A technology perspective of Blackbaud Education Management Solutions
Updated April 27, 2021

A technology perspective of Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

Anonymous | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

It is being used across all divisions (lower, middle, and upper schools). As previous users of the Education Edge products (NetClassroom and FAWeb), this product allowed us to have a relatively seamless transition into a much better SMS interface. Better for parents, better for students, and better for teachers.
  • 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,.
  • It is expensive.
  • If teachers keep up with it, it should save them time when grades are due.
  • Product updates can sometimes break the product
For the most part, I find that you can get problems solved pretty easily through the use of the chat feature. Phone calls can solve more complex issues, but you can also find that there seem to be problems that they just declare unsolvable or say they are looking into to repair in the next update.
It is certainly well suited to any system that is currently using Education Edge. Obviously, I believe that it is appropriate for any school system looking to have an SMS that allows for rich content would be happy with this. It is less appropriate for lower grades. Perhaps a change could be an interface that is more appropriate to the needs of, say, a 2nd-grade teacher.

Integrating Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

Most of the integration is fairly easy - however, there does seem to be some amount of finger pointing if a problem arises in the integration where both sides blame the other for something's failure to work. We have been able to always get things to work satisfactorily, but sometimes getting to the end result is a little more difficult than it should be
  • PTC Wizard
  • Connect Five Emergency dialing syatem
  • Magnus Health
The integrations in all cases were simple sets ups that allow the BEMS logon to function as an SSO to the programs
We have no plans at this time to integrate anything new with the system
  • File import/export
  • Single Signon
No
Have patience when things malfunction and be prepared to go to both sides of the integration for answers - don't be dissuaded by one side or the other in placing blame on the other. With appropriate pressure you will find out the answer and be able to repair the issue

Evaluating Blackbaud Education Management Solutions and Competitors

  • Prior Experience with the Product
When I arrived at the school we were using Blackbaud - in the NetClassroom set up - because we had a Whipple Hill website, when they were purchased by Blackbaud we ported our EE data over to Core - the transition was a bit painful, but we have been on it now for quite a few years and find it effective
Since we really did not evaluate any other programs but Blackbaud, the decision to remain with it when they purchased Whipple Hill was easy - it allowed us to move our SMS from the not very flashy NetClassroom to the much more flexible and user friendly OnCampus products. I would see no need to change this decision in the future