Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions: What’s New For July 11, 2023

Katie Burckhalter · July 2023

Here are the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for July 11, 2023.

Academics

Edit Enrollment Date

Schools can now edit Enrollment dates from the Student section of Manage Classes. Previously, schools had to first delete and then readd the enrollment date in order to effectively change it. With this change, schools can select Edit enrollment details to alter the field.

Core

User profile settings: Pronouns

Previously, platform managers configured genders and pronouns from a single tab within Core, Users, User profile settings, Gender because pronouns mapped to specific gender values. Now, platform managers will notice a separate tab for pronouns within User profile settings. In a future release, you’ll be able to use this new tab to configure options for pronouns separately from gender values.

Disabled accounts

Platform managers typically Connect and Invite a single user to Blackbaud ID from the Access tab of the user’s profile in Core. Now, if the user’s account is disabled, locked out, or inactive, an alert appears on the screen that the platform manager uses to confirm the user’s email address for their username. It now indicates when the account was disabled, locked out, or marked inactive and who made the change. When a platform manager connects or invites the user to Blackbaud ID, the user’s account is re-enabled.

We also reordered information on the Access tab to improve usability. The option to enable or disable an account is now directly under the user’s authentication status for Blackbaud ID.

View personas for former employees

Previously, if a user had a past employee role and a current application role (such as group owner), then the user had the Friend persona but the persona wasn’t listed in the User list. This is fixed.; past employees are now listed as friend personas in the User list.

October 3, 2023 – Blackbaud ID requires Multi-factor Authentication

Starting October 2023, Blackbaud will begin to require faculty and staff users of Blackbaud Education Management® (BBEM) to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) on their Blackbaud ID (BBID) username and password. These users have roles with Application or Employee/Volunteer types.

The requirement will be enforced in “waves.” The first wave of schools will require MFA as of October 3, 2023. If, by this summer, your organization has not yet established an SSO connection, then we will send you an email with the exact date on which your users will be required to use MFA.

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, 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.

Try MFA early

We recommend testing MFA with a cloned role at your school’s convenience. For example, require users who have the nurse role to login with MFA and BBID. The nurse could complete the login using a numeric code sent to their phone for additional security.

As a platform manager, go to Core, Security, Roles, and search for a role. On the role’s row, select more (…) and then select to Enforce MFA.

Platform managers can also Remove MFA enforcement from here (during your testing phase). When you disable the MFA requirement for a role, users in the affected roles may still be prompted to login with MFA. However, after logging in, the user can go to their individual BBID profile to opt out of MFA.

When MFA is required for a school role, those users can view their BBID profile, but can’t opt out of MFA.

Encourage your users to act now by enabling MFA on their Blackbaud ID if they have not already done so.

Miscellaneous

Please note:

Users who login with single sign on (SSO), Sign in with Google, or Sign in with Apple, will not be prompted to use Blackbaud’s MFA, even if the school enforces MFA for one of their roles.

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:

Recordings will also be available on demand after each webinar event.

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

Enrollment management

Locked Form Editing

We've added the ability to make edits to forms that are locked. When attempting to edit a locked form, a blue banner now appears at the top indicating that the form is in use and locked for editing. However, admissions managers can now select Edit Form on the left side which will open a warning screen that needs to be confirmed before the form can be edited. Keep in mind that only text-based fields can be edited (text blocks, field names etc).

Edits made after the form has been locked are also added to an audit log, which will keep track of changes made including the date of the change, the user who made the edits, which fields were changed and the previous and new values. The logs are accessible from View History under Edit Form. Locked form edition has been added to Application, Inquiry, School, Recommendation Forms, as well as contracts.

School Forms

The Submission count for School Forms no longer includes forms that were declined. The School Forms page now has a dedicated count showing the number of forms that were declined.

Additionally, Inactive and Archived School Forms can no longer be selected for a Checklist Step.

API and Integrations

Improvements to WISEdata export year-over-year transitions

Several improvements have been made to managing WISEdata exports (Wisconsin Information System for Education), a system specific to schools operating under Wisconsin's Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

Previously, admins transitioned to new school years by overwriting a single, global WISEdata data row as the new school year approached. Now, admins create a new school-year-specific data set for each school year and toggle Enable for automated export when they are ready for it to become active, serving to simplify the annual data transition process.

The complete list of changes includes the following:

We’ve moved the WISEdata configuration page; it’s now found in Core under System Tools > Integrations.
WISEdata data configurations are now school-year-specific:
- Add the data for each new school year or,
- Copy an existing school year to use as a new one approaches.
Toggle Enable for automated export for a configuration to be active for the current school year. Toggling this setting to active automatically unsets the option for the previous school year.

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”

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

To manage your community subscriptions:

Log into the community and locate your name and profile picture in the upper right corner.
Select the drop-down arrow and select My Account.
From the My Account page, select the Subscriptions tab and scroll down to the Blogs section.
Locate Blackbaud Higher 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.
Scroll to the end of the page and select Save changes.

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.