Better sorting/filtering options for relationships in lists, contact cards, directory

We want better sorting/filtering options in lists so that we can sort relationships by Mother, Father, maternal Grandfather/Grandmother, Paternal Grandfather/Grandmother

Currently the system pulls the relationship ordinals in whatever order the users are entered into the system and if you don't use them, the list doesn't stay flattened but it also makes it so we can't just pull parents in a specific order into a list easily. WE WANT FLATTENED LISTS, without needing to do special tricks to get them..

  • Meredith Sperling-Jeffers
  • Sep 22 2016
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  • Elaine Pettit commented
    5 Dec 02:47am

    This is tidious. When I try to pull employee only tuition remission I get spouses of actual employees because they are listed first as the relationship ordinals. We should be able to determine who the main person is. When I tried to filter it out and force it to just name the employees with teacher or non-teaching staff it removes the student who is getting the remission off of my list. This does not make my list a good one and have to edit out spouses with employees' names. Please change it.

  • Veronica Zermani commented
    3 Sep 07:34pm

    Please do something about this. I have to manually adjust all adv. lists pulled with student/parent info before sharing them with my admin. Using the sky lists is not always an option depending on which data is being pulled.

    I should be able to simply share the adv. list with admins so they can run it anytime they need to, but because of these relationship ordinals not pulling parents correctly, it is not possible.

    These relationship ordinals are not an ideal way of pulling parents for many reasons, including...

    1. step-siblings - I have step parents being pulled BEFORE biological parents. These step parents want to be included in all communications, so filtering them out of lists is not an option.

    2. deceased parent - when "parent 1" was entered into the system first, but is then marked deceased, the "parent 1" field returns blank, again requiring me to move parent 2 into that field.

  • Annemarie Merow commented
    3 Jun 08:19pm

    Bringing this issue back to life since so many schools are currently talking about salutation formats.


    Please let us chose the format of Salutations. Some are Mr. John and Mrs. Michelle and others are Mrs. Susan and Mr. Jake all based on what parent signed into BB first (ordinal value). Please let us standardize and not rely on ordinal values to know who goes first!

  • Pam Foster commented
    4 Sep, 2021 12:08am

    I had Grandparents showing up in the flattened parent list and had to add to the Object Filters (Join clause) -> Parent/ChildRelationship.List as Parent is true (for each Parent/Child Relationship Object included in Select Objects). But, I spent 2 hours afterwards using the EXACT formula in Excel to determine if Parent 1 address line 1 matched Parent 2 address line 1, Parent 3 address line 1, or Parent 4 address line 1 (and so on between other possible matches), and then cutting/pasting cells to get spouse/partners in household order (Parent 1/Parent 2 columns for household 1 and spouse/partners in Parent 3/4 columns for houshold 2). The parents just exported out randomly with parent 1 being married to parent 3 or 4. It appears to pull them in the order they were added to the student relationships but not certain. This can be a real problem when pulling the data to import into another database that is household-based. The room for manual error is great.

  • Karen Reiss commented
    2 Sep, 2021 02:38pm

    We noticed that parents aren't getting pushpages (using Advanced List Distr. group) when grandparents are added to student records. This is a big issue.

  • Noelle Becker commented
    9 Aug, 2021 09:03pm

    @angela addision I have an open support case 018454713. If you have any insight on this, that would be great. As far as i know grandparents, dont have parental access to the grandchildren but may for the parent. However, that shouldnt matter since the student is linked to the parent who has a Parent role. Why would the grandparents even appear when they don't hold the role of Parent?

  • Angela Addison commented
    9 Aug, 2021 08:05pm

    Hi @Noelle Becker I can't think of anything that was changed recently that would cause grandparents to show up in your parent lists (I realize the ordinal issue is a different problem). In the case of your lists that used to be fine now showing grandparents though, I'm wondering if something changed in your data i.e. grandparents being set to have parental access or list as parent selected? Can you put a support ticket in for that one and they can dig into what's going on there with you? If you already have one and would like to message me directly I can look into what happened,

  • Noelle Becker commented
    9 Aug, 2021 06:45pm

    The fact that grandparents are now showing up in a parent list is unbelievable. Please fix this ASAP!!!! This is a direct quote from the knowledgebase and I am baffled that they think this is ok... "There is no way to change these ordinals after they are created. Removing all relationships and re-adding them in a new order will not change the relationship ordinals assigned to them. " My report that was always correct is now all messed up due to adding grandparents. They aren't even in the parent role and it's affecting my flattened lists. Unreal!

  • Denise Williams commented
    13 Apr, 2021 06:33pm

    yes, please. Divorced parents also have specific needs...and if we have a parent who is "primary" they don't show that way in the directory. For parents who have different last names, we should be able to order them any way we want; for now, the default is alphabetical which isn't always best.

  • Jean Springs commented
    29 Jan, 2021 07:31pm

    Please! This would save sooooo much time.

  • Cheryl Fanti commented
    3 Sep, 2020 01:26pm

    How has this problem not been resolved yet?

  • Jill Frantti commented
    15 Dec, 2017 04:37pm

    I would also say in regards to the relationship ordinals that we should be able to designate for a student role that the parent/guardian is always relationship ordinal 1 and 2; siblings should follow and then everybody else (cousin, grandparents etc.)

  • Kim Chait commented
    26 Oct, 2017 02:53pm

    We need the ability to prioritize the family hierarchy and designate a primary parent in some situations.  This is the time of the modern family!

  • Rosemary Shofe commented
    25 Oct, 2017 03:39pm

    Our school just went "live" with the onproducts. We are experiencing the same problem and would love to see a resolution to this problem.

  • Sue Pelletier commented
    10 May, 2017 08:16pm

    I couldn't agree more!  We spend countless hours weeding through spreadsheets we have pulled form lists in order to get them properly aligned.

  • Guest commented
    27 Mar, 2017 01:51pm

    Also related: https://blackbaudk12.ideas.aha.io/ideas/K12CO-I-920

    (change order of parents on a contact card, as this affects how salutations must be written: Mr & Mrs, or Mrs & Mr)

  • Joanna Cherry commented
    30 Sep, 2016 07:10pm

    This would be helpful!

  • Guest commented
    30 Sep, 2016 07:07pm
  • Guest commented
    30 Sep, 2016 06:54pm

    This would be helpful!

    Nadine Peters npeters@hhca.org

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