Preferred Names in School Forms?

Morgan Kunze

Hi, we're about 6 months in to implementation, and still finding our way around some of the communication pieces.  It looks to me as though I can't add a student's "preferred name" to a school form (I've looked at a couple of the canned forms and the blank form so far). We have a strict policy at our school of only using a student's preferred name, so the lack of this feature means that we will have to transfer all preferred names to the "first name" field and create a separate custom field for "legal first name" or something to cover the gap.  Am I misunderstanding the way this section of the form works, or is this feature really not there?  


I submitted an "idea" to the portal, surprised that I didn't see this already in there.  But as I say, I'm a relative noob and may simply have missed something.  If not, will you please upvote my idea (if you think it's a good idea ? ) and let's get this feature implemented!  I know that Blackbaud has been working hard to improve the identity fields (gender, preferred name) elsewhere in the system.  


Thanks!

Sarah Bienvenue

Hi Morgan, we've been doing a lot of work in this area and it seems that school forms might have slipped by us. I'll work with the team to get it added and let you know when it's been completed.


thank you,


Sarah

Susan Ott

Thank you  Sarah Bienvenue. This has been an issue for us as well. I had brought it up to support at one time but never got a satisfying answer. 

Morgan Kunze

Sarah Bienvenue‍ that is great news!  Thank you so much for your response.  

Jennifer Welch

I see this has been addressed somewhat but I have another issue regarding preferred name. It seems as though we are only allowed to use a preferred first name. What happens when a person needs to retain their legal first and last name but wishes to be known by a different first and last name? How can we set this up short of retaining the legal name in a memo field or official note?

Thanks.

Morgan Kunze

@Jennifer, I'm interested to know how others manage this. We do use an admin-only field for “legal name” and use it in cases of identity transition, family changes, etc. We also have a separate admin-only field called “profile idiosyncrasies" that the Registrar can reference when looking for immunization records, etc. if a student has previously been enrolled under a different name, or to post a note if they need their transcript to read differently than their in-school records, or whatever. There are so many individual situations to navigate it's hard to see how a system can accommodate everything!!

Kathy Hannon

@Jennifer Welch Our policy is - use legal - birth certificate recorded First & Last names. Preferred name is used for nickname, and name changes (trans until formal legal name change). Our parents might bulk a bit but they understand - it's fair to ALL parties and better data keeping too.

Jennifer Welch

@Kathy Hannon I understand that and it is how we do it at our present school. The school I am now working with and will be transitioning to full time soon has other needs so I was wondering how those schools who want to use both a preferred first and last name handle it. I think that is how we are going. Thank you!