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Heritage Hall loves Blackbaud!
March 28, 2018

Heritage Hall loves Blackbaud!

Jessica Walters | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Blackbaud K-12 “ON” Solutions

The ON products are used by all constituents in all departments across campus except in the Business Office and Development Office:
  1. We use onCampus, onRecord, onMessage, and onBoard for the usual uses.
  2. We also use ConnectRE to send the data from Core to Raiser's Edge and eventually to Student Billing in Financial Edge through the Integration.
  3. Our booster clubs use Community groups to communicate information regarding activities and events
  4. We are about to launch an "Alumni" portal so that alumni can log in to view resources, sign up for events, and share relevant alumni information
The ON products have solved the problem of inconsistent and inefficient data entry. We used to enter demographic information for students and families in 6 different software databases from 5 different vendors. Now, all of our demographic information can be entered once, ensuring accuracy, and our constituents can log in directly to update their own information. As a result, our staff can focus more on best practices instead of rote data entry. Furthermore, with all of our school functions housed under a single, cohesive platform, I am able to provide better support for all departments across campus.
  • The Student and Parent personas provide a unified and organized way to share class content (Bulletin Boards and Topics), grades, assignments, attendance and conduct information in a single system. The system is user-friendly and easy to navigate. (Before, students had to log into FinalSite to see teacher pages and log into PowerSchool to see assignment grades and attendance.)
  • Students LOVE the assignment center. The assignment center puts all assignment information from multiple classes and teachers on a single page. The status buttons empower students to track their own progress and take ownership of their work and time management. Because Assignment flags in the gradebook are visible to students in the Assignment Center, students receive timely feedback about their performance.
  • In onCampus groups, Bulletin Board and Topic pages are user-friendly and easy to adjust, edit, and manage.
  • The organization of courses in Core and onCampus allow us to adjust section offerings and apperance in report and transcript forms. At the same time, it prevents erroneous changes of fields that affect credit accumulation and GPA calculations. It also makes setup for Online Signup a breeze.
  • In onBoard, we appreciate the ability to adjust Checklist forms, even for existing candidates. The capacity for admission staff to see greater detail than the families ensures confidentiality, but it has been immensely helpful for parents view the student checklist. They are able to track their progress toward completion of the admission process. We saw a significant rise in percentage of families who completed the process upon implementation of onBoard.
  • Our onMessage website is MUCH faster than our FinalSite website was. I imagine that can be attributed to the content organization scheme under the Content menu in onMessage, reducing the weight of our online media.
  • Since the ON products are hosted by Blackbaud, we can manage anything and everything away from campus at any time.
  • We are missing a way to log community service hours completed by our students. This is a graduation requirement, but right now we have to track these using a series of hundreds of Google spreadsheets. (We voted on an enhancement request on the Ideas board.)
  • We would like to see enhanced formatting options in report card and transcript forms.
  • In the onBoard enrollment contracts, we need a way for parents to indicate their payment method (without paying $50/student for Smart Tuition.) If parents wish to pay by EFT, we need to be able to collect bank information. We also need a way to display images on the contract (like a tuition loan repayment schedule) and preserve formatting of text when we print the contract PDF. Right now, images disappear and text (outside of the policies block) are jumbled.
  • We would like to see improvements in Admission reporting. The KPI board shows numbers of contracts issued vs. returned, but doesn't show a number of contracts that are outstanding vs. not returning. We would also like to be able to quickly see attrition, re-enrollment, and new enrollment in a single list with names.
  • Our advisors have requested a report of student grades in each of their classes so they don't have to navigate to each student's Progress tab, which doesn't print in clean format.
  • We have saved money by consolidating our software needs under a single vendor.
  • We have saved time by efficient data flow and we have an expanded capacity to focus on how and why we are doing things.
  • Our implementation process was not well planned or supported by administration above me, so many administrative users were burned by growing pains and by failure to understand the software initially. If they had done the recommended training and prioritized the implementation, there wouldn't have been as many problems. However, they place the blame on Blackbaud, claiming overpromise and under-delivery.
We love the chat feature. Anytime I have a question, somebody is there after a click of a button. If the support analyst can't provide an immediate answer (whether in chat or on the phone), they reach out to other resources and come back with an answer or a plan to implement a solution.
Blackbaud is great for large schools who want everything organized in a single system. Blackbaud is not suited for schools who prefer a lot of mailed or tailored communication. It is designed for groups that will regularly reference the software. If the school prefers to send lots of snail mail and bulk emails, those processes require more time and management.