August 2009 - Posts
Introducing the List Lady....
Do you like things to be short, sweet and informative?
Do you like things to be numbered in a clear and definitive fashion?
Do you like series of items placed together in a meaningful way?
If you answered Yes to the above questions, allow me to introduce myself. I am the List Lady! Whether it's a list of my friends, my favorite songs, or my grocery store list, I will be sharing them with you. To start off, I'm listing the reasons why grades may not be included in GPA Calculations:
Reasons why a grade is not included in a GPA calculation:
- Are there grades entered in the marking column selected on the GPA Calculation?
- You can check this by looking at the student's record in Enter Grades by student:
- Open a student that should be included in the GPA
- Ensure the student has grades in the selected marking column
- Rerun the GPAs from this screen and filter on the one student.
- Is the course a transfer course?
- This information appears on the General tab of the course record. If the course is a transfer course, the GPA calculation needs to include transfer courses, to change this:
- Open the GPA calculation
- Check Include outside school grades on the General tab
- Rerun the GPA calculation
- Is the individual student grade marked to be included in calculations?
- One grade for one student in one marking column can be marked not to be included in marking column calculations. To view this for the specific student:
- Go to Enter Grades by student, open the student in question
- Press F5 to open Details for student
- Mark Use in Calculation for the appropriate marking column
- Is the student’s grade (i.e. A, B, C, D) marked to be included in GPA calculations on the translation table?
- You can check this from the student's grade details:
- In Details for Student, Click View Translation Table
- Go to the GPA view by clicking the paper with a 4.0 icon
- From this view, make sure the applicable GPA type has a GPA Equivalent entered and is marked Use in GPA Calcs
List Lady...out!
Over the last several months, we've been talking about our new Knowledgebase in our newsletters and on the Web Sitings blog. The new Knowledgebase has arrived! Read more about our new Knowledgebase and leave feedback about it on our Knowledgebase forum.
Do you have students who want to switch sections of the same class or move from one course to another course? Which option will keep grades and attendance with the students' records? Let's take a look at the differences in dropping, withdrawing, and transferring students:
- Drop deletes the student's enrollment in the class, deletes the student's grading and attendance information for the class, and omits the class from report cards and transcripts.
- Withdraw retains a record of the student's enrollment in the class, retains the student's grading and attendance information for the class, and includes the class on report cards and transcripts.
- Transfer moves a student between sections of the same course.
You can drop, withdraw, or transfer students using
Edit Student Schedules. On the Scheduling page, click Edit student schedules and open the student.
- To Drop or Withdraw the student — In the Class column, select the blank. You'll get a prompt saying you can drop or withdraw the student. Click Drop or Withdraw. If you receive the prompt the student will be dropped, check the withdrawal date on the term (BB145859).
- To Transfer the student — In the Class column, select a new section. If you transfer a student to a new section within a term, only the new class ID and teacher name appear in the row for the course on report cards. If you transfer a student to a new section across terms (for example, Madelyn is in section 2 of Earth Science in Fall and section 5 of Earth Science in Spring) and print report cards for both terms, both class IDs and teacher names appear in the row for the course on report cards.
Knowledgebase solution
BB134926 contains even more information and steps. Not sure of what happens when you drop, withdraw, or transfer a student? Review
How to determine whether to withdraw, drop, or transfer a student, which has an awesome reference chart.
It's that time of year again, school is beginning. What does that mean for Blackbaud users? Faculty Access for the Web setup, of course!
We know that setting up Faculty Access for the Web is not always the pain point; you also have to train your users and offer advice on how to setup teacher's gradebooks. Not to fear...Blackbaud Support is here!
Did you know we have tutorials that you can give to your teachers with minimal edits? We cover the following information in these tutorials:
Setting Up Your Gradebook:
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Setting Up Grading Scales
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Setting Up Marking Column Calculations
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Summary of Grade Calculations
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Setting Up Categories
Managing Your Gradebook:
- Entering Assignments
- Entering Attendance
- Entering Marking Column Grades, Comments, and Skill Ratings
- Customizing the Grade Entry Grid and Setting Options
- Entering Assignment Grades and Comments
- Adding Shared Documents
- Copying Categories and Assignments
- Getting Ready to Post and Viewing Posted Information
- Running Reports
Other Features in Faculty Access for the Web:
Using Spell Check
Approving Course Requests
Sending Emails
To view these helpful documents follow this link and log in to the website. If you do not have a login name for the website, please contact your site administrator.
For those of you who are regulars on the Faculty Access for the Web Ideabank, the most suggested idea has had the Planned tag on it for a while. Your wait is almost over! We're implementing a way for you to consolidate entry in version 7.80, which will be released soon!
The way to consolidate entry is on the Student View tab. It can't save the planet, but you can enter grade, attendance, skill rating, and comment for each student on one screen! There's even a Next button so you can quickly enter this information for each of your students. See for yourself!
Teacher, you'll be so proud of the Faculty Access for the Web 7.80 new features. Now that I've referenced one of my favorite Joel Plaskett Emergency songs, let's continue teaching you about those new features.
In Gradebook, you can sort student rows by first name, last name, or a custom order. If you want new students at the bottom or your Gradebook grid, select Custom in the Sort order drop-down and use the Move Up or Move Down buttons to arrange them. No matter how you sort your students, the rows are numbered in Gradebook, Attendance, and Skills so you can quickly see the total number of students in your class.
Want to see if Zack and Lisa's Friendship Bracelets or Slater, Kelly, and Jessie's Buddy Bands received a higher grade on your Economics Project? Now you can! Just click the Class Statistics button, and the project rankings are revealed.
There's one more fantastic new feature in Faculty Access for the Web. If you've visited the Faculty Access for the Web Ideabank, then you know it's the most requested feature. We'll get to that in my next post.
And if you know that Joel Plaskett song, leave a comment!
Here's a post from Blackbaud Senior Educational Consultant Chuck Hays.
Did you know there's an easy way to calculate totals for next year's billing? Have you been using the Projected Charges Report to its full advantage? (Reports -> Analysis Reports -> Projected Charges Report). This fantastic tool can give you totals by product and billing item, breakdowns by grade or month, and show student detail! Remember, you're not limited to one report parameter; create as many as you need to satisfy your reporting requirements.
The Projected Charges Report can be used before, during, and after billing for next year. If you added bill codes to student records, but you haven't added billing schedules for next year, the report can still calculate what will be billed! If you've already added billing schedules but haven't generated charges, the report can calculate financial aid and advance deposits as well. In other words, you don't need to generate the charges and credits in order to have accurate totals for next year's billing.
Here's an overview of key settings in the report.
- Selecting the billing time frame and student grade levels:
- On the General tab, use the Scheduled dates to select the correct billing cycle or data range for the final charges and credits.
- If you use grade-based billing, select the option to use next year's grade level if you haven't promoted the students or the "as of" date for the grade level if you use Registrar's Office.
- Selecting summary totals or student detail:
- On the Format tab, Detail section, use the "Show records..." checkbox to add student detail.
- Also in this section, you can elect to use a breakdown by grade or month.
- Grouping the report:
- On the Sort tab, you can group the report by Billing Item Type by adding the Break checkbox.
- Then a second level sort by Billing Item ID.
You open the linking grid and particular records are missing. Perhaps no Students appear in the linking grid or only records you linked previously appear in the linking grid. Why does this happen? There are a few factors that determine which records appear in the linking grid:
1. Integration Setup
In Set up Integration, let’s say you selected to include students with a particular status and/or grade level. You may need to cross-reference the student’s Education Edge record with your selection in the Students section of Set up Integration with The Raiser's Edge to see if the Student meets the criteria to be included in the linking grid. The same is true for Individuals who are relationships to students.
2. Filters in the Linking Grid
The Filters Button in the Linking grid is the most common culprit. Sometimes users will select particular record types to show only Faculty or only Students in the Linking Grid. When a different user looks at the linking grid, he may wonder why certain records are missing.
3. Drop-downs in the Linking Grid
Add As - In the Add As field, you can filter by Constituent or Nonconstituent if The Education Edge is the record source. If The Raiser's Edge is the record source, you can filter by Individual or Organization.
Matches - In the Matches field, you can select to show records in the grid based on matching status:
- <All> - Shows all records regardless of matching status.
- Any Match - Shows only records that are matched to a record in the target database based on your matching criteria.
- All Unmatched Records - Shows only records that are not matched to a record in the target database based on your matching criteria.
- All Unlinked Records - Shows only records not linked to a record in the target database.
- Linked - Shows only records that are linked to a record in the target database.
- Match - Shows only records that are matched to a single record in the target database based on your matching criteria.
- Multiple Match - Shows only records that are matched to multiple records in the target database based on your matching criteria.
- Academy Manager Match - Shows only records with an Academy ID that matches an Academy ID on a record in the target database.
Conflicts- In the Conflicts field, you can select to show records in the grid based on conflicts:
- <All> - Shows all records regardless of conflicts.
- Data Conflict - Shows only records with different values in mapped fields.
- Multiple EE Match - Shows only records with more than one matching record in the Education Edge database.
- Multiple RE Match - Shows only records with more than one matching record in the Raiser’s Edge database.
- Multiple Address Matches - Shows only matching records with multiple address matches.
- <None> - Shows only records without conflicts
Version 7.80 will be released later this quarter and includes loads of new features. Take a look at the new additions to records.
The federal reporting requirements are more specific about tracking ethnicity, so we've updated fields and functionality. When you click the Demographics button in student, individual, applicant, and faculty/staff records, you'll notice a new Latino/Hispanic? field. You can select Yes or No there. We've also updated the Ethnicity field so you can select more than one ethnicity per record. These fields are available in export, too!
On the Restrictions 1 tab of faculty records, you can assign a faculty member as an advisor in specific grade levels or all grade levels.
Do students have separate advisors for English and Science? Now you can enter more than one advisor per academic year for students! Select multiple advisors from the student's progression entry and in the Advisor field on the Bio 1 tab.
As a bonus to those using the multiple advisor functionality, we've added advisor groupings to query and exports, you can assign multiple advisors to students in the Mark for Reenrollment and Enroll Applications wizards, and you can print up to three advisors in the header of report cards and transcripts.
Stay tuned for more new stuff in 7.80!
Once upon a time, end of year procedures involved copying your products and billing items. The Copy utility was great, it had a lot of cool features, and it would make your life a lot easier if it was correctly used. Think of it as the DeLorean of processes. It has stainless steel body work, beautiful gull-wing doors, and an attitude to match!
Like the DeLorean, the Copy utility had problems getting anywhere efficiently, and sometimes you had to pop the hood and take a good hard look at the whatsit. So we created a new way to handle your end of year procedures: The Billing Cycle.
The Billing Cycle is the Back to the Future version of the Copy utility. You load up the Mr. Fusion, hit 88 miles an hour, and you're done!
Billing Cycles are basically a way to keep track of your dates. They define a cycle of billing in the database. This could be your fiscal year or any other period of time you need to count as a cycle (one customer I spoke to copies billing items each semester).
For example, to set up your fiscal year as a billing cycle, go to Configuration, Billing Cycles, and set it up so that 2009-2010 has a start date of 07/01/2009 and an end date of 06/30/2010.
The beauty of the Billing Cycle is that you can associate 3 things with it:
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Application Restrictions
- Products and Billing Items
- Bill Codes
This way, when you copy your Billing Cycle from 2009-2010 to 2011-2012, you copy all of those items. Thus, you've gone Back to go to the Future!
The only additional work left is adjusting fee amounts and repairing the Flux Capacitor.
Have a creative way you've used Billing Cycles? I'd love to hear it! Leave a comment below!