Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

Runs lists based on information entered into the system.

Offer knowledge-based assistance/links.

Offer knowledge-based chat opportunities to dive into unique problems.

They are always improving on how to create easier workarounds and solutions when it comes to "marrying" systems with another system.

The customer support is phenomenal.

The ease of access for both students and parents makes it extremely easy to use.

Constantly incorporating user feedback to enhance the site.

The ability to differentiate assignments.

The need for a positive reward system feature.

Ways to use the conduct to support a PBIS.

Ease in completing applications.

Ease in completing enrollment.

As a parent and employee, I love how all of the platforms are integrated with each other.

I wish that it was easier way to generate a contract.

I wish that there was a way to post a candidate to Committee Review from the candidate's profile, instead of having to go to Committee Review.

I wish there was a way to customize our dashboard in EMS.

Master rollover saves time

Calendar adjusts well for rotating schedules

Email communication with built-in groups (such as advisories or classes) is easy

The new transcript builder is essentially unusable for us - it won't include transfer classes, which is a tremendous gap

I feel that they need to streamline their site. Every function takes multiple pathways to reach and as a result, many functions are hidden from the average user

We are K-12 and our middle school teachers can't recommend classes for 8th graders going into 9th grade - this should be a basic function

it appears to be straight forward

it has course request, prerequisites and other useful features

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customer service is not accessible or very helpful

launching the gradebook added an extra step + committing grades

some features require extra steps to figure out

Classroom management of rosters, assignments/assessment, and grading at a class grade book level and grades for report cards. The grading function is flexible in terms of how a teacher might manage their class grade book and support consistency for rolling up grades for report cards.

"Pushpage" communications to constituents is a powerful tool for targeted messages and for tracking results of messages read, bounced, opt-out, and clicked through.

In attendance management, there is a nice feature to alert parents and staff when a student reaches a threshold for number of times tardy. It is difficult to do the same for absences ... we have a policy that when a student reaches a threshold of number of classes absent, their grade starts getting reduced for each additional absence. This is hard to track at a class level ... 5 absences could be 1 day out missing 5 different classes or it could be across multiple days and be 5 misses of the same class.

Online forms have good basic functions, however, additional formatting control and ability to include/merge more data from student records would greatly add value.

easier integration with other SIS / LMS ... like CANVAS and google classroom

Users can update their contact information within the system

All educational processes within one system

Responsive design that can be accessed securely from anywhere

User driven reports and analysis require a working knowledge of SQL

Steep learning curve for those utilizing multiple areas of the software

Several functions lack nuance or the ability to customize between divisions

Seamless integration between the LMS, EMS and SIS modules

Real-time, effective chat support helps me not only with urgent needs but also to work through possibilities for increasing how we use the product.

Feature upgrades monthly that respond to voiced needs from users

Assessments are somewhat buggy and don't have enough question types

Advanced lists could be more user-friendly and need to be updated to be in line with new features (but support is really helpful to work through making these work!)

In the enrollment module, some of the features that are still podium-based need an upgrade

Attendance portal - ease of taking attendance by teachers and editing/inputting by the attendance office

Courses set up is intuitive thanks to a great tab set up

Directories - availability to use filters

Sky lists - love these!

Forms - lack of conditional questions

Gradebook -lack of links to assignments

Not being able to customize displays, for example, Grading tab - we just finished 1st semester and teachers could only see the current quarter but not the 1st one which is still part of the first semester. Lack of customization in assessments.

Scheduling- even though re-running generating schedules, we're still getting a high number of unscheduled students. Lack of being able to limit the number of scheduled classes in a row for teachers.

Creating and generating built-in and custom reports

Managing curriculum and course information

The Platform Managers have many options for customization

E-Newsletter software is very out of date with very limited functionality

The website CMS provides limited access to styles

Electronic application process, including recommendation letters

Easy grade entry for Faculty

Online course registration

Online student directory

Reporting

Cross-module information sharing

Document reader for admissions submissions

Fully integrated from Enrollment through Graduation

Great API to access data

Constantly being improved

Requires a fairly sophisticated user

Nomenclature constantly changing - hard to figure out sometimes

Requires a lot of clicking

User friendly for parents

Clean look

Good customer service

Customization

Better email options

Better graphic usage

Integration with many other third party apps or software

Very impressive reporting

Donation collection made easy with Blackbaud

Multi user access available

Donor gifts tracking system

Unable to customize RENXT reporting

Quirky interface

Forms customization

For the most part, user friendly

Content is accessible through all platforms; desktop, mobile

Training/webinars/product information easily accessible

Lists -unable to just create a simple list of say 100 students of varying grade levels. Need to export, then whittle the list down. Super time-consuming. Not possible to run a list and then click the students needed from there.

Reports - [I feel there is] not enough of a selection of "canned reports" and no ability to create your own reports

Advanced lists - [in my experience] THE WORST - again creating more work - I spent over 3 hours trying to make an advanced list of all NHS eligible students, that included email addresses for the students AND the parents. Way too difficult and needs to be simplified

Learning Profile: [I feel] Fields for the person creating a learning profile for a student are too small. It would seem like the developers creating this have literally no idea how complex some accommodations are. Many accommodations come directly from a physician.

Checklists: Should be in Academics not just Enrollment Management

Ideas: [I feel it's a] good concept, poor execution. Many of the people who are actively using BB do not have the time needed to submit an idea, know it even exists or have time to search and vote.

Some aspects of Enrollment management should follow a student into Education Management. For example, [I feel]The Candidate Summary should be viewable once the student is enrolled. Converting a process from all paper to electronic-only works if the information is accessible to all pertinent staff

[I feel] There are many more - do better!!!

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions provides a centralized place for students and parents to find all the information they need for their day-to-day lives from assignments to schedules to athletics and more.

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions allows for prospective families to progress logically through an admissions process and gives admissions managers the ability to track all aspects of the process.

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions allows constituents to quickly update their own contact information, putting them into control of how they are communicated with.

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions has a very antiquated method for sending out email communications/newsletters (called Pushpages). Many other systems provide a more robust system.

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions has been working towards an all-in-one scheduling system, but the current system does not work for all school setups, especially those with complex structures.

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions forward facing/public website solution works well but does not have the "flashiest" of feature sets that other solutions provide.

The Enrollment Management solution works well in providing a user friendly experience for potential students, and also does a good job of tracking candidates through the various phases of the application process.

The parent portal and the use of community groups works well for getting accurate communications out to the appropriates constituents. As a larger school, it was challenging making sure everyone was informed about the upcoming events and information that was pertinent to them. With the use of the various groups in Blackbaud's solution, we have been able to tailor our communication so that everyone gets the right communication without having to send everything to everybody.

Blackbaud has several modules, but they all connect back to a Core database, that way common biographical information is shared between the various modules, and if it is updated, it updates everywhere.

Their system has an Open API and is OneRoster and LTI compliant. This allows their system to easily connect to other learning tools and systems to share information without having to perform numerous exports and imports to keep information in sync.

I would like to see a wider array of fields available to their User Lists and Insight Designer. Currently, some information is only available through Advanced Lists, which is an older platform for querying data and is much more difficult for standard users to work with. Making more fields available to the User Lists would make it easier for standard users to gain access to the data they need without having to involve a data administrator or power user. Making all the fields available to the insight designer would allow me to build custom Dashboard for Administrators, which would make KPI data very accessible to those individuals and reduce my overhead to provide it.

I would like to see some workflow changes and enhancements made to their attendance module. While there are many great features, some of the workflows put in place make the use of this module hard to manage for larger schools.

I would like to see the user roles/permission module revamped to allow for more granularity when granting access to parts of the system. I know they are actively working on revamping this, but it is still currently an opportunity for improvement.

The "front end" marketing side of the site is great with its mobile-friendly platform. The site looks very professional, yet student-centered.

Behind the password, class pages are informative and students can have access to their homework and schedules.

The site is there for parents to login and access information that they need from the school at their fingertips.

Parents have access to a school online directory and can assess parent-related links, resources, photos, and class inforation

The entire On record module needs immense improvement. It's extremely clunky and hasn't been updated in ages. It's an afterthought.

The event registration piece is not mobile friendly. We have had tons of issues with people having problems signing up for events on their phones.

The reporting and lists functions can be clunky and difficult to execute.

Easy to use, simple and clear interface.

Logic and data flow designed to suit needs of educational institutes.

User-friendly interface and functions for administrators and developers.

Some features in the system are outdated and difficult to navigate.

Poor integration with certain reporting system required by the ministry.

The learning management part is not considered to the ideal one by our school.

Very user-friendly for "non-tech" parents/guardians.

It covers all areas of school daily life. Academics, activities, athletics and community groups involving parents/guardians.

It is constantly improving in all areas of the user interface.

Some of the functionality of advanced lists require extra clicks to perform steps.

SKY lists are constantly improving, but have a ways to go. They are so easy to build and use but are limited to what can be displayed or filtered.

Bulk deleting of rosters would be a nice improvement.

The availability of data to all constituents anywhere that you have internet access is vital.

The ability to view online data easily on every device is crucial. (responsive views).

Ease of use for Parents and Students has been critical. Students figure it out on their own. Written "how to" documents were hardly used by students.

Blackbaud is committing resources to always evaluate and improve their product. It is comforting to know that if there is functionality that you wish was better, it is only a matter of time and it will likely be improved.

We need personal profile data updates for parents to update their record in Tuition Management automatically.

We need to be able to view the feeder school on the student's academic record and not have to go to Enrollment Management to see this.

More scheduling rules like, "do not schedule X in the same semester as Y."

Allows sharing of content between classes and teachers.

Provides good integration of event and news items between internal and external (public website) systems.

Provides a single place for assignments, grades, and feedback.

Creating schedules is extremely complex and doesn't provide good opportunities for selecting between different options.

Customer support is sometimes extremely slow at finding and offering solutions to problems.

Terminology is sometimes hard to figure out: the system will use the same or extremely similar names for multiple different features or options (grades vs grading; assignment; assessment).

Knowledge base is mostly filled with articles that are outdated, offering instructions that are no longer helpful because the system has changed too much since the article was written, and the steps/menus that are listed no longer exist.

Complete package from enrollment through to Smart Tuition billing.

Excellent support via chat. Very informative and responsive at all times.

Great reporting abilities.

Would love to be able to archive events.

Additional Fields in Applications (Enrollment Management).

Ease of use is great. Easy to view the information by parent and student and easy to schedule. Very intuitive to use.

Great user interface. The parents are enjoying being able to get the information in an easy format. They can easily log on and see what class their student is in and their daily attendance.

As Registrar, I enjoy how easy it is to update a room change or enter in new comments or notes on a student's records.

Reporting - Hard to print out a schedule matrix like we did in Education Edge. The new K-12 system needs a report similar to the Master Schedule in Education Edge. They have one named that, but it is nothing like the old option. The ability to print a room matrix would be great.

Reporting - printing out actual student schedules. Improve the ability to print an A/B schedule for students.

Ability to query data like in Education Edge. This is absolutely a must. The ability to get data out of the system is horrible compared to the previous Education Edge product we used from Blackbaud.

The biggest problem we have run into is that the new system does not support a student changing sections from 1st term to 2nd term. We use final grades, so the terms must be combined into a single Final Course Grade. This is something that Education Edge easily supported. It should have been discovered and brought up before we converted to K-12. Blackbaud should have a list of functionality that will go away when you migrate to the new system. These are both Blackbaud owned systems and they should be more responsible.

Customer Support: Overall, the majority of analysts are knowledgeable and helpful. If they are not able to directly help with an issue they will escalate to appropriate departments and keep you informed of progress.

Partnerships: While the EMS can act as the whole solution, not all schools fit that mold. K12 Partnerships allow institutions to find the best individual fit while remaining connected via API/SSO, etc.

Roles and Security: I know this is currently under development, but at present, it is difficult to make sure users have the appropriate permissions. Cloning roles to customize doesn't always work as it can allow for users to have access to information they do not need.

Wednesday Releases: I have personally found that there can be larger-scale issues that occur as a result of the Wednesday releases.