There are multiple ways that you could improve the Compose Official Note function in the faculty Gradebook. The common thread is that the student specific information should be able to be emailed directly to the student, teacher and Advisor without those people having to log-in to Blackbaud to view the Official Note, but the info that is emailed to the above roles would also get kept in Official Notes so that school personnel could see what communications were sent to the parents/student. Here are the possible improvements:

1) When you are in a grade book, the teacher can drill into a student's specific assignment grade and see a window that allows them to mark Exempt, Incomplete, Missing and Days Late, as well as enter a note. Ideally this box would have a list of recipients (i.e. student, parent, Advisor) that you could check and then click "Send Notice."  The Notice would be a pre-written, automated email that would be sent to the people selected above.  The message would pull in the following data:

Class Name

Teacher Name

Student Name

Assignment Name

Assignment Due Date

Assignment Grade Earned out of possible points

Assignment Status (i.e. Exempt, Incomplete, Missing, Days Late)

Assignment note from teacher.

 

The beauty of this feature is:

It would save the teacher time (they only need to enter the grade and the assignment note).

It saves the student, parent and Advisor time (everything they need to know about the notice is in the email - they don't have to log-in to view their Official Notes). 

It increases the chance of people reading what the teachers send to them.

 

2) If the above is not possible, then I suggest this less complex and less ideal change:

In the teacher's gradebook you can click on three dots to the left of the students name and click Compose Official Note. 

Right now the options under "Type" send an automated email that does not include specific information about the student or their assignments.  A simple fix would be to add more useful placeholders for the automatic email such as: Class Name, Teacher Name, Student Name, Assignment Name, Assignment Due Date, Assignment Grade Earned out of possible points, Assignment Status (i.e. Exempt, Incomplete, Missing, Days Late), and Assignment note from teacher.

Also, in the same Compose Official Note there is a box for the teacher to type called "Note."  Teachers can type a message, but there is not automated text which means they have to type everything out long hand and what they type does NOT get emailed to the family, it goes to the family's Official Notes that they can only access by logging in to their Blackbaud account. This is an immense waste of everyone's time.  A simple fix would be to have the "Note" be included with the email being automatically sent so that the family does not need to log in to the Blackbaud account (which takes time and makes it more likely that they won't log-in and thus won't see the note).  Adding the same placeholders options mentioned above to this text box would also be helpful to speed up the teacher's process.

 

Please feel free to contact me for clarity. Thank you!