Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions: What’s New for December 5, 2023

Katie Burckhalter · December 2023

Here are the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for December 5, 2023.

Academics

Conduct

The specified calculate dates for conduct setup now default to match the school year dates. Previously, when changing the current year indicator on a school year, the calculate dates for conduct caused threshold calculations to break.

New Assessment creation experience from calendars

Assessments created from the Calendar, as well as the calendar views of the Assignment Center and class Assignments pages, now utilize the new Assessment builder. Previously, creating an Assessment from these calendars launched the old builder.

Removing old assignment annotations

A little over a year ago, we introduced a new tool for annotating files that students submit for assignments. With the implementation of that new tool, it meant that eventually the previous annotation tool would leave our Learning Management System. As of December 12th, 2023, annotations created with the previous tool will no longer be accessible. Any file with annotations added prior to July 5th, 2022, will no longer display those annotations. This update does not impact any grade information, the original files submitted by students, or annotations added after July 5th, 2022.

Report Cards

We've added sorting to the Attendance Summary Excuse Category to better match the order defined on the template.

Exclude past students from rank calculations

Grading Managers can now configure rank calculations to exclude withdrawn students with the Past Student role.

In Academics, select Grades, Grading Setup, then Calculations.
Under Rank, select Add new rank calculation or select Edit for an existing calculation.
Enable Exclude Past Students.
Select Save & Close.

New student assignment experience available

A new student assignment experience is available for schools to enable through Activate new features. Platform Managers can review the provided resources, including the Getting Started video, and turn on the new experience when it best suits their school community. Once enabled, students and parents will have access to both the new and previous Assignment Centers. In Summer 2024, we will remove the old Assignment Center and the new student assignment experience will be required for all schools.

To activate the new student assignment experience:

In Core, select Settings, then Activate new features.
In the New student assignment experience tile, select the Edit icon in the upper right.
Set the Status to Active.
Select Save.

Note: It may take 20 minutes for a feature to fully propagate throughout your site.

The new student assignment experience includes the following updates:

Custom color coding for classes: Students can select a color to assign to each of their classes. The chosen colors are then used in both the list and calendar views of the new Assignment Center.
Enhanced settings and filters: Students have more filters to identify their actionable assignments and settings to manage the information displayed for their assignments.
Maximum points for assignments are visible to students.
Assignment and Class tasks: Students can create tasks for a specific class or tasks for a specific assignment, which is particularly helpful if they want to track milestones for long term or multi-part assignments. Previously, students could only create General tasks that are not linked to a class or assignment.
Separate Assignment Center defaults: Academic Group Managers and Gradebook Managers can now configure Assignment Center defaults for faculty and separate defaults for students and parents. Previously, the same default settings were applied to faculty, students, and parents.
Default assignment due time: Previously, all assignments defaulted to an 11:59 PM due time. Now, Academic Group Managers and Gradebook Managers can set a global default due time that better suits the school.
Enhanced Student Assignment Preview: Faculty can access an assignment preview that mirrors the student view. The previous assignment preview was not an accurate reflection of the student view.
New Student Assignment Details page: Students have an updated Assignment Details page where they can view all information for an assignment and submit online assignment files. The new page replaces the previous Assignment Details when the new student assignment experience is enabled.
The new student assignment experience utilizes SKY UX for improved usability on mobile devices.

Billing management (Limited Availability)

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

Record online payments against a specific account

We’ve added a new field for recording an account number under Transaction rules, Blackbaud Merchant Services clearing account. This optional field ensures that online payments are recorded against a specific account; if left undefined, online payments are recorded against the Cash account number.

Charge a required fee for payment plans

Billing clerks can now ensure payers enrolled in a payment plan are charged a specific fee as part of the enrollment.

Billing clerks define the fee under Special fees, and then apply the fee to payment plans within a billing year.

Include distributions from Yesterday in Post to GL

We’ve added the Yesterday filter option for Post date and Transaction date to provide Billing clerks with more flexibility when compiling their list of distributions when posting to the general ledger.

This feature is available to schools participating in the Post to FENXT Early adopter program (EAP).

Core

Activate new features

With this release, we added a new way for Platform Managers to enable non-foundational features when it is convenient for their school community. Activate new features enables administrators to strategically plan for the introduction of new user experiences, while also minimizing disruptions to user workflows during critical points in the school year.

Before activating a feature, review the feature details and documentation.
Unless otherwise stated, the available features have already completed an Early Adopter Program (EAP) and have met the criteria for General Availability (GA).
We will eventually activate available features for all schools.
Keep an eye on the What’s New for announcements regarding new available features and required activation dates.

To activate a feature:

In Core, select Settings, then Activate new features.
Locate the feature you want to activate and select the Edit icon in the feature tile.
Set the Status to Active.
Select Save.

Note: It may take 20 minutes for a feature to fully propagate throughout your site.

Employment

This release includes enhancements to the user interface that admins use to view and edit a user’s employment. These make it easier to view employment details while editing.

When you view or edit a user’s departments and sports, the school level abbreviation now appears in parentheses after the department name or sport.
When you edit a user’s grade levels for the faculty directory, they’re now sorted by display order.
We also made the edit screen larger.

Enrollment management

Attendee Options List

Admissions managers can now add a column to display the attendee User ID inside the Attendee Options List.

Direct Debit Surcharge

With this update, we've added the ability to toggle a surcharge fee when the Responsible signer selects their payment as direct debit. When editing a contract, select Deposit and then Block Settings for the option to include a surcharge fee for the responsible signer when using Direct Debit. Selecting Yes will automatically add the surcharge fee that the school set for that Academic Year, using the Special Fee value set under Billing management, while No will waive it completely. Please keep in mind that this change applies to billing management integrated contracts only.

Financial Aid management

Grade column in Financial Aid Export Reports

With this release, we've added Grade to the School and Enterprise Financial Aid Export Reports.

Tuition management

Text formatting in Email Parents

We’ve added text formatting tools to Email Parents, including the following options:

Bold
Italic
Underline
Unordered list
Ordered list
Highlight
Font size
Indent

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. The endpoint is in BETA and may be removed or replaced with a 90-day deprecation period:

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

School API and OneRoster API

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

Subscribe to “What’s New”

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Log into the community and locate your name and profile picture in the upper right corner.
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