Streamlining admissions with Blackbaud Admissions integration

Finalsite now offers an integration with Blackbaud’s Enrollment Management software, utilizing SKY API’s School API. This integration will source candidate information, including status, and relationships, to facilitate using Finalsite’s marketing and communication tools to nurture families through the admissions process.

This article will describe how it works!

In this Article

• Configure data types
• Complete prerequisite actions in Blackbaud
• Integrate admissions and candidate data
• Implement Blackbaud + Finalsite best practices

Configure data types

This integration can be configured to integrate in different ways. This article specifically covers the process for the integration of admissions and candidate data:

• Admissions/Candidate information for use with Finalsite's Messages and Workflows functionality.

The article, "Seamlessly connect your data with Blackbaud SIS integration" will describe the process for the integration of user data and athletics data:

• User data, including faculty, students, parents, and any other roles/feeds created.
  • Available roles in Finalsite are determined by your contract details.
  • User integrations are sourced from the User Changed endpoint in the SKY API. This feed runs hourly to pull new and updated users that have been changed in the last 24 hours. Once nightly, we pull the entire dataset to identify all users still “on the feed.”
  • Users who are no longer on the feed are not automatically removed from Finalsite, but we offer an “Off Feed Utility” that can be used to deactivate these users that we have not seen on the feed in 48 hours.
• Athletics data, including teams, rosters/coaches, and events.

The available datapoints are detailed in this document. As described in that document, we map a number of the fields by default to what we determine is the logical “home” for those fields in Finalsite. However, the integration is fully configurable, so fields marked “custom” can be set to pull from the feed into Finalsite, fields can be adjusted, and fields can be removed, depending on your specific needs. Your data specialist will work with you on that “mapping.”

Complete prerequisite actions in Blackbaud

In order to access your data and begin setting up the integration, you will need to ensure some prerequisites are taken care of in Blackbaud. This is documented here: https://developer.blackbaud.com/skyapi/apis/school/admin-prereq

1. If you are currently using the “On” integration, and are looking to add the Admissions/Candidate sync, we will need to migrate your existing integration to the School API version, which is a relatively painless process and your existing mapping can be recreated in the new integration.
2. To configure access in Blackbaud, you will need to install an application in your Education Management environment. The process for this is documented here: https://developer.blackbaud.com/skyapi/apis/school/connect-app. Your deployment specialist will provide you with the Application ID you need to complete this step.
3. Once the application is installed in Blackbaud, you will need to grant consent to the application to access your data. This is a simple process of accessing a link in Finalsite, logging into your Blackbaud, and acknowledging that you allow the Finalsite app to access your data. It is important to note that the user granting access needs to have access to the data that Finalsite will need access to. For Admissions, this requires the user to have the Admissions Manager role.
4. Please note that if the admin account in Blackbaud that grants this consent has rights removed or is removed in Blackbaud, the integration will no longer be able to access your data. If this is a change that will happen (for example, an employee is leaving your school) please notify Support so we can assist you in re-granting consent.

We may need you to go through this process twice if we utilize a clone site in setting up your integration, which is common to avoid any complications on your live site as we go through the deployment process.

If you use the Raiser’s Edge NXT integration, that is a separate (but similar) process. More information on that process can be found in this article: Raiser's Edge NXT integration.

Once access to your data is established, the remainder of the deployment can proceed with:

• Determining which feeds in Finalsite will be needed and what roles in BB will be targeted, etc.
• Testing the feeds, refining mapping
• If you have existing data in your live site, determining whether data will be purged and repopulated or rekeyed to avoid creating duplicate accounts
• Going live with the integration, and scheduling feeds to run

Integrate admissions and candidate data

We can create and update admissions and candidate data between Finalsite and Blackbaud. Here's how the integration is set up to connect both platforms:

• The integration will run hourly, creating new records and updating existing records in Finalsite. Candidates are sourced from the “Candidate List” endpoint in the SKY API.
• The parents are sourced from the “Users Changed” endpoint, which will also serve to set up the relationships that will be needed to facilitate communication with parents based on their child(ren)’s status and other admissions specific information.
• In Finalsite, there will be a new role for these users: Blackbaud Admissions.
• Additionally, when the integration is created, we will create a group structure based on the admissions checklist defined in Blackbaud utilizing the “Checklist Status List” endpoint. This will create a group of nodes in Groups Manager that will track candidate statuses as they update in Blackbaud. It will also create a corresponding node of groups including parents based on their child(ren)’s status in the admissions process. These are not editable in Finalsite, but can be built off of to create specific groups for Workflows or Messages lists.