Education Management issue

John Andrus

I have changed school years. Graduated the last class. Promoted incoming students.

However, when I promote the 1st years to 2nd years and the 2nd years to 3rd years, I get a Unique Key error. I don't know how to proceed.

Todd DeSchuiteneer

Hi @John Andrus, I apologize for this experience. It is definitely not expected and I suggest reporting to our support team so they can troubleshoot and report to our development team if there is a problem with the process.

John Andrus

@Todd DeSchuiteneer

Ok thanks. This is the email I got from support:

"So the 'Manage student enrollments' tool cannot be used to promote students when you have more than one session in a school year, this is why we're getting errors every time.

You will need to promote the students using the Future Enrollment import.
https://kb.blackbaud.com/knowledgebase/articles/Article/196000

In Core > System tools > Data import, Click the Create Import Job button. For the category, select Student. For the import type, Create Future Enrollment. Click the 'View file layout help' button and then Sample file to get a spreadsheet template that can be used to promote students in bulk."

It seems very strange that the reason we can't use the simple “Manage student enrollments” promotion tool is because I “have more than one session in a school year”. I can't imagine a K-12 or college in the country that doesn't have Fall and Spring (or more) semesters. How can this simple tool only be reserved for schools without semesters? Having to do data imports for each class is a nightmare.

Thanks for the response though.

Todd DeSchuiteneer

@John Andrus can you provide your ticket number so I can research?

Todd DeSchuiteneer

@John Andrus I am having another agent follow up with you to go over the available options with your case. You should hear from them soon.

I apologize for the confusion and inconvenience this caused.

John Andrus

@Todd DeSchuiteneer

Thanks for your willingness to help Todd. Blackbaud support is very kind and eager to help. I thank you. My case number is 019419599.

Chris P is helping now and just sent me a long email with things to try. I will do that.

Todd DeSchuiteneer

@John Andrus glad we could help out and things are heading in the right direction now!

Karen Diener

@John Andrus I'll be interested to hear if your problem is resolved. I'm working with a client who is seriously considering leaving Blackbaud because of this reason and it will be helpful to know if there is a fix!

Karen

Gabrielle Russin

@John Andrus
I had gotten a similar error when preparing for our school year. We have multiple sessions per year (like most higher education institutions…which is the target demographic of this Blackbaud product…) and I eventually moved forward by completing a future enrollments import.

I find the imports section of the system to be, frankly, very intimidating, and would appreciate there being more thorough help documentation that assumes no prior knowledge.

I am glad that things worked out for you-- the beginning of the year is always such a busy time!

John Andrus

@Karen Diener

Hi Karen! There is good news and bad news. You already know the bad news. Many things about the Blackbaud software are the opposite of being user-friendly. It feels pieced together from the 90's and so many things don't make sense in how they are done. They also tend to be a huge pain. The knowledgebase is also complicated for me as a higher-ed person because the help files use different words and titles for K-12 and for higher-ed for the same thing.

As an example, this page:

says to go to “Academics > Scheduling > Requests and Schedules”

That doesn't exist in Higher Ed. Here is what I see:

So I have to figure out on my own that I should really go to Course selection and schedules and not Requests and Schedules. It's little stuff like that, but it's a big deal when you are an IT person troubleshooting.

That being said, the good news is that I find Blackbaud support to be fantastic. In this post in particular, @Todd DeSchuiteneer immediately jumped in and tried to help. There was also a Blackbaud support person that didn't even post on this topic but emailed me immediately to help. My customer care person ALSO emailed me separately to make sure I was getting help. That's THREE different people that were helping me within the hour, and the problem was solved really quickly. I don't remember the exact fix, but I believe I used Data Import and manually uploaded my classes with an Excel file.

Word of warning: I will never be using “master rollover” on my own again, but instead will contact support to walk me through rollover every summer. There are too many things that can go wrong, which ends up duplicating classes and other things, which in turn, ends up making a bunch more work. Since I've found support to be so delightful, I don't see any reason to potentially screw something up (since the design leaves much to be desired).

John Andrus

@Gabrielle Russin
That is exactly how we fixed this. A “Create Future Enrollment" in “Data Import".

Thanks, Gabrielle! Have a great school year.

Karen Diener

@John Andrus thanks so much for the follow up! I think you nailed it on a little of what you said related to language differences and complications of the software.

Glad to know that you're feeling positive about the support. You did get a lot of proactive support which is great! Sadly, a lot of people on the fundraising side of the world (Raiser's Edge) never hear from their customer support person even when contacted directly and repeatedly, let alone have other support people reach out. This particular client had minimal response from their Education customer support person, which did not help their frustration level. Good to hear of a positive experience!

Karen

John Andrus

@Karen Diener

I have found that using chat to open a ticket is by FAR the easiest way to get help. We, as customers, don't know our individual support person's daily schedule and they may be busy helping other schools. Chat gets a ticket open and allows other people to help immediately. I would encourage you to have your client always start with chat, not their one-on-one customer support person. If it's outside the hours for chat (something like 8am to 6pm Eastern Time) then post on these forums. They seem to have people watching them closely.

Steve Backer

Hi @Karen Diener - hate to hear that one of our Education Management users (or any users for that matter) are having a challenge with our Customer Support team. If you're interested in discussing more, please feel free to send me a note offline and I'm happy to investigate!

Steve Backer

It can certainly be hard to remember every task that needs to take place, especially if you only complete it once per year! I recommend checking out The Annual Procedures Checklist!

Karen Diener

@John Andrus:

@Karen Diener
I have found that using chat to open a ticket is by FAR the easiest way to get help. We, as customers, don't know our individual support person's daily schedule and they may be busy helping other schools. Chat gets a ticket open and allows other people to help immediately. I would encourage you to have your client always start with chat, not their one-on-one customer support person. If it's outside the hours for chat (something like 8am to 6pm Eastern Time) then post on these forums. They seem to have people watching them closely.

Oh, they do start with chat support, believe me! I've been using Blackbaud products since 1997.

I always tell people to start with the knowledgebase and then go to chat support for more details or clarification. But again, the knowledge of the support person varies A LOT.

When chat support doesn't do the trick, we escalate and that's when the client's Customer Success Manager is non-responsive. Or the implementation person that is supposed to be shepherding them through a migration.

We always fill out support surveys and always offer to chat more if the person in charge of support asks for more detail about the case. It is incredibly rare that they take me up on it.

I'm aware of the avenues, but also all too aware of the roadblocks and dead ends on those avenues.

Arunaa Atreya

@Karen Diener

Can you please provide me with the case number and/or client you are working with? I would like to research this issue further.

I apologize for the inconvenience caused.