The Month in Review: August 2021 Feature Releases

Derek Nichols

August has come and gone, which means for many of you, school is back in session. Before we get too far ahead of ourselves though, let’s end the summer months with one final look back at everything we added during August 2021.The dreaded phrase, “School is back in session” now rings true, putting an end to the summer months. The good news is, we’ve continued to be plenty busy in preparation for your return to the Education management products, some of which I detailed in last week’s blog. If you missed it, make sure to check it out.

In addition to new resources and help content, the development teams have also been hard at work adding new features and making quality of life improvements. So, as you’ve come to expect, here’s everything that happened with the Blackbaud Education Management products for the month of August.

Academics
As expected, it was another busy month for the Academic product teams. Faculty can now add assignments for a specific student or group of students after selecting the assignment(s) that should be assigned to a student when adding a new one. Under Publishing options, they will need to select the Edit icon next to Full Section then select Selected students. They will then see their course roster and can select students from the available list.

Once an assignment is assigned to specific students, it will appear on the Assignment Center with the number of students listed. Faculty can select this to view the students they have selected for the assignment. Faculty can add additional students by editing the assignment. Students will only see these assignments if they are assigned to them.

The Manage enrollment feature is being replaced by the new Edit student enrollment feature. The old Manage enrollment workflow is still available until the end of October 2021. A warning banner will appear across the top of the page when a user visits Edit student enrollment.
In addition:

• Faculty can now scroll away from the assignment header when viewing assignments, allowing more room for teachers to view and evaluate student work.
• Grading Managers can set up a transcript template to display a student's degree information, including Degree, Conferred On Date, Major, Minor, and Concentration.
• Academic deans can enter awards for a single student or multiple students via the Manage awards page.
• Academic deans can edit the Date conferred and Comment on student awards via the Manage awards page.
• Faculty can add official notes for students from their Gradebook. In order to add an official note, they need to select the student from their roster and select Compose official notes. You can then add an official note for the student.
• Faculty can now view all Discussion contributions by a single student, including their original posts and replies to others, in the same panel from the updated Assignment Details page.
• Faculty can sort the Cumulative grade columns in their Gradebook.

Core
The Years & terms page has been reorganized to fit more information on a single screen and improve ease of use. All previous functionality remains, but some workflows will look slightly different now. For a look at the page, go to Settings, select School information, and open the Years & terms tab. We’ll have more on this change in a future blog so stay tuned. For now, make sure to check out our documentation.

Keep in mind that on October 5, 2021, dashboards for Analysis (SKY Reporting) will no longer appear within the “ON” app under Core, Academics, etc. Instead, you’ll use the Analysis option in the solutions menu and it’ll take you to the Education Area. The solutions menu appears in the top left corner (three, parallel, horizontal lines) and is where you would select to access Core, Academics, etc.

To prepare for this change, ensure users have security group rights and roles to access the Education Area and that they log in with Blackbaud ID. For details, review this article.

Also released this month:

• When viewing the Handle Profile changes page, you can now get to a user's profile by selecting their name.
• When you edit relationships on a Core user profile, you you’ll notice that it’s easier to view and enter notes and comments. The full information appears by default; you no longer click to expand the view.

Enrollment management
This month for EMS, the team made a couple of form related changes. First, the Relationship to Applicant field on an Inquiry Form now has a Parent option. In addition, the parent relationship selection now processes from the application and inquiry forms.
Finally, Admissions managers can now use the full HTML editor to format Committee review notifications.

Billing management
In August for Billing management, we’ve improved the experience for payers making an online transaction after selecting Make a payment on the Current Bill. Specifically, the Upcoming payment date and Recent payments/credits sections are removed. The Payment amount now breaks down how each student a payer is responsible for contributes to the owed amount. Payers can select Other amount to pay custom amounts and target specific balances.

Anticipated aid now appears under Account summary on the Current bill for payers. The Account summary compares the difference to the Current Balance after anticipated financial aid is applied and shows the difference as the Balance after aid.

The new School decision column found on the Financial aid awards list provides Billing clerks with a snapshot of each financial aid decision to determine whether financial aid still needs to be awarded.

If you want the full and complete details of everything we’ve added to the Education management products in July, 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 all for this review. We’ll see you right back here next time. See you then!