So Many Clicks! Or, Potential Locations for Time-Saving Links on BB

Chris Paolelli

My school is using Blackbaud for the first time this year, and e-learning has shoved us all into the deep end of the pool.  I'm still a very basic user, but my biggest day-to-day problems have stemmed from elements of the user interface that are needlessly complex for lack of a well-placed link.  For example:

• Can we get a button to go directly to editing an assignment on the Assignment Details page?  It drives me nuts when I notice a mistake, but I have to click "Assignments," often rejigger the view because it defaulted back to Active and my assignment is Future, or vice versa, and then click the Edit button.  An edit button on the Assignment Details page would save precious seconds, which add up to many minutes of life when you consider how many preps some teachers have and how many assignments we post. 
• Can we get a link in the gradebook to the class page of whatever class you're currently viewing?  It's possible to quickly jump from the class page to the gradebook, but not vice versa.  I have gradebook shortcuts in my Chrome bookmarks bar, but when I start there, I have to open a separate tab to go anywhere else in Blackbaud.
• Can the student names in the gradebook become links to that student's profile or contact card?  It's maddening to be looking at the gradebook, notice something that requires contacting a student/parent, and have to open a new Blackbaud tab and navigate separately to the student's contact info from scratch.  Not every issue requires an official note, so it would be nice to have a shortcut to email addresses.

I'm sure there are more places where an extra link would save me many clicks.  Maybe some folks can add other ideas in replies. 


Also, this is not a link issue, but does the Description box when editing an assignment have to be so small?  That's where I type several paragraphs of text to explain procedures during e-learning, and it's so small that I can't see more than three lines of text at a time.  Several times a day I find myself struggling to scroll through what I've written or select more than one line of text without wildly overshooting what I'm aiming for.  Could it at least gain one of those resize handles in the corner that many online text entry boxes have?  This problem applies to every text entry box I've encountered on Blackbaud (e.g. bulletin boards, topics).

Bryna Gleich

The best way to share ideas and request enhancements is by creating a post in the Ideas tab of this forum https://community.blackbaud.com/products/k12/ideas 


When you post ideas and reasons for them in the Idea bank, other members of the community can read your ideas, vote on them, and add their own comments. You can also vote and comment on the ideas of others. 


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When you post an idea, you can copy the URL from the idea bank and then paste the URL into a discussion thread (like this one) to drive more attention to your entry in the idea bank. 


Although Blackbaud staff (including product managers) do occasionally chime in on discussion threads like this one (especially for pressing issues or threads with no peer replies), our goal is for this discussion area of the community to be primarily for peer to peer communication.