July 2019
Our biggest update ever. Due to the number of changes to various elements of SB this release has taken a little longer than we had planned so it has knocked back our development timeline a little, but hopefully, you will like the updates. We will be getting stuck into discounts, transport module (work already started), sports team improvements and individual messaging over the coming months.
Headliners
- Timezones with UTC support throughout the site. Set your containers to open at a local time to you
- Wallet payment system (complete re-write of our fees module). Allow credits to be given to a parent wallet account (optionally instead of refunds) and then allow parents to book and pay for events and fees with this wallet balance.
- Childcare voucher management
- Language Support throughout entire site (Initial languages available are Chinese & Korean. each school receives one additional language pack as standard in addition to English)
- Event cut-offs (allow events to be hidden from booking from X to Y days before an event - ideal for lunches or care bookings when no bookings can be made within 8 hours)
- Multi-club registrations (ClubsBuddy only)
- Simplified bookings admin with relation to fees
- New Navigation Bar (better performance on iPads)
- Images now allowed in email communication. (Must be hosted somewhere other than SB but can be linked and will show on Message Centre and also in the email template.
Little Winners
- Telephone numbers clickable from mobile app (make a call in one click from the guardians tab)
- Save your search state in Activities & Clubs tab. If you only want to see 'Active' containers search once and it will only show you active. (Works on Status and Type dropdown boxes)
- Filters on 'Create events' when managing an instant book container
- Processing state, so going back in browser and parents paying for events twice is no longer possible
- Instant booking events, 'Select all' button hidden by default (to save load and also parent confusion)
- Now see 'Super Users' from the staff roles tab - check who your super users are (SB need to edit SuperUsers)
April 2019
Key New Features (scroll down for more information)
- Speed Improvements - Now 5x Faster!
- Mark all as read - Message Centre
- Fees Module improvements
- Student-Only Sign Ups
- Activities Management updates
- Extra efficiencies for Bookings
- Dietary information now available
1. Speed Improvements
We have taken a number of steps in recent months to improve the speed of the Schoolsbuddy site, including the use of snapshots and designing more efficient code. We are very pleased to say that our efforts have been rewarded with a 5x faster speed, down from 800-1000ms response time to under 200ms!
2. Mark All as Read - Message Centre
We have now added a new 'mark all items as read' feature to our message centre inbox for all users (see below)
3. Fees Module - new features
- To increase efficiency for admin users, we have now added a toggle within the fees module to select and fill down to make multiple payments easy to administer (see below)
- Parents can now also 'select all' to make multiple payments at once
- We have now added a reference field that is visible to parents within their overview and email notification for clarity
- Parents can also now filter their historical transactions (using a date range). This is also possible via the mobile app.
- The fees tab for parents now also shows a total balance outstanding above the list of fees due.
4. Student Only Sign Ups
For schools wishing to give their senior students more control, we have added a third option for sign up responses. You can now select 'Students Only' to be able to respond to sign ups, rather than 'Parents Only' or 'Parents & Students'
5. Activities Management updates
- We have now made it possible for you to ADD EVENTS to groups within a pre-existing CCA container which is useful for extending your programme.
- Inactive groups are now clearly visible within Schoolsbuddy, so you can ensure everything is running that should be. These include on-hold groups or new groups with no events generated. (see below)
6. Extra efficiencies for Bookings
- We have now created and added a 'free' booking email template which has removed the price column for clarity
- A day of the week filter is now available (see below)
- You can now hide the date, time and day of the week fields within 'fee only' bookings, ideal for sports team kit purchases, etc
- We have added an 'edit' button to the summary bar for quick and easy access to the edit screen
