Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions: What’s New for January 16, 2024

Bob Costanzo · January 2024

Here are the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for January 16, 2024.

Billing management

Send a notification for failed payments

We’ve added a failed payment notification that alerts payers when either a direct debit or Auto-Pay transaction fails to process. Customize the notification to include fields such as the payment method, date, and amount, alongside personalized information such as the statement recipients first and last name.

The failed payment notification joins other Billing management notifications found by navigating to Core, selecting Communication and then Notifications in the navigation, and finally selecting the Billing management tab on the page.

Export failed Post to FENXT batches

Batches that fail to be sent to Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT are now represented in the spreadsheet produced by the Export function found on the Post to GL page.

This feature update currently applies only to schools participating in the direct post to Blackbaud Financial Edge NXT early adopter program (EAP).

Enrollment management

Contracts

While adding or editing a contract, admissions managers can now either specify a specific due date or set a conditional due date based on the number of days after the contract is generated for the candidate or student. The Due dates for these candidates and/or students are then calculated based on the number set within the Days after Generated value including when they're being generated from Assign Contract Types. When copying a contract, the Days After Generated value is kept on the new contract too.

Finally, admissions managers can also edit a Candidate or Student Contract Due date and Reminder Option even with a conditional due date applied.

Remember that the Due Date setting can no longer be updated or changed once the contracts are generated. If a contract is created with a specific due date, it can’t be changed to use Days After Generated instead.

Events

When an event is tied to a candidate's checklist step, it'll automatically get updated alongside the attendee status. For Checked In or Attended, the checklist step is marked as Completed. When an attendee cancels or is deleted, the checklist step gets reverted to Awaiting.

Tuition management

Configure Gender values

Schools can now customize the Gender values available for selection on student profiles. By default, all schools have Male and Female values that cannot be edited or deleted.

To add Gender values:

Select Settings, then Manage Codes and Gender.
Select the Gender tab.
Enter a Gender.
Select Add.

API and Integrations

Respond to our Pushpage and Advance Lists survey

We've prepared a survey to collect feedback on your experiences using Pushpage and Advance Lists. You'll find a link to the survey on the Home tab under Core and at this direct location.

School API

New

Update a phone number from a user record

We’ve added a new endpoint for updating the phone number property associated with a user record.

PATCH Users phone update updates the specified phone number from the user record based on the provided user_id and phone_id path parameters; the optional split_phone_if_shared Boolean property provided in the request body creates a separate phone number for the user when set to True, but only if the phone number is shared.

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.