How to get Blackbaud (myschoolapp) assignment reminders on your iPhone

Blackbaud’s Assignment Center already lists your homework by day. Its calendar feed lets a reminder app read the same list and tap you before things are due. Blackbaud’s school platform, often at an address ending in myschoolapp.com, is used by many independent schools.

Step 1: Find your Blackbaud calendar link

1. Open your school’s Blackbaud site in a web browser and go to Assignment Center.
2. Switch to the calendar view, then click the feed icon at the top.
3. Copy the link.

The link looks something like webcal://yourschool.myschoolapp.com/podium/feed/iCal.aspx?…. It’s private to you: anyone who has it can read your calendar, so don’t post it or share it.

Step 2: Get a reminder before every due date

1. Get Nudge from the App Store. It’s free.
2. Pick Blackbaud from the list of school platforms. (Later on, it’s under Settings › School calendar, or tap “Paste my calendar link” on Home.)
3. Paste the link. Your dated work appears in one list, sorted by due date, and Pip starts watching.

You choose how early Pip speaks up: 1 day and 2 hours before a deadline, or 1 day, 3 hours and 1 hour before. Deadlines due together share one nudge, and nothing arrives overnight. Nudge rechecks your link whenever you open it or pull down to refresh, and if a teacher moves a date, it tells you what changed.

What comes through from Blackbaud

Assignments with due dates from your Assignment Center. Calendar feeds share due dates, not grades or whether you’ve submitted, so mark work done in Nudge after you hand it in. For anything that isn’t in the feed, type it into Nudge like a text: “essay draft thursday 9am”.

Other ways to see Blackbaud due dates on your iPhone

The same link works in any calendar app that can subscribe to a calendar. That’s a good way to see your due dates, but it isn’t built to remind you of them:

• Apple Calendar: in the Calendar app, tap Calendars, then Add Calendar › Add Subscription Calendar, and paste the link. Subscribed calendars are read-only, so you can’t add your own alert to each assignment, and school feeds usually don’t include alerts of their own.
• Google Calendar: on a computer, click + next to Other calendars › From URL. Google checks subscribed links on its own schedule, so new or moved due dates can take many hours to appear.

Nudge reads the link for one job: deadlines. It lists them by due date, counts down to the next one, nudges you before each, flags anything that moved, and lets you mark work done.

Troubleshooting

I can’t see the feed icon.

Make sure you’re in the calendar view of Assignment Center, not the list view. If it’s still missing, your school may have feeds turned off.

The link starts with webcal://.

That’s normal. Nudge accepts webcal:// and https:// links.

My school’s site isn’t myschoolapp.com.

Many schools use their own address for Blackbaud. The steps are the same.

Questions

Still stuck? Email [email protected] and say which platform you use, but please don’t send the link itself. See also: what a school calendar feed is and how to keep it private.

Blackbaud (myschoolapp) is a trademark of its owner. Nudge is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Blackbaud; it reads the standard calendar link Blackbaud gives you.