Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions: What’s New For October 17, 2023

Katie Burckhalter

Here are the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for October 17, 2023.

Billing management (Limited Availability)

Blackbaud Billing management is available to customers not currently using Blackbaud Tuition management.

Calculate tuition refund plan by subtracting financial aid from fees

Billing clerks now have access to a new option for calculating the tuition refund plan (TRP) that works by subtracting financial aid from tuition and eligible fees.



Access this new option in Billing management by navigating to the Billing years page, selecting Tuition refund plan in the side navigation, and selecting Edit under Tuition refund plan. Under Fee amounts, select Tuition + included TRP fees - financial aid.

View the payment plans from past years

Payers now have access to a new Plan year drop-down in their billing portal that enables them to select between different years and display the corresponding payment plan for the selected year.



Payers access this new option on the Payment plans page.

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Core

Hide/show disable tasks for a security role

When a platform manager views the tasks associated with a security role (Core > Security > Roles > role name > Tasks) a gray check mark now appears next to disabled tasks. Green check marks still appear next to enabled tasks.



You can now select Hide disabled which filters the view to only show enabled tasks and their domains. Clear the filter to show all tasks, including disabled ones.

Auto-complete addresses in Core

With this release, we’ve made it easier to add and edit addresses while also keeping the data clean and consistently formatted. This helps platform managers ensure addresses have standardized capitalization, spelling, and more (such as “Street” instead of “St.”).



Currently, this enhancement only appears when a user adds or edits an address from a Contact card in a user’s Core user profile. However, in future releases, it’ll appear in additional locations throughout Blackbaud Education Management, including later use in forms and 360 user profiles.



After you select a country and begin to enter the address lines, suggestions to auto-complete the address appear. Select a suggestion to use it or keep typing for different suggestions.

Blackbaud ID requires Multi-factor Authentication

This release includes the third and final “wave” of schools for multi-factor authentication (MFA) enforcement.



Blackbaud requires faculty, admin, and staff users of Blackbaud Education Management® (BBEM) at all schools to use multi-factor authentication (MFA) on their Blackbaud ID (BBID) username and password. These users have roles with Application or Employee/Volunteer types.



To learn more, view the webinar recording (25 minutes) from Product Manager Jessi Walters.

Exemptions

The following users are exempt from Blackbaud’s MFA requirement for BBID and their login experiences will not be affected:

• Users who login with a Single Sign-on (SSO),
• Users who login with Sign in with Google,
• Users who login with Sign in with Apple,
• Students, alumni, parents, and non-administrative users of Blackbaud Education Management. These users have only Constituent or Other role types.

What is MFA?

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires a user to successfully validate at least two of three factors to authenticate before gaining access to your solution and data. Blackbaud ID will require MFA using your password (what you use today) and a unique, time-based, one-time code accessed on a secondary device. We are proactively making this change, following industry-standard security measures, to help protect your organization and your data.

Miscellaneous

Please note:

• Users who use Sign in with Google or Sign in with Apple may be prompted to use an MFA that is managed by Google or Apple, even when Blackbaud doesn’t require MFA. These “social sign ins” are subject to the third party’s authentication processes, instead of Blackbaud’s process.

• Users who are already required to use MFA because they also use their BBID for other Blackbaud applications, such as Raiser’s Edge NXT, will still require MFA, regardless of their MFA settings for their roles in Education Management.

To learn more about multi-factor authentication for Blackbaud ID and to prepare for this change:

• view the online help,
• review this Knowledgebase article,
• view the webinar recording (25 minutes).

Please contact Support or your Customer Success Manager with any questions.

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Financial Aid management

Set up your 2024-2025 application session

With the new Multi-Year functionality that we released last year, an administrator must log in and set up your school’s 2024-2025 application year with open and close dates so your school is visible to families completing the application. Your school can decide which application years are open and when they are available. You have the flexibility to keep either the 23-24, 24-25, or both years open during the date ranges of your choosing.



When you create a new year, your settings from the previous year roll forward into the new year. Take a moment to review your settings and make any necessary changes, such as updating your custom questions, before families begin applying.



Set up the 24-25 application year:

1. Select Settings, then Manage School Years.
2. Select Add.
3. Under Session, select 2024-2025.
4. Select the Open Date and Close Date.
5. Select Save.

Multi-factor Authentication requirement

Blackbaud is requiring school users accessing Blackbaud Financial Aid Management® to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on their Blackbaud ID (BBID) accounts. The requirement is being rolled out in waves throughout the month of October.

What is MFA?

Multi-factor authentication requires a user to successfully enter two or more factors to prove their identity when signing in to gain access to your solution and data. In addition to their Blackbaud ID username and password, users are required to enter a unique, time-based, one-time code accessed on a secondary device. We are proactively making this change, following industry-standard security measures, to help safeguard your organization and your data.

Who is required to enable MFA?

Users accessing the Blackbaud Financial Aid Management school site.

Who is exempt?

MFA is not required for parents and guardians accessing the Blackbaud Financial Aid Management parent site.

School users who authenticate via Single Sign-on (SSO), Sign in with Google, or Sign in with Apple are not required to enable MFA.



For more information, please review this Knowledgebase article.

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Tuition management

Multi-factor Authentication requirement

Blackbaud is requiring school users accessing Blackbaud Tuition Management® to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on their Blackbaud ID (BBID) accounts. The requirement is being rolled out in waves throughout the month of October.

What is MFA?

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires a user to successfully enter two or more factors to prove their identity when signing in to gain access to your solution and data. In addition to their Blackbaud ID username and password, users are required to enter a unique, time-based, one-time code accessed on a secondary device. We are proactively making this change, following industry-standard security measures, to help safeguard your organization and your data.

Who is required to enable MFA?

Users accessing the Blackbaud Tuition Management school site.

Who is exempt?

MFA is not required for payers, parents, and guardians accessing the Tuition Management parent site.

School users who authenticate via Single Sign-on (SSO), Sign in with Google, or Sign in with Apple are not required to enable MFA.



For more information, please review this Knowledgebase article.

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API and Integrations

School API

New

Update athletic requirements for a student

We’ve added a new endpoint for adding medical athletic requirements for a student.

• POST Medical athletic requirements update updates a student's athletic requirements list for a specific school year and season corresponding to the user_id, school_year, and season provided. The athletic_requirements property accepts an array of objects, enabling a single call to update multiple athletic requirements records.

Use the value of value[i].id returned throughout various GET Users endpoints as the user_id.

School API and OneRoster API

For information about recently added endpoints and other updates, view the School API and OneRoster API changelog.

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Subscribe to “What’s New”

To receive email notifications when the What’s new update appears, make sure to subscribe to the K12 community’s blog by logging into the community site and selecting the Subscribe button.



To manage your community subscriptions:

1. Log into the community and locate your name and profile picture in the upper right corner.
2. Select the drop-down arrow and select My Account.
3. From the My Account page, select the Subscriptions tab and scroll down to the Blogs section.
4. Locate Blackbaud K-12 Education solutions Blog. If you want to be notified as soon as the What’s new content goes live on the community, select the Instant option. You can also opt for Daily and Weekly notifications.
5. Scroll to the end of the page and select Save changes.

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What’s Recent

Missed any of our weekly releases? You can catch up on everything in our Month in Review blog posts, which cover every feature and update Education management releases each month.

• September 2023
• August 2023
• July 2023
• June 2023
• May 2023
• April 2023
• March 2023
• February 2023
• January 2023

Chrystalle Kiefer

I like the auto complete for the addresses, but how can we control the format? We do not use “street”, we use “st”……do we have control over how this populates?