About Digistorm
At Digistorm, we’ve been building custom school app solutions, websites, and admissions platforms for K-12 schools across the globe since 2011. Our plug-and-play solution offers various custom and standard modules to choose from so that our schools can have the perfect communication tool for their unique goals. Along the way, we’ve created clever integrations with a range of ed-tech providers to connect our school’s existing software solutions into the app, delivering an even greater experience for users.
If you’re unsure how a School App will help you connect your whole community, take a peek at these two examples of Blackbaud schools using a Digistorm App to communicate with their communities. For TMI Episcopal, their Digistorm App has offered a one-stop-shop for communication with students, parents, faculty and staff, freeing up time for their admissions team of three. Meanwhile at Wisconsin Lutheran, implementing a Digistorm App has reinforced their school brand and streamlined their many channels into one, lowering parent frustrations with finding information.
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud launched in 1981 with a student billing solution to empower accounts receivable systems for private schools. They've since grown into a cloud computing provider offering a range of software products for the social good community, including education administration tools for schools. They also commit themselves to helping small and medium sized businesses create their own corporate philanthropy programs. With headquarters in South Carolina and offices in many states of the USA as well as Sydney, London and Glasgow, they’re proof doing good can lead to big and wonderful things.
How does the integration work?
The long and short of all the technicalities is that your school community can seamlessly go from their Digistorm App, straight to their most loved Blackbaud features, without signing in and out of multiple sites.
Technically speaking, the Digistorm App grabs data from various endpoints within Blackbaud using an OAuth sign-in. This means your school's parents, students and staff members can access the specific Blackbaud data they need by signing in from their Digistorm app. This dramatically simplifies their usual process of having to sign-in from the in-app browser before making their way to the mobile version of Blackbaud.
When your community members are navigating through their Digistorm app, they can access data from the Blackbaud API—done technically and seamlessly behind the scenes via Digistorm's middleware using their Access Token. Once the person using the app has been authenticated, the app displays specific modules depending on the permissions they have and what they can typically access in Blackbaud.
The Digistorm App will understand details of the logged-in user like their ID, role, name and data they might find useful. When a specific module is accessed (such as calendar or grades), we fetch the data from Blackbaud, process the data, and then display the data within the app. Some pretty sophisticated technology that makes life very easy for your community!
"We are very excited about the Blackbaud integration with our Digistorm app. Parents, students, faculty, and staff will have easy access to grades, homework, and schedules all inside one convenient app that already provides them with essential community information such as quick contact information, news, and other important links we share with our community."
~ Stephanie Gish, Director of Community Relations, TMI Episcopal
The Digistorm App will understand details of the logged-in user like their ID, role, name and data they might find useful. When a specific module is accessed (such as calendar or grades), we fetch the data from Blackbaud, process the data, and then display the data within the app. Some pretty sophisticated technology that makes life very easy for your community!
How does the integration benefit your school?
The Blackbaud integration has numerous benefits for schools, particularly around security and simplification—things that are top of mind for most parents. Here are the main perks:
1. Your families have one centralized information hub
The Digistorm App for Blackbaud becomes your community’s central hub with easy access to the information they need, including some of Blackbaud’s most loved features.
2. A single-sign on simplifies and secures things
With simple and secure single sign-on authentication, families can access their App and Blackbaud features instantly.
3. Your school's brand is consistently presented
The Digistorm App for Blackbaud is designed to match your school’s brand, ensuring a seamless experience from your school website to families’ phones.
Next steps
Eager to learn more about our App’s Blackbaud integration and what it can do for your school’s community? Talk to our friendly Colorado-based team. They’ll run you through a quick, no-pressure product walkthrough so that you can see the integration in action.