Any issues launching BBID with your parent community?

Victoria Little

Hi all,

I'm curious what issues you've come across so far while launching Blackbaud ID with your parent community.

Is there anything you wish you had done differently?
Did you receive any feedback from parents?

Thanks for sharing!

Brian Gray

The most common problems that we ran into are:

1. Parents in China sometimes have trouble accessing the site at all, due to internet restrictions. We refer them to other families who have been able to solve the problem.
2. When students and parents share a device, the sign-in process will try to use saved credential cookies for the last person who signed in - even if they don't match the username entered. The solution is for the user to use a different web browser or a Chrome Guest window (that does not save cookies on exit).

In general, my instructions documents evolved over time (because my initial instructions were more ambiguous than I thought, and because users found problems that I had not considered). I put the instructions in a shared Google doc that I could edit at any time - updating it on the fly. That made it much easier to keep current than a PDF would be.

Candace Chesler

We connected our parent accounts in the Fall of 2021 - two weeks before opening up registration for Parent Teacher Conferences. 75% of our parents connected to their Blackbaud ID right away and had no problems. Two weeks before launching Re-Enrollment Contracts - which require two parent signatures - I pulled a list of parents who had not yet connected to BBID - and sent all of them a personal email with instructions on how to sign up.

Similar to Brian - our second most common error is parents trying to sign in on a Chrome window where their child has already signed in.

Our other two main errors were related to parents who could not follow instructions - and people who somehow got redirected to the Blackbaud branded BBID help pages. It was VERY helpful to be able to navigate to the Admin > Settings > Branding pages of my Blackbaud login. I was able to add our logo - and provide a custom URL for the Help button which redirects end users to our website instead of Blackbaud.

Overall - it has been a manageable process.

John Ronan

Since only the end of last week or beginning of this, when someone tries to convert, they get an ‘authentication’ popup appearing and need to enter a 6-digit code that they receive in their email.

It doesn't work. We found that they need to enter 6 digits , refresh, maybe enter 6 more if it reappears and eventually the popup does not reappear and they can continue.

Does anyone get this?

Support didn't seem to know anything about it.

John Vogel

Hi John, Can you please file a ticket with support to ensure this issue is properly tracked? We'll then get all the details needed to the engineering team to investigate the issue. The One Time Passcode (OTP) that is being required to enter is due to a low score on a reCAPTCHA assessment and we have the user verify access to their email to prove they're not a bot. Overall less than 5% of all assessments receive the OTP trigger but I wouldn't expect a user to have to reenter the code multiple times and we will investigate.

John Vogel

Hi Brian,

Re: your 2 issues noted.

1. There was a time when parents in China were being blocked from signing in but that should be resolved now. If you have any parents continuing to experience an issue signing in, then please contact support with the details so Blackbaud can investigate.

2. For families that are sharing devices, my recommendation is to create separate chrome profiles. For example, I'm logged into Chrome on my phone and laptop with the same profile which is very convenient for my browsing history stored in the account and not specific to a device. However, if Chrome profiles are too advanced for some users, the easiest thing to do is just ask the user to sign out. Then on the sign in page if the input fields for email and password do not show then they just need to click the link “Use a different email address” as seen in the image below which will take them back to the starting point of the sign in page as if no cookie is present.