The Month in Review: November 2020 Feature Releases

Derek Nichols

Well, we finally made it. December 2020. It’s been a wild year, but before the holiday season truly arrives, it’s time to take a moment to look back at everything we added to the Education management products in November.The last month of 2020 is finally here which means that 2021 is right around the corner as well as a whole holiday celebration. We’re not ready to call it a year quite yet though.

With December here, it’s time to once again reflect on the past and keep you updated with details you may have missed. Let’s dive back in to everything that happened in November 2020 for the Education management products. Let’s get started!

Academics
As usual, the teams that make up Academics were incredibly busy in the month of November.

The Academics dashboard received even more context-specific help updates this month. Users will see a small ‘?’ icon on many of the available tiles from the Academics dashboard. Selecting them will open will pull up the specific help page inside of the panel. This month brought targeted help to Items to review, Today Is, Grades to approve, Find me now, and What’s going on? tiles.

Enrollment Types were another big focus this month. For those who may not know, Enrollment types allow you to control the following parameters for each student's course enrollment: Credits, Possible grades, and Attendance. The default types can be found under Scheduling then Schedule outline and include Regular, Audit, Independent Study, and Pass/Fail. For more on this feature, please visit our help documentation.

Other updates this month include:

• Educators can now change the text to draw attention to keywords and phrases, or to make assignments more accessible to students who need visual assistance. 

Core
Users were a big focus for the Core team in November, adding the ability for platform managers to add new users from their Core Home Page. This replaces the old method of first having to go into the Users settings from the Core dropdown menu.

In addition, when a platform or contact card manager edits a user profile and adds a related individual, they can also specify whether the new person will be a user and whether they should get an invite to log in through Blackbaud ID.

Enrollment management
In the month of November, the EMS team spent a lot of time tweaking checklists. Video uploads were a big focus with functionality added so common video types like MP4 files can be uploaded to checklists while administrators can upload them to candidate profiles. The Assigned Checklist list no longer displays archived checklists for student checklist administrators. Lastly, when managing checklists, data that extends beyond the word limit now have a See more option to expand the view. Select Show less to compress the list once again.

In addition, the EMS product also gained the following updates in November:

• Admissions managers can now view interview and visit notes as a tile option for review committees.
• Re/enrollment managers can now archive contracts using a new Yes/No setting. Archived contracts are considered inactive and can’t be edited.
• In regards to School Forms, if a manager has access to them within Core, they now have the ability to print them as well.

Billing management
This month, the Billing management team focused on easing the workload typically associated with preparing for a new Billing year. As such, you now have the ability to copy settings over from one year to another automatically. These settings include Financial aid, tuition, and fees and each now have a copy button beside them for ease of use.

Other updates this month include:

• Payers can now leverage time-based filters to refine what transactions appear on their Current bill.
• Billing clerks can now calculate Enrollment deposit amounts to equal the difference between a defined percentage of tuition costs and awarded financial aid. 
• Billing clerks can use multiple transaction type filters at one time to refine the results in the list.
• Charge summaries now communicate the Payment plan the charge is involved in, helping to identify past, present, and future installments.

The Wrap Up

If you want the full and complete details of everything we’ve added to the Education management products in November, 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.

That’s going to do it for this week as well as 2020 in genera as we’re signing off in advance of the holiday break. Thank you for stopping by and checking out our new content, whether you’re a longtime reader or a newcomer. 2020 has been a difficult year for so many and I hope that these weekly blog posts were able to help make your life easier at work, no matter how small.

I also want to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you a safe and happy holiday season and New Year. I’ll see you right back here in 2021 when we kick things back into high gear here on the blog in January.