Custom/Third Party Reports to format our data

Nathan Ong

Hello!

I had a question on what kind of third parties people used for custom reports (if your school uses custom reports).

We have to send out attendance reports out to districts that also includes attendance with clinical services.

Blackbaud's advanced list helps to pull the data needed, but we need to get that data into particular pdf/report format.

Prior, in Education Edge we were using a plug-in for Custom Crystal Reports.

Is there any similar thing for Blackbaud SIS? Any particular consulting needed?

We had meetings with retainer/consultant but found out the scope only extends to creating the Advanced List and needs another step/third party to format.

Any help is appreciated--thanks!

Scott Yoshimura

@Nathan Ong

I have most of our reports generated in Google Sheets with Google Apps Script. After creating advanced lists containing the data needed for the report, a script uses SKY API to pull the list data into the spreadsheet. Then a combination of formulas and scripts format the report. Some of our reports use Google's functions/API to create PDFs and email them. Google's script triggers automate a lot of our reports to update and run daily.

Sorry, this probably doesn't help you much. We also switched from Education Edge, and we had one custom report built in Crystal Reports. The solution above is what I did to replicate that report in the new system. For me, using Apps Script made it easier to customize the logic in some of the report areas--I'm not a fan of Crystal Reports.