The Month In Review: November 2022 Feature Releases

Derek Nichols

The weather is getting colder, Mariah Carey is back on the radio, and holiday lights adorn houses. Seems to me like we’re now in December which means it’s time to go over everything that released this past November.I feel like I say this every month, but with this recap, it feels even more true than usual. We’re nearing the end of 2022, jeez, where does the time go? December already?!

As we descend quickly into the holiday season, we have some business to attend to. As you may have guessed based on the blog title, it’s time to go over the monthly recap, where we compile a big list of everything that was released for Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions during November 2022. So, let’s dive in, shall we?

Academics
In November, Academics tackled Gradebooks. Users can select a student > See student’s gradebook to access the individual Student gradebook. If the class is associated with a school level using Mastery, the user can select to view Total score, Content-area skills, or Transferable skills in the Student Gradebook view. The available options will vary based on the skill types enabled for the school level. Transferable skills span a student’s academic career at the school, so when Transferable skills are selected, users can also choose between displaying skill details for Just this class or All years/classes.

Additionally, users can select a skill to view details for the student’s assignments associated with that skill. Assignments are separated into two sections: Evaluations for summative assignments, and Formative for assignments excluded from calculations.

Billing management
This month for Billing management, we made some updates to payments. Billing clerks can now add payments to a group of students using the new Add payment to a group option found under Add payment on the Recent payments page. Add payments is broken down into two sections: Defaults, which contains the default payment information for each payment, and Payments to add, the list of students for whom payments are added. Billing clerks can override the defaults on a per-student basis to customize and refine the process.

In addition, we’ve added the ability for payers to save and reuse payment methods, speeding up making payments. Payment methods include credit and debit cards and bank accounts (US only); the options available to payers to save are based on payment methods approved by your school. 

More updates in November:

• We've moved the notifications Financial Notifications and Online Payment out of Core and into Billing management. Please note that billing clerks can still find them under Core, Communications, Notifications, then Notification History.
• We’ve added an option to disable generating application distributions, found under Transaction rules when configuring Billing settings.
• We’ve added support for Project codes, an additional organizational dimension for distributions that integrates seamlessly with Financial Edge NXT.
• We’ve added additional criteria to give billing clerks more control over which general ledger accounts tuition revenue posts to. Now, under GL distributions, when configuring Tuition & course fees, selecting a different set of GL accounts based on each student yields additional dimensions.
• Text area is a new configurable section now available when building statements.

Core
It was a big month for Core as the user interface used by platform managers to access roles has been updated! Gone is Podium and instead replaced by a roles list similar to the design used throughout Education management products. Find it in Core, Security, Roles. Better yet, watch this video on our YouTube channel for a sneak peek.

Enrollment management
Application forms got some love this month in Enrollment Management. Specifically, we’ve added an option to connect and invite new users to BBID when admissions managers add or edit an application form. Once the application is processed with the BBID option enabled, a Login Email box appears and defaults to the email address entered on the form. New users will then receive a BBID invite email after the application has been processed.

Other updates this month:

• Admissions managers can now add the Entering grade column to the Attendee List.

Extracurricular
This month for Extracurricular, we added notifications to the Communication menu. Athletic managers can now customize their notifications right from Extracurricular rather than having to go into Core.

Financial Aid Management
Financial Aid users may have noticed that we added the Multiyear feature on December 1. Essentially, the Multiyear feature enables schools to decide when their application session opens and closes for the current and next school year. Schools can define sessions with overlapping dates, making it possible to accept applications for more than one school year at a time. For example, you can re-open the 22-23 session and continue accepting applications for the current school year, while also leaving the 23-24 session open and accepting applications for next year.

Additionally, the parent navigation has been streamlined on the Home and My Applications tabs. We are updating Help resources throughout the parent site to reflect these changes. You can review these parent resources here.   

Also this month:

• Automatic emails notifying parents that they have an Open application from the prior year will no longer be sent after rollover. Open application notifications for the current application year will still be sent. Additionally, rolled over Open applications from prior years are no longer included in Manage Families.
• We’ve removed “Other” as a Gender option for dependents in the application.
• Advanced School Users and Advanced Enterprise users can now soft delete applications from Manage Families.

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That’s all for this edition of the Monthly recap, we hope you enjoyed what Blackbaud launched in November. As 2022 winds down, so to does the blog. Next week will be our last post before our weekly blog series goes on holiday break. Don’t worry, we’ll see you next year (har har, not apologizing for using that tired joke) right back here, so don’t miss it.

Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date on all of the upcoming content as well as putting a smile on our faces for the support. Happy Holidays everyone and see you next week for our final post of 2022!