Given my experience with this request, being able to turn off bulk emails for users or a subset of users is really the only part of this feature request that I want... and it's not implemented.

This says implemented but I don't think its quite there yet. Parents still have to subscribe for each individual thing and we end up missing people in important notifications and alerts.

Yes @Kim, while you can bulk-subscribe constituents to a very limited set of notifications, it's not at all useful or comprehensive.

When looking at Core>Communication>Notifications, navigate to the "notifications(new)" tab, pay attention to the "not subscribed" column. Anything with an "N/A" or a "0" are not able to be used in this way.

That yields the following notification types that can be modified in bulk:

• Assignment Added

• Assignment Changed

• Assignement Graded

• Assignment Missing

• Late/Missing Online Assignment Submitted

Sadly, that's all.

Please link to documentation on how to bulk subscribe and which notifications you can bulk subscribe to constituents. This should be standard procedure when you make an announcement about new features.

I was excited that we could finally add all current parents to the news notifications. However after struggling to figure out how to do it. I reached out to support and got this disapointing response: It looks like there are only select notification types that can utilize the bulk subscribe option, and the news posted option is not one of them currently. I might create a new idea in the ideas portal if you'd like to potenitally see this in the future: https://community.blackbaud.com/products/k12/ideas

Filter and Disable notification by type would be helpful.

Hi all! This idea has lots of comments and details, so here is a summary of what was implemented in late September:

• bulk subscribe users to a notification based on things like role

• bulk unsubscribe users from a notification

• all notifications types, which were previously separated by category, are now all in a single, sortable, searchable list.

• better notice to end users when a notification type is inactive and will NOT be sending notifications.

• notifications can be styled with HTML formatting

• notifications can be branded with a logo

We will not be able to implement notifications from which users are unable to unsubscribe due to the CAN-SPAM Act. Additionally, some notifications are not editable from the list of notifications because their contents depend upon context of the feature which triggers the notification - like which contract, which official note template, etc.

For other related ideas, like bulk text messaging, auto-unsubscribe upon child withdrawal, etc. I encourage you to vote for those specific ideas so you can receive updates if/when we begin working in those areas.

I would very much appreciate being able to send text messages for weather alerts/school closures, etc.

We are currently using the Pushpage schoolwide notifications, but messages are sometimes unreliable (end up in Junk Mail/Spam).

This would be HUGE in helping parents see the value in buying into this product!!!

hello hello folks! We are ready to flip our Notifications EAP switch on for phase 1 which was enhancing the notification template/management workflow. And, moving on to phase 2 which is the user management workflow (visibility into who is opted in, out, and YES bulk subscription management). We are ready to review prototypes on that and get busy on development and need more schools to participate please. If you would like to join us, please email me at angela.addison@blackbaud.com with your school ID and contact info and I'll get you all the details. Super excited to move forward on this one!

We are just beginning to use Groups iwth our PA, and this would be a huge step in making this successful. We're a K-8, and while I understand the principle of having parents subscribe to what they want...it is NOT PRACTICAL, especially when we're all trying to "sell" the parent portal experience (and tuition fees!)

Currently, it's either a heavy lift for offices to do this on behalf of their parents (and nobody has time), or a heavy lift dealing with all of the parents who never got around subscribing, who miss something, who become disillusioned with the whole portal experience and end up needing to be spoon-fed info.

PLEASE give us the control to bulk subscribe users to notifications we determine they need!

(and I also second the Emergency Notification feature as well - woudl be great to use Blackbaud for this and not rely on a third party or partner integration.)

Dear Blackbaud,

This was submitted 6...SIX YEARS AGO with 380 votes...and it is only "under consideration?" For those of us who actually work in schools, this is a no-brainer. Announcements are essentially a useless "feature" if parents and students have to opt-in to them. And in today's world, customers should not have to ask for this feature:

• an emergency notification that can be sent out via email/text messages, that all Students/Parents/Faculty would be automatically enrolled in, and that users cannot opt out of like they currently can with content notifications.

@Angela- I just jumped on here--I think what many of these folks are clamoring for is to be able to auto set User notification settings in their Profile to receive things without relying on them to do it themselves. In my case this is for INTERNAL users: Faculty and Student roles. For example, I want to bulk set the Announcement and News notifications for all my 684 students. I trust the staff to do their own but at this point I am going to have to manually set all 684 student profiles before we launch our new student resource board next week. I love all of what the original post by Jake is saying. (in 2015 oh my gosh! wow that's a long time!) Many thanks..also 100% agree with Claire and Tabitha even though theirs is a slightly different issue--but still very critical.

+1 for Tabitha and Claire's comments!

Hey all! this is a bit of a mash up of ideas here. Here is what we 'think' we have fixed: if you are not CURRENTLY in a role that admins have given access to for receiving notifications, then you should no longer be receving them. If you're still experiencing issues with that can you open a support ticket and we'll dig in? The ask for bulk subscribing and unsubscribing for users message me directly as we have a lot of discovery going on around this right now and would love to chat with you

I hope this hasn't gotten swept under the rug. Our school very much needs more control over notifications.

It's very misleading for there to be an option to select specific roles to receive notifications in the NEWS setting only to then discover that selecting the "Parent" role and clearly NOT selecting the "Parent of Past Student" role doesn't actually mean that past parents won't receive the notification. There really should be a mechanism that disables these notifications when a parent becomes a past parent or at least when "Parent of Past Student" is NOT selected to receive specific notifications. This continues to be a problem for us in May 2021 (despite being told previously that the problem was fixed). I'd like to echo Claire Broadway's sentiment—having to apologize to past parents for errant texts/emails that should only be going to current parents damages our reputation and relationship with alumni parents. To have to manually remove each and every past parent from notifications is simply untenable. This needs to be a fix on the Blackbaud end. Please remedy this issue for the 2021-2022 school year.

Our Past Parents have continued to get text and email notifications that are only meant for Current Parents (as recently at late May 2021). When a Current Parent's role changes to Past Parent, to have the option to automatically unsubscribe them from text and email notifications is an absolute necessarity and I am almost in disbelief that it wasn't built in when the feature was initially implemented. Having to manually unsub every parent from emergency text notifications is more than just a hassle on our end. Inevitably we will miss someone and a previous parent will get notified of a snow day or late start. This makes us look unprofessional and causes annoyance for possible donors. Please consider implementing this feature! We are desperate.

Angela, parents are not "connected" to the right division in Notifications when their child moves from LS to MS or MS to US. Currently, under General Categories, parents manually have to reassign themselves to their "new" division.

@Angela Please don't close this idea. It's about a lot more than not sending notifications to past parents. We really need a way to bulk manage subscriptions and removals. Right now, every summer we spend hours going into each one of our new parent and employee records to subscribe them to Announcement and News Notifications.