The Month in Review: August 2022 Feature Releases

Derek Nichols

As the Summer months finally come to a close and a new school year begins, it’s time to take one last look back at everything that came to the Education management produces in August.Just like that, Summer has officially come to a close as many, if not all, of you are back in school and greeted by the smiling faces of your students (hopefully).

As we press forward into September, it’s also time to kick off the Month in Review, where we look back on all of the changes and updates that arrived for August 2022 for the Education management products.

Academics
Student Enrollment was a big focus for the Academics teams in August. Specifically, when using Edit Student Enrollment, a new row at the top of the Find a section grid displays the student’s current schedule. As you scroll down the page, this row will freeze in place to remain in view.

If a student is enrolled in multiple courses in the same block, they will display side by side. Select the name of a course name in this row to see more details about it. Please note that the Current Schedule row will not update when you add enrollments on the rest of the grid. By default, this row will display the student’s enrollment for the same term indicated in the Starting in dropdown menu. You can change this by selecting a different term under Current schedule.

Also this month:

• When using the Report Card Builder or Transcript Builder, use the "Current date” placeholder in a text area to insert the school’s current date at the time you generate the report card or transcript.
• For schools that have set up Diploma Requirements, the Requirements tab on a student academic profile takes a student’s current in-progress courses into account when calculating the number of credits needed for a Requirement Group.
• When trying to find a course section in Edit Student Enrollment, if a course has multiple sections in the same scheduling block, all sections will display in the grid.

Billing management
This month, we’ve added a new option to add payments based on the student name or student ID is available in the Recent payments list. Add payment by student joins the existing ability to Add payment by payer name or ID.

For those interested, we’re looking for more members to join our EAP! Ask questions, provide feedback, learn about upcoming features, and engage with others participating in the Billing management Early Adopter Program (EAP) by joining the community forum.

That’s Not All!

• Payment method is now available as an optional column on the Transaction list; include Payment method in your list to quickly review which Payment method was used to pay for a charge.
• The Disbursement date for payments processed through Blackbaud Merchant Services is now featured on the Processing details section of payments.
• Disbursement filter and column are now available on the Recent payments list. Include the optional Disbursement column to review the disbursement date for payments, and filter on the Disbursement date to refine the entries in the list.
• Students enrolled after the beginning of the school year can now have prorated tuition distribution charges automatically applied. The distributions adjust equally based on the remaining number of months after the default starting month. This change applies to Tuition and Miscellaneous fees with Posting procedures set to post over a defined number of months.
• Pending date is now available under Processing details for direct debit payments. Use the Pending date to determine when the payment clears.
• Selecting a student’s Name on the My Actions list now opens a flyout with a summary of the student in question.
• Dates for payments now appear formatted for the Eastern Standard Time (EST) zone, whereas previously, they were shown in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
• A new optional column, Payment plan, is now available on the Transactions list. Add the Payment plan column to see the name of the payment plan the charge is associated with.
• Applying payments/credits to charges or charges to payments/credits now shows an Amount remaining field in the footer; the Amount remaining is the amount (e.g., charge) minus the total applied (e.g., payment).
• Adding credit card and debit card payments manually no longer requires Billing clerks to use a payment processor, providing a means for adding payments made “offline.” If a Billing clerk accidentally selects a payment processor, a new blank drop-down entry can be chosen under ‘Process with’ that reverts the selection.

Core
More important reminders! Ensure your school’s users are on BBID by September 27, 2022! Don’t forget that 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.

In the coming weeks, users will see some improvements to app.blackbaud.com, including your Organization display name and Logo icon, which will take them directly to your Education Management site. If the user has admin access to a solution, such as Education Management or Raiser’s Edge NXT, they will see it listed under Solutions on this page.

Also released this month:

• Now, list managers can choose to show Locker combo as a column in the Students list. The list already includes Locker number.

Enrollment management
In August, EMS made a number of updates related to BBID. First, when adding an Entering Year while filtering on a Parent of Candidate, the BBID Authentication List will now return results based on entering year of the candidate who is associated with the parent as expected.

Finally, when a school has Blackbaud ID enabled for Enrollment management, candidates will now see the updated login experience. If a user selects the forgot your login/first time logging in option, they'll see the sign-in/help message that was added under Core, Settings, Custom Text/Messages, then Sign In Help/Request Login Information.

Want more? Here are the other updates made to EMS this month:

• When creating a new account, we've updated the candidate username field text to say email address instead of username.

School Website
Heads up! On September 27, 2022, Mobile will be deprecated from Blackbaud's School Website System, meaning it will be removed from BBSWS and any users who edit the page will lose access to its features.

This feature is currently a low traffic, low-impact feature so we recommend that schools direct all web traffic through your main school website for the best experience. All schools with Website Mobile traffic should expect to see an email notification with additional details regarding this change. If you have any questions, please reach out to Blackbaud Customer Support.

Tuition Management
Couple of updates relating to changes to some features inside of Tuition Management. As of August 31, the Blackbaud Tuition Management mobile app will no longer be available for download from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. Previous downloads of the app will no longer be accessible on mobile devices. All payers should access the fully responsive mobile site — parent.blackbaud.school — for a consistent and streamlined experience viewing their account, processing payments, and more.

On August 3, Blackbaud Tuition Management stopped sending email notifications when a payer stops their auto debit. To continue receiving notifications when a payer stops their automatic payment(s), school users can schedule a Blocked Auto Debits Report.

And a few more:

• Invoices now display the names of both responsible payers. Previously, invoices included only the primary payer's name.
• In addition to the total Amount Due, payers with a past due balance now see the past due amount listed separately as Due Immediately on e-invoices.
• When applying billing on a Pending family in Edit Billing Details, users can now remove a fee or discount added in error.
• Users are now able to Override Late Enrollment Settings when activating families with due dates that have already passed in the current month.
• Parents connected via Single sign-on can now go to My Profile and select Unlink single sign on to break the link between their Core and Tuition Management accounts. This option was missing in the new rebranded parent site.

Financial Aid Management
This month, we made a change to Clusters. Specifically, enterprises can now use Clusters to group schools by Region, School Type, and School Category. Advanced Enterprise Users can configure Region, School Type, and School Category entries in Settings > General Enterprise Settings and define them for each school in Settings > General School Settings. Additionally, Enterprise Reports now include filters for Region, School Type, and School Categories and Cluster information is displayed in the Family Report and Summary Report at the Enterprise level.

Also happening in August:

• Enterprise administrators can limit the areas that school users have access to by enabling Allow Only Enterprise Budgets in Settings > General School Settings. With this setting enabled, School Users, Advanced School Users, and Read Only users cannot see Home, Reports, or Settings.
• The Gender field on dependent profiles now includes additional options for Other and Do not wish to respond.
• Award letters can now be created at the Enterprise level. Enterprise Award letters include awards from multiple schools within a single letter. From the Parent view, users will see an entry for each school included in the Enterprise Award letter. Upon opening the letter, the Enterprise letter including multiple schools is displayed.

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Thanks for stopping by everyone and here’s to a great upcoming school year! With the summer months now behind us, so to is the blogging break, so expect to see new posts each Tuesday.

So, if you haven’t yet, make sure to subscribe to not only stay up to date with all the latest, but put a smile on my face and the community managers here as well…probably. In the meantime, we’ll see you next week for an all new post. Thanks, as always, for reading!