Blackbaud’s Education Management Solutions: What’s New For Septemer 12, 2023

Bob Costanzo · September 2023

Here are the latest changes, updates, and new features for the Education management products for September 12th, 2023.

Academics

Attendance

For classes that have Attendance recorded, the block and meeting time can no longer be edited.

Pre-recorded attendance now includes the current date as well as all future dates.

Introducing: Name Pronunciation

Name pronunciation gives users and administrators the ability to record an audio sample of how their name is pronounced. The recording is then added to their profile page next to their name as an audio icon where anyone can select it to listen to the audio sample. Platform managers will need to first enable this feature from Core, Security, and then Profile Access. Under User fields, change Name Pronunciation to Yes, which then makes it available under General Information from a user's Contact Card.

Select Edit and then Name Pronunciation to bring up a modal, which allows the user to record an audio sample of how to say their name. Some users may also need to grant the web browser access when prompted to use their microphone. Once the audio sample is recorded, the user can play it back, record it again, or completely delete it. The audio recording then appears on the user’s profile page as an icon after their full name. Click on the audio icon to hear the recording play.

Please note that this feature is being rolled out in waves to schools over the coming weeks.

Scheduling Updates

This update has also made a number of changes to Scheduling. First, when clicking on a Section ID inside the grid for activities and advisories, a popover appears with more detailed information.

Next, when editing Activities or Advisories, the grid cells now display additional data. We've updated the Legend on Activities and Advisories as well to include the new information like a green block for when the student is enrolled, a plus sign when additional sections exist during that block, question marks to show a missing Section Identifier, and smaller gray text to show the current number of enrolled students.

Finally, Athletics no longer has a Legends button, and the Context menu for the enrollment no longer has the Transfer option.

Summer 2023 Developer Update

With this release, we've added a Developer Update video under Related links on the Faculty - My Day page. The video highlights improvements we made over the summer based on feedback from the Faculty user experience survey conducted earlier this year. It also features a preview of some enhancements we’re working on for the 23-24 school year, including an updated Grading tab interface, and a revamped Student Assignment Center experience.

Billing management

Add a link to the billing portal in notifications

Billing portal URL is now a selectable merge field for billing notifications, enabling Billing clerks to further personalize notices with a direct link to the payer’s current bill in the billing portal. The merge field appears as Billing portal URL in the notification.

To get started with notifications, head over to Core, select Communication in the navigation, and then select Notifications. On the Notifications page, select the Billing management tab.

Core

View user’s current employment

Last week we released a new Employment tile, which is visible to users with rights to view the Access tab of the Core profile. Now, the tile also indicates when there are pending changes to a user’s employment status, rather than only their current employment. It’ll show when the change will take place, who made the change, and which changes are pending.

In a future release, you’ll also be able to undo or cancel pending changes from here.

Enrollment management

Official Notes

Thanks to a Community Ideas suggestion, we've added new placeholders for Official Notes templates. These include:

Admissions > School Program
Admissions > Admissions Staff
User > Date of Birth

API and Integrations

School API

Get and post medical immunization for student records

We’ve added two new endpoints, GET Medical immunizations for a student (BETA) and POST Medical immunizations update (BETA); these endpoints are in BETA and may be removed or replaced with a 90-day deprecation period:

GET Medical immunizations for a student (BETA) returns an array of medical immunizations as objects for the required user_id path parameter.
POST Medical immunizations update (BETA) updates medical immunization records for a student with the array of student immunizations for the user_id referenced in the request body.

Authorization requires a user with the Nurse role.

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.

Vicky Lopuchowycz · September 2023

I'm really excited for the name pronunciation feature. I always try to make an effort to have the students tell me the proper way to say their name because I think it's really important. This will make it easier for the presenters with things like awards night and other events where names are read.