Import assignments wizard

Hi Blackbaud. Please reply to this to give us guidance on how help our teachers with these changes to the import wizzard and the new assignment list interface.

- How can teachers make the import work sortable by due date?

- Point us to the instruction page for using the import tool.

- give us some pointers on why the new import tool and assignment tabs were changed so we can share positives with teachers about the new arrangements.

- Why does the assignment tab filer "in the past" not show assignments from the past?


We need help with this esp. during this time when using the system is more important than ever.  

 

Michael Moulton‍ sorry I missed a couple of your asks in my last response. The new designs have simplified menu and filter options which is part of what lends itself to being more mobile friendly as well. And we have sticky view functionality so that if they change their filters and columns to what they typically want to look at it should remember those so they don't have to repeat that every time they go to the assignment center. There is yes a known bug with the past assignments filter not working right now but it is in our upcoming sprint so should be fixed soon!

Thank you Michael Moulton‍ ! 

Help! The "past" filter for importing assignments still doesn't work and the order of assignments in the import list as alphabetic and not by date is really problematic!

I have been trying to import assignments for several weeks and am beyond frustrated.  Importing topics is so easy...why isn't the process similar?  The filter(s) are lame!!!

‍ Michael Moulton‍ dates (sortable) in the assignment import wizard will be going to production in tomorrow's release.

Thanks Megan Day‍ I hope it helps alleviate some pain tomorrow. If the dates being added back in don't do it for them definitely reach out to support and put something in and they'll get it escalated to us up in product/dev. Thanks for your help!

Hi Lorrin Saliba‍ that's strange, when I test importing assignments I see them whether type is populated or not. Can you open a support ticket? It may be there is something about the data on the assignments you're not seeing that's a different scenario and we can look into. On the part about displaying whether assignment, assessment or discussion like we do in the assignment list view I can put that in for dev to add. thanks!

Lorrin Saliba‍ Thank you!!! I will share that tip with my teachers.

Angie Addison‍ Thanks for your quick response. When we click on Last Due to sort the dates within Import Assignments mode, the dates seem to be sorted randomly (see below). I'm happy to submit a ticket for this if it's not normal.


 

@Angie we're still experiencing difficulty with this new feature and are days away from having our students in classrooms.


The issues we are currently having occur at the final stage of importing assignments. After going through the process of selecting assignments and entering due dates, you arrive on the last page, confirm your import, and click "Save and Close."  Unfortunately, the window never closes. So you're left wondering, if save and close doesn't close, does it save? After some research, you'll find that it did actually save. It just takes some know-how of a new assignment center to find the imported assignments. Many teachers aren't savvy about this, so they are going back to redo the import. Now we're not only suffering through a clumsy import but also forced to sift through and remove duplicate assignments for teachers. For the worst cases where a teacher imported all of their assignments two or three times, Blackbaud said it would take 7-10 days to help fix this (perhaps with a charge). 


On top of this, some teachers get an import window that is zoomed in and hides the ability to select due dates. You can only navigate to the side if you realize there is a hidden scroll for the window. Oddly enough both of these issues happen to some teachers and then not to others. So it is very glitchy and challenging to prepare for. Even my Blackbaud support agent noted how inconsistent her experience was while testing this feature and experiencing what we have gone through the past week or so.


I'm also not certain why Blackbaud would remove the "add existing assignment" option for teachers to import assignments from the add Assignment feature. That was a heavily leveraged option for us. 


While I'm asking, are these the best directions from Blackbaud to import assignments?
https://kb.blackbaud.com/articles/Article/94909

Yippie Tracey Kounanis‍!!!!


Thank you for sharing your good news.  

Thanks Angie, I'm glad to hear other schools are having success with this tool. We're not in that boat, yet, but we'll continue to use our workarounds.


If it helps, this problem was replicated by tech support and they encouraged me to share the experience here. I'll add that all of our teachers are experiencing the zoomed-in window issue. It occurs while trying to filter a long list of previous assignments and the due date column is lost without scrolling to the right within the import wizard. It makes this tool very clumsy. 


Lastly, Blackbaud needs an "undue import" option baked into the import wizard.

 

Angie Addison:

Hi Anson Kendall‍ I worked with support earlier on trying to reproduce the issues that you're describing with the screen not saving and closing and we tried many scenarios and weren't able to reproduce it, it seems it was specific to one user on assignments with downloads from what they're seeing but we will get it into dev to debug on that particular scenario. I haven't seen any reports come in from other schools on similar issues and I know this is being heavily used right now so I'm optimistic that it's something isolated because of a difference in your environment or data in this particular teacher's case. We'll take a look though. Glad to see reports here of others successfully getting theirs in. Thanks Tracey Kounanis‍ !