The Month in Review: June 2022 Feature Releases

Derek Nichols
Derek Nichols Blackbaud Employee
Ninth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud K-12 Education Solutions™ Blog
Middle of July?! Where does the time go? Let’s go ahead and look back on everything that happened through the month of June for the Education management products.Happy July everyone! Hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July and the Summer continues to be a relaxing and great time. Thanks to the Fourth, this blog got pushed back a bit, but here we are!

Many of you have probably been wondering where the June recap is and I’m happy to report, you’re currently reading it! While we’re entering the middle of July, its never to late for the Month in Review, where we look back on all of the changes and updates that arrived for June 2022 for the Education management products.

Academics
During June, Gradebook was a big focus for the Academics teams. First off, teachers now have access to Cumulative grade - By section and Cumulative Average - By Section reports right from their Gradebook experience. After opening Gradebook, navigate to Reports, and then select the specific report to start generating data. The information can also be exported as a CSV file if needed. Keep in mind that this feature adheres to Group Page Access and Grade Access permissions, so as long as the teacher can see courses and grades for students, they'll be able to see the output.

In addition, gradebook managers can now access and manage gradebooks from an updated list view in Academics, Grades, Gradebooks. The list can be filtered by School year and School level. Users can also search the list for teachers or gradebooks and open gradebooks from this list view.
Also this month:
  • In Grade average calculation setup, the width of dropdown menus for classification types has been widened to fit longer classification names.
  • Teachers can now generate and export cumulative grades for a date range using the Cumulative Grade - By Section report. Previously, the report only returned current cumulative grades.
Core
Important reminders for our Core users! First, platform managers can now select to join the early adopter program (EAP) which forces all users to log in with Blackbaud ID (BBID) before it’s required for all schools. From Core, select Security, select Blackbaud ID authentication, select Enforce Blackbaud ID authentication, and finally select Enforce to confirm you want to join the EAP.

The last day users can log in with legacy usernames and passwords is July 25, 2022. On July 26, all users must log in with Blackbaud ID. Parents do not need to login with a single sign on (SSO), such as if parents are not part of your school’s domain. Platform managers can migrate users to Blackbaud ID via the links on the Core home dashboard. They can also export user lists for use in mail merges and other communications.

Enrollment management
For EMS in June, the team made an enhancement to how some contracts are accessed. Re/enrollment managers no longer have access to the Assign contract types tab. Instead, the functionality can be found in a new wizard from Manage contract forms instead.

Want more? Here are the other updates made to EMS this month:
  • Admissions managers can now bulk assign admissions staff from the Candidate list. In addition, admissions staff can be changed from here as well.
  • Billing clerks can now edit student financial aid if it hasn't yet been displayed on a contract. If it has, the financial aid information will be locked.
School Website
June was all about Notifications for the SWS squad. First, we've updated the Subscriptions Count column from the Notification list to display the number of subscribed users instead of the number of subscriptions through email or text. Hopefully this clears up any potential confusion over the displayed numbers.

Next, when editing a notification, the Notification Name - Context field will now display the value based on whether context has been added. If there is context, it will appear after a hyphen. If there is no context, a hyphen will not be used.

Other updates:
  • Following a recent Gradebook update, we've fixed the Missing Assignment Notification to correctly link to the right student.
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If you want the full and complete details of everything we’ve added to the Education management products in June, make sure to visit our What’s New letter. Use the Recent option at the top of the page to view past and archived releases. Want to stay updated whenever we have a new release? Get notified via email by signing up for our mailing list here.

Sure, it may be “Summer Break” for the blog, but don’t worry, I have some new content coming at you later in July so make sure to keep an eye out for that. If you haven’t yet, make sure you’re subscribed to the blog and feel free to leave a like or comment below to let me know you’ve stopped by. As always, thanks for reading and talk soon!

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