Password Blank in Education Edge with New NetCommunity version

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Donna Pradith
Donna Pradith ✭
Eighth Anniversary
in Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT®: General Discussion
I understand that there are changes in the way passwords are encrypted in NetCommunity, which now means all of our new users have a blank password field in their Education Edge record. The only way to have a password show up is for either they or an admin to reset their password after their Education Edge record has been created. As our users also access NetClassroom, we now have to instruct every single new user to go back and reset their password so that they can access NetClassroom. This seems rather conterintuitive to the entire integration process between NetCommunity and Education Edge. It seems odd that a password change will allow a user's password to appear in Education Edge, but their initial password creation can't. I hope there will be a better solution with the next version, this creates an administrative nightmare for schools.
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  • Anthony Gallo
    Anthony Gallo Blackbaud Employee
    Ancient Membership Facilitator 2 Name Dropper Photogenic

    Donna Pradith:

    I understand that there are changes in the way passwords are encrypted in NetCommunity, which now means all of our new users have a blank password field in their Education Edge record. The only way to have a password show up is for either they or an admin to reset their password after their Education Edge record has been created. As our users also access NetClassroom, we now have to instruct every single new user to go back and reset their password so that they can access NetClassroom. This seems rather conterintuitive to the entire integration process between NetCommunity and Education Edge. It seems odd that a password change will allow a user's password to appear in Education Edge, but their initial password creation can't. I hope there will be a better solution with the next version, this creates an administrative nightmare for schools.

    Hello Donna,


    I agree we need a better solution than what we put into the most recent release.  We were very cautious to not break passwords for the entire Education Edge system like we had happen a couple years ago and that was our main point of emphasis.  This issue was still put in purposefully due to the way that the password architecture was already designed.  This isn’t going to solve the current issue but I can give you a little background on why it is working this way.  


    With the new 7.1 password structure in BBNC it is impossible to decrypt a password from the BBNC database.  That goes for us internally as well as anyone externally.  


    When a new user is created the user information is saved to the DB and then the form is filled out.  Once the form is done the system goes to get the password from the BBNC database but it cannot do anything with it anymore so we aren't able to update the EE side.  


    For a password change, the update function still works and it is instantly passed to EE before the database makes the save.  We don’t every have to try and read it from the database.  If we did we would be stuck there too. 


    With all that being said I am looking for options here to make this work better but knowing where Education Edge is in its lifecycle we need to make sure whatever changes we do make don’t put risk on anything that is already working.  Changing the way passwords work for EE would affect FE and that risk may just wind up being too great.  


    This is definitely something I am thinking about often and if we can make this smoother we definitely will.  

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