Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

Helps students and parents track progress.

Helps teachers organize and present content, assessments, assignments and grades.

Helps administrators manage enrollment.

Interoperability between Blackbaud products ,not one database for all products

Intuitive

Nice looking interface

Family friendly

More bulk complete options, we are a huge school.

A separate Q&A option in training sessions.

Perhaps have people on hand during sessions for individual help.

High level of customization (from the user's end) for onMessage pages

Nice user interface for several parts of the "back-end"/ portals

The chat help function is convenient

School forms (for online permission slips) - really awesome, and were a huge hit with parents. Except there is no way to organize prior years' forms, so I think they will be less than thrilled this year.

"Thinking through" features seems to be a problem, so most of them feel somewhat "incomplete." For example: School Forms are great, but without the ability to organize the dozens of prior years' permission forms for parents (i.e., re-order, or hide, or even change button color) the feature is going to go from great to terrible pretty quickly for parents. Same with SmartTuition integration, or the ConnectRE tool (which is perfect for maybe 40% of scenarios and requires manual exceptions for the rest,) Adding News is annoying (no WYSIWYG option for Header styles; can't enlarge the dialog box). Photo galleries are a problem when it comes to the responsive design. (No "lightbox" viewer, so any portrait images not only stretch to fill left to right, but also push content way down the page.) Navigation on the mobile display is ok, but requires an extra tap to get to a certain page. (i.e. Tap Admissions, then have to tap Admissions again, and then you see L2) I could go on about things that look/work great at first glance but still end up causing a headache. Still, by and large, the benefits are mostly worth the annoyances, though everything takes longer on my end to find workable solutions—including changing our own work practices to fit the website/database's demands.

The fact that the online event registration function isn't responsive is just plain ridiculous.

I'd love to see more ability to integrate, or even SSO, with other 3rd party solutions.

Data Management - Family data is organized easily and it is very user-friendly.

Attendance - This is easy to manage for all involved.

Enrollment - online contracts are convenient for school and families.

The "new" report card builder is archaic - not easy to format and not very intelligent.

Financial aid awards can be difficult to manage unless you use Smart Tuition.

Scheduling of school tours is frustratingly difficult.

Integrated systems making it easier to manage multiple places of data.

Ease of use--intuitive and quick to pick up how to use the software.

Great support--knowledgeable support to help when issues arise.

The tuition management system has room for improvement to deal with tuition discounts.

Better advanced training for the solutions.

Access for certain users (like teachers or managers) to see what parents and students see without having to grant too much access to the system.

It helps the staff easily keep track of records.

Enrollment is up to date.

Communication with constituents is more frequent.

I am unable to find easy tutorials to provide to parents and teachers.

Finding workarounds to implement.

Sometimes the customer support does not know the answer to a question.

Single sign-on system for users (parents, students, faculty/staff)

One database to manage

Streamlined communications (Messages, Notifications, Pushpage)

"Holding tank" for posterity/evergreen documents

CMS - lots of weak areas that are just not up to par with competitors for website features

onBoard - lots of features that are lacking, especially in terms of lead conversion/tracking, drip campaigns through enrollment funnel, and reporting

Too often get support answers like "that's just the way it is" or "we know that doesn't work well, and it's on our HOT list" (meaning MAYBE it will get addressed in a couple of years

Development database management through RE.

User end experience.

Online access to student documents.

The admin side of the education products section can be cumbersome to navigate.

Everything is built in a very visible block-like structure.

Hard to get customize information in and out of BB, most of the time it requires paying for consulting hours.

All-in-one service

Linking to external programs to help manage the different databases an organization uses

Drag and drop user experience

Limited capabilities on back end design/templates

Downtime in OnMessage/Pushpages

Downed pages/URLs not working

Integration with our Website

Email broadcast fully integrated so no more uploading data to a third party system

Resource boards are very handy in organizing important information

Enrollment Contracts are integrated with Blackbaud Tuition Management which has made the parent process and Admissions /Business Office much easier

Clicking thru from record to record no next or back button

Advanced lists are not so user friendly to an average user

Report cards are quicker to complete with the calculate functionality.

Recording grades for assignments and comments is better, no lost papers.

Collecting back to school forms is more efficient.

Website

Events and registrations

Pushpage

The ability to assign checklist to preschool transfers.

It is not always easy to find the report you need due to naming of reports.

Contracts for Preschool students because they change constantly

I like the ability for teachers to customize their individual bulletin boards for their classes. Allows them to provide information and enrichment materials that students can access at any time.

I like the SSO integration available for things like PTC Wizard conference scheduling software.

I like the ability to imitate parents\teachers as it makes troubleshooting issues easier.

There should be the ability to making changes to the interface to help the visually impaired.

The changeover to the Blackbaud ID was unnecessary, consider restoring LDAP.

Some of the management interfaces to do tasks in Core are clunky, they could be redesigned to be more clear and streamlined,.

The application has provided us with a complete management of the administrative processes in our institution, from providing us with an enrollment form to the billing process through Smart Tuition.

We can send pre-established contracts to our educators online.

It also allows us to open documents containing student information in case we need to consult or edit any data.

We have problems with the customer service that integrates the application, users who need support to solve a problem we have to manage them in person or through other channels.

Also, when creating and configuring an admission or billing form for the first time, we consider that it requires an advanced and prolonged level of knowledge and time.

Incredibly easy to use interface for the User (parents, applicants, etc.).

Ease of gathering data - Helpful lists, formulas, and reports.

Time saver - Especially in the Admission office. Since everything is done digitally from the user through the employee, there is no need to hand-enter data; you just click the button, and everything imports or exports as needed!

In EMS, we would love for custom fields to show on the Contact Card and be able to pull into our linked platforms (Raiser's Edge, Finalsite).

We would love to be able to delete old contracts, instead of just archiving them. Archiving only helps in certain areas, but full lists of contracts exist in some of the dropdown menus, which can be confusing for the employee if they are not familiar with all of the various contract types, titles, and years.

Keeping track of all parts of the enrollment process.

On stop shopping.

Centralized data on students.

While it is very robust, some of the logic is not intuitive—it takes a while of using it to understand how all the parts fit together.

Versatility in product options -many components are customizable to meet the needs of the individual school.

Customer support - options between email, chat, and phone provide access to a knowledgeable and friendly associate when needed (during business hours).

All areas of school life seem to be covered - space to work with athletics, clubs/activities, academics, counseling, business office, advancement, etc.

It takes a long time to learn to navigate the interface. It's not always very intuitive

While the knowledgebase and support are generally helpful, when you are looking for a quick answer to something it's not always easy to access quickly. Knowledgebase takes a lot of time to navigate to find just what you want.

Report building is a skill that takes time to learn and there aren't a lot of training options to learn it. I've had to learn by trial and error.

Design is aesthetically pleasing to look at.

User friendly layout.

Cloud based

Easy to update constituent profiles.

Wish there was a version of Address Finder for Education Management where the addresses can automatically be updated like in Raiser's Edge.

It would be nice for the analysis dashboard to include other groups of constituents in addition to "Students."

It keeps all of the students information in one place. Contact information, medical information, schedule, calendar, forms, resource boards & grades.

Saves on paper, you have the parents fill out the forms & important information & it's done.

The more you utilize all the sections the more you get out of it.

Sometimes trying to find a section is a bit difficult & when you go to the help you have to make sure you word it correctly.

It manages student grades.

It manages student schedules.

It tracks student behavior.

It manages student sports activities.

The new Competency Based Grading has really taken off, but we need to track dropped grades better.

It can improve its integration with Google Drive.

It can improve its billing function.

If there is a concern, Blackbaud responds quickly with a solution.

They have very friendly teams of support.

I felt like the demo we had was rushed.

The feature of subtracting amounts when transacting with Smart Tuition's set up screen.

Keeps track of attendance.

Scheduling.

Keeping web pages for teachers to post assignments.

I have not had any problems - it is a big improvement from other systems I have used.

Wealth rating information which guides us with constituent management moves.

Links and tracks relationships within the database.

Reports - I'm able to report on anything imaginable with the options available.

Online access to data from anywhere - incredibly important given the current climate.

Report results depend upon how information is queried - that could be made better so that new users are confident they are returning the data they are looking for.

NXT reports should look identical to the traditional database for ease of use.

Automatic email and address updates regularly, rather than having to run the work manually.

Applications are easy to submit, and save / remember information for families to come back.

Documents can be directly uploaded, and then are saved if we ever need to go back and refer to it.

Issuing contracts to new applicants electronically is great.

Creating reports is not as user friendly as it could / should be.

Some parts of the system still have a "back end" user look and feel as opposed to a more front end user look and ease of use.

There is no way for users (applicants) to reach customer support for issues that they are having, so I have to try to play middle man to rectify any issues - that can be frustrating.

From the admission side, Blackbaud streamlines the process, allowing for templates that look and feel personalized.

The product is easy to use from the back end and for our parents.

Data is easily accessible in the form of lists and reports.

Our Business Office would like for the software to work more seamlessly with our billing system.

We would love the option to create surveys through the software.

Creating and setting up templates for the first time is very time-consuming and requires advanced knowledge.

The ability to send "official" notes to candidates and internal employees.

The filtering and columns feature.

The potential duplicates feature.

There should be more automation across the board. Once a candidate "raises their hand", the system should automatically send them the appropriate email or official note.

There is a steep learning curve. It would be great to have more YouTube video tutorials. The support section within Blackbaud is great, but some folks learn better with a visual example.

There should be a way to text customers through the app itself.