creating parent lists

Mary Cummings
Mary Cummings
Third Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant
in Core

How would I create a list/advanced list of parents of a specific grade?

Thanks!

Comments

  • Ravendra Persaud
    Ravendra Persaud
    Ninth Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Facilitator 1

    @Mary Cummings
    I believe this basic list would be helpful for you:

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    If you just need parent emails the Sky lists also work

  • Candace Chesler
    Candace Chesler
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Mary Cummings - I have built a number of SKY lists as templates for our faculty and staff. if you create a Student List - and include Parents and Parent Emails as two of the output columns - you can then use the filters to select specific grades. The beauty of the Student List is that it defaults to showing only current students without you making any initial selections.

    The SKY lists have so much functionality - I have cut way back on the number of Advanced Lists that I actively use.

  • Mary Cummings
    Mary Cummings
    Third Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    @Candace Chesler
    Thanks for your input. Would you have time to talk? I'm new to Blackbaud and I'm trying to get my head around reporting.

  • Candace Chesler
    Candace Chesler
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Mary Cummings - Certainly! Our last day of school is Friday - would be happy to chat next week. I'll send you a message.

  • Jessi Walters
    Jessi Walters Blackbaud Employee
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    @Mary Cummings and @Candace Chesler I'm Jessi, the Product Manager for Core. I'd love to join you in a conversation about how lists of parents are used. We are looking for ways to reduce the reliance on Advanced Lists, especially for things as simple as a list of parents by grade.

    I'm on PTO next week, but I don't want to hold up your conversation. I'll reach out via email to see if you're open to chatting with me in another meeting to provide feedback and insight :)

  • Susan Ott
    Susan Ott
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    @Jessi Walters

    Will we ever be able to use SKY lists for pushpage distribution lists? Other than the more complex lists, pushpages are the other main reason we need the advanced lists.

  • Nancy Kierstead
    Nancy Kierstead
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    @Jessi Walters If you ever want to chat about how we use Advanced lists, I'm happy to connect this summer. We use them all the time. I'm the only one who really knows how to build them, but I build all kinds of lists for department heads, grade deans, learning specialists, staff etc. SKY lists just don't give us what we need in some cases, or simply aren't available to faculty/staff unless you have a manager or back-end role. I can easily give a person access to an advanced list and point them to the Lists tile on our resource board. Something I can't do with a SKY list.

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

    @Jessi Walters I am happy to chat also, like @Nancy Kierstead we rely on Advanced Lists heavily because they are much easier to give access to individuals as they might not have the role to pull the Sky Lists themselves - especially our faculty!

  • Jessi Walters
    Jessi Walters Blackbaud Employee
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    @Susan Ott nothing is under development, but we are exploring options for an easier way to send bulk communication. I can't share more yet, but improving bulk communication is a high priority.

  • Brian LeBlanc
    Brian LeBlanc
    Kudos 5 Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Participant

    @Jessi Walters Hey Jessi, if you're taking requests, I'd be happy to chime in. I use advanced lists all the time, but I'd be happy to share my experience and see if there's anything that you all could use to port over to SKY lists. Outside of EMS, we almost never use SKY lists for anything because advanced lists are so much more functional (despite being significantly less user-friendly, especially for anyone who doesn't know basic SQL).

  • John Ronan
    John Ronan
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    @Jessi Walters,

    If I may, respectfully respond to the previous note:

    It seriously concerns me that the intention is to supplant advanced lists.

    Are there any plans to expand SKY lists to allow the choice of any aspect of the objects involved [and possible sub-objects] so that users do not have to rely on BB to add occasionally add information for display and filtering?

    If not, I fear it will be like patching a patching a sieve: by the time you (BB) release a column there will be several waiting to be added.

    At very least, a stopgap might be the addition of admin-only fields to the filter and columns for every SKY list. That way, one could always deduce [via a combination of other sky lists, spreadsheets, etc.] which objects they are interested in dealing with and “tag” these records by assigning a value to an admin custom field [via import] and go from there.


  • Candace Chesler
    Candace Chesler
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Brian LeBlanc - while I like the SKY lists for quick lists that my end users can run themselves - I also continue to use many of the Advanced Lists I have built over the years.

    I still need to be able to create a flat file of our families showing all the students and affiliated parents - or - all the grandparents and their related grandchildren.

    I also need to be able to query on Custom Publishable Fields on Parent and Teacher records. Love that those fields are available in SKY lists for students - but I need more. Frankly - I would like to be able to filter on any field that I can include in the output - similar to how filters work in Raiser's Edge NXT.

    WIthout some additional functionality - as @john ronan was saying - I don't see us being able to give up Advanced Lists anytime soon.

  • Art Bryman
    Art Bryman
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 2 Name Dropper Participant

    @Jessi Walters I'll give you an example of a list that caused us some grief: parents of graduating seniors, with no other children as current (or incoming) students. Support did find a way to list students who are siblings, but it didn't give us good results.

  • Jessi Walters
    Jessi Walters Blackbaud Employee
    Seventh Anniversary Kudos 5 Name Dropper Participant

    @john ronan and @Candace Chesler I hear you. We won't be deprecating Advanced Lists anytime in the near future. We are exploring options to bring a more modern and user-friendly querying tool to Education Management that will power robust list creation like we have today. We know that Advanced Lists are still needed for the breadth of column and filter options, ability to combine data across offices, accessibility via SKY API, use with mass communication, and definition of the record level - to name a few key requirements. We're still in the data collection phase for this project, so I encourage you to continue sharing your feedback like you do! It's all helpful :)

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