Preferred Names in School Forms?

Morgan Kunze
Morgan Kunze
Sixth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
in Blackbaud K–12 Education Solutions™ General Discussions
Hi, we're about 6 months in to implementation, and still finding our way around some of the communication pieces.  It looks to me as though I can't add a student's "preferred name" to a school form (I've looked at a couple of the canned forms and the blank form so far). We have a strict policy at our school of only using a student's preferred name, so the lack of this feature means that we will have to transfer all preferred names to the "first name" field and create a separate custom field for "legal first name" or something to cover the gap.  Am I misunderstanding the way this section of the form works, or is this feature really not there?  


I submitted an "idea" to the portal, surprised that I didn't see this already in there.  But as I say, I'm a relative noob and may simply have missed something.  If not, will you please upvote my idea (if you think it's a good idea ? ) and let's get this feature implemented!  I know that Blackbaud has been working hard to improve the identity fields (gender, preferred name) elsewhere in the system.  


Thanks!

Comments

  • Susan Ott
    Susan Ott
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant
    Thank you  Sarah Bienvenue. This has been an issue for us as well. I had brought it up to support at one time but never got a satisfying answer. 
  • Morgan Kunze
    Morgan Kunze
    Sixth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant
    Sarah Bienvenue‍ that is great news!  Thank you so much for your response.  
  • Jennifer Welch
    Jennifer Welch
    Third Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    I see this has been addressed somewhat but I have another issue regarding preferred name. It seems as though we are only allowed to use a preferred first name. What happens when a person needs to retain their legal first and last name but wishes to be known by a different first and last name? How can we set this up short of retaining the legal name in a memo field or official note?

    Thanks.

  • Morgan Kunze
    Morgan Kunze
    Sixth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Jennifer, I'm interested to know how others manage this. We do use an admin-only field for “legal name” and use it in cases of identity transition, family changes, etc. We also have a separate admin-only field called “profile idiosyncrasies" that the Registrar can reference when looking for immunization records, etc. if a student has previously been enrolled under a different name, or to post a note if they need their transcript to read differently than their in-school records, or whatever. There are so many individual situations to navigate it's hard to see how a system can accommodate everything!!

  • Kathy Hannon
    Kathy Hannon
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 K-12 Fall 2025 Product Update Briefing Badge Name Dropper

    @Jennifer Welch Our policy is - use legal - birth certificate recorded First & Last names. Preferred name is used for nickname, and name changes (trans until formal legal name change). Our parents might bulk a bit but they understand - it's fair to ALL parties and better data keeping too.

  • Jennifer Welch
    Jennifer Welch
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    @Kathy Hannon I understand that and it is how we do it at our present school. The school I am now working with and will be transitioning to full time soon has other needs so I was wondering how those schools who want to use both a preferred first and last name handle it. I think that is how we are going. Thank you!

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