any U.S. registered charitable organization that operates or solicits donations in California is subject to this law.

Inactivating auto debit bank accounts with On Hold payments

When inactivating an auto debit bank account that includes an On Hold payment, school users are now notified that inactivating the account will fail the On Hold payment. Users can select Fail Payment to proceed, or they can select Cancel to exit without inactivating the account. After canceling, a user can return to inactivate the account once the payment comes off hold in 4 business days.

API and Integrations

School API

New

Update athletic requirements for a student

We’ve added a new endpoint for creating medical athletic requirements for a student.

POST Medical athletic requirements update (BETA) updates a student's athletic requirements list for a specific school year and season corresponding to the user_id, school_year, and season provided. The athletic_requirements property accepts an array of objects, enabling a single call to update multiple athletic requirements records.

Delete medications for a student

We’ve added a new endpoint for deleting medications for a student.

DELETE Medical Medications delete (BETA) removes a medication for a student corresponding to the medication_id parameter provided in the request.

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.