The Month in Review: April 2023 Feature Releases

Derek Nichols

We’re diving headlong into May, which means we need to take one last look back at April. So let’s kick off the Month in Review and see what sort of content arrived for the Education management products! Alright, April showers are over, so it’s time for those May flowers, right? Isn’t that how the old adage goes? I guess we’ll see.

Either way, it’s time to discuss new features! Most of you probably know the drill by now, but at the start of each month, we do a little feature review called the Month in Review. We’re looking back at each update made for Blackbaud’s Education management products, so let’s get started!

Academics
In the new assessment experience, we've added metrics on how students performed on assessment questions. From the assessment Evaluation page, select Detailed breakdown. Under Question breakdown, a stacked bar graph displays the number of Correct, Partial, Incorrect, and Not graded responses for each question. Faculty can hover over a bar in the graph to isolate that response category or select a response category from the key to show or hide that category in the graph.

In addition, you can now add the image of a signature to the signature line on Report Card and Transcript templates. This can be useful in cases where a school wants to include, for example, the Head of School’s signature on each student transcript.

Also in April:

• If a school has created Admin view only fields or Publishable fields, those fields can now display as columns on the Day attendance list and Class attendance list. These columns are already also available on the Students list.
• We have begun to roll out LTI 1.3 as a connection type and have constructed a new landing page for setting up LTIs. In this first iteration, we support the launch of LTI tools via the new 1.3 authentication method. We do not yet support LTI Advantage, so you may encounter incompatibilities when connecting to various LTI 1.3 compliant tools. The function to allow Assignments & Grade Services 2.0 is available. Tools that require Deep Linking 2.0 or Names and Role Provisioning Services 2.0 will not yet function, though we have plans to implement both of these capabilities in the future.
• A slight change has been made in the way credits are applied toward a General Elective Requirement for a degree. This change is visible on the Requirements tab of a student profile.
• When Allow for partial credit is enabled on multiple choice questions, points are awarded for correct answers selected and deducted for incorrect answers selected. If more incorrect answers are selected than correct answers, zero points are awarded, never a negative score.
• In Assignment Center and on class Assignments pages, we’ve added columns for Assignment description and Section block. To add these columns to their view, teachers select Columns, enable Assignment Description and Section block, then select Apply changes.
• Two new columns are available for the Consequences list: Infraction date and Infraction description.
• Reporting for the new assessment experience now includes Question insights, which teachers can use to quickly identify the most incorrect question and most correct question in their assessment. Incorrect and Partial answers are combined to determine the most incorrect question. In instances of a tie, more than one question will be listed.

Billing management
Transaction type is a new filter available on the Recent payments list, enabling Billing clerks to refine the list results by focusing on either Payments or Enrollment deposits. This refinement allows Billing clerks to exclusively display Enrollment deposits, making it easier to group them into bank deposits directly from the list.

More updates in April:

• Funding type is now available as a required option when adding payments, enabling Billing clerks to further organize payment records for tracking and reporting purposes.
• Failed payments are now given a post status of Do not post, preventing them from being posted to the general ledger and ensuring only valid transactions are recorded.
• We've added a new Recent credits list to Billing Management. This new addition joins the existing Recent payments and Recent charges lists, providing Billing clerks with a focused and filterable list of credits.

Enrollment management
Thanks to ideas from our community, we've expanded the information displayed from Student Checklist. Now, admissions managers will see totals for Steps ready to process and Steps in awaiting status. Keep in mind that these values are specific to the school year selected in the list, so changing that will also change the totals displayed.

Other updates this month:

• Candidates filling out an Application form now copy address values from the Applicant Block and hide Household address fields when selecting Yes for the Address same as user option.
• The Candidate date of birth is now included in the Process file submissions header information.
• When a school form recipient is filling out a profile update form, if the Address Same as User field is selected, it now copies the address values from the User Address.
• We've added a new checkbox style field called Languages Spoken at Home when creating a new Inquiry Form. Once the form is processed, the selected languages then appear correctly on the user's Contact Card under the Citizenship/Resident section.
• We've added new date range filtering and column options for the Candidates list including Last week, Last month, Last school year, and Last calendar year.

Extracurricular
Extracurricular was active in April! While in Manage teams, Athletic Group Managers can now update team photos. This can be done under Athletics, Athletics setup, and Manage teams, then select the team name > Team details. If a team photo already exists, it displays under Team section photo. To add, update, or remove a team photo, select Edit team photo.
Also this month:

• Athletic Group Managers can now review and update team members and their details from Extracurricular > Athletics > Athletics setup > [team name] > Manage roster. Managers can add and remove team members, as well as edit member information, including Jersey numbers, Positions, player photos, and more

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That will put a bow on April 2023. We have a lot more planned this month in the blog so make sure to stay up to date by subscribing so you don’t miss a thing. See you right back here next week for more BBEM content!