December 2018
Key Updates:
1. VAT (Tax) Recording
VAT (tax) shows on receipt (for instant bookings only) and VAT is recorded in our financial transaction data for reporting or for importing into accounting systems. Only a single tax rate per organisation is supported.
2. Enhancement for preference based ECA/CCA/Club signups
As well as our recent ‘for information / invite only’ groups you can now easily pre select students for these groups, prior to opening up a signup ensuring that these students who are required to select a specific activity (may be a sports team) are selected and not allowing them to change or select something else.
3. Parent Teacher Conference / Parents Evening
The attendee name will show under the staff diary without the need to go into each event, improving visibility. Only applies if there is only one attendee (as standard)
4. Super User Access
Now only Super Users are able to delete users from SchoolsBuddy.
5. Attendance Registers
Staff now have the ability to ‘Untick’ a student
To improve efficiency, the Reception | Registers/Events tab now shows TODAY as the default option.
6. Export / Printing
It is now possible to export the daily list of registration groups for staff via a .csv file
In addition, attendance notes and consent notes will now print.
7. Container Management
We have now enabled a text search to assist schools with multiple containers to speed up admin time.
Other Integration Improvements:
ManageBac
SchoolsBuddy will now bring in and show the true ManageBac student ID into our user interface
PowerSchool
SchoolsBuddy will now bring in and show the true PowerSchool student ID into our user interface
AsiaPay
Now fully supported on iOS devices
October 2018
Key New Features (scroll down for more information)
- Current day student absence now visible within a SchoolsBuddy attendance register (with exceptions please see below for details)
- Event level communications, organisers can now send communications including cancellations from within the event itself
- You can now pre-define a group of students who are allowed to 'pay' with Childcare Vouchers
- We now offer an 'information only' group for preference-based sign ups for information to parents - to show a group but not allow it to be selected
Other Additions
- We have made creating instant book containers quicker by allowing you to copy groups
- Registration groups list now shows 'other name' in addition to given names
- Manual Booking navigation - remain in the container when you have added a new manual booking
1. Attendance Data Sync
What’s new?
We are now able to pull in 'on the day' student absence information to show within a SchoolsBuddy attendance register (providing the student has been marked as absent within your MIS/SIS). Please note this is only possible with particular MIS/SIS providers, including ISAMS, Sims and Managebac. Other systems may be possible but will need to be advised on a school-by-school basis.
Why?
This enables staff to see, when taking a register, whether a pupil has been marked as absent from school on that day, a feature for which we have been asked by many schools.
IMPORTANT - while this system update enables this feature, each school and MIS/SIS integration needs to be set and scheduled individually, so may not be in operation immediately from release. Please bear with us while we activate each eligible school.
2. Event Level Communication & Cancellation
What’s new?
Event organisers can now go straight to an event from their diary and will be presented with a send communication tab within the event itself. This is available to staff or external providers. From here they will be able to send a communication to the confirmed participants of that event, and can also send a cancellation of the event.
Why?
By using this element within the event, communications and cancellations will only go to the students/parents who are confirmed as taking part (it was already possible to cancel at an event level but now benefits from a quick link button). For example when a group is made up of a sports squad of 20, but the event just entails a selected 10 students, the communication will only be sent to the 10 selected students, not the whole group.
3. Refined Childcare Vouchers / Staff Parent Button
What’s new?
Following feedback on our new feature to allow parents to 'pay' by Childcare Vouchers, we have now added the ability to filter and define which parents can see the Childcare Voucher button and therefore limit those who can avoid paying any upfront amount to just those who are eligible.
Why?
To limit this button use and avoid errors or confusion.
Further development is planned for this but this will make the initial Childcare Vouchers we released in the last version much more usable.
4. Display-Only Group for Preference-Based Sign Ups
What’s new?
We now offer a display-only group for preference-based sign ups to be used as information to parents so if their child needs to be available for a compulsory or specially selected regular event, they will see this group as an information only entry. This discourages parents from selecting another activity on that day, but doesn't include the special activity on the preference-based sign up.
Why?
This has been requested by a number of schools where some groups are pre-defined, or defined later and therefore cannot be included in the preference-based sign up. Therefore activities should not be selected on a day where their child may not be able to attend due to their participation in the information-only event.
The information only event will be displayed within a preference-based sign up container as below, visible to parents, but the preferences will be unavailable for selection.
September 2018
Android App Push Notifications
Push notifications are now live for our Android app.
Download our 2nd Generation app for Android
Download our 2nd Generation app for iOS
Join Requests
- Declined join requests send message to the parents.
- Join request view now shows day of week, number of places available, time of the event and cost.
Mailto Link for Messages
We have now added an additional email link option to the message formatting bar to allow quick email links to appear within your message text, as below:
Preference Based Containers
To continue to improve the usability of SchoolsBuddy we have now locked down the allocations and overview screens to ensure you cannot add students via allocations after the container is 'Active'. This was causing some confusion which should now be eliminated.
We have now added the following reminder message to the allocations and overview screen to direct users to the correct location to add/remove students.
Preference Based Containers (cont.)
When a group is put on hold, we now remove all allocations to students within that group, so they do not receive communications for a group that you are no longer planning to run.
Attendance Registers
Following requests from a number of schools, you can now see students' class/homeroom and/or Year/Grade on the attendance register.
Both of which can be turned on or off per school, please let us know if you would like to use this additional filter.
Mobile Screens Improved
We have improved the design of some mobile screens to provide a better display on smaller devices.
Early September 2018
Key New Features (scroll down for more information)
- External Provider Staff Role
- Integrated Self Service Reports
- Childcare Voucher Checkout Option / Staff Parent Bookings
- Other New Features
- Alternative method for sending of activation emails from the Users tab, with a filter option to send to a selected group of parents or students
- We have modified the 'Auto-Notify' game type so the requirement for parent consent can be switched on or off.
- Other New Features
Other Minor Additions
- Welcome Message & Block Dates tab now only Admins can update
- Switcher for parents of multiple children in multiple SB schools
- Preferred Name Import for ManageBac
- Hide full staff names from CCA Container
- Payment receipt for block bookings show total of events.
1. External Provider Staff Role
What’s new?
You can now setup external user roles to enable a reduced level of access to SchoolsBuddy so they are only able to see essential information.
Why?
This has been designed to respond to school requests for external club providers to use the SchoolsBuddy system but without access to other school data.
More...
There are individual preferences which can be set per school to provide the External Provider some or all of the following elements:
Fixed (minimum permissions)
- Student list & attendance register
- Details of the event - information including date/time and location
Optional - ON by default
- View Guardian Information for the students in their group/activity
- Send Communications to their group
- Edit their own events to update time, day & description but also cancel and delete
Optional - OFF by default
- View Medical Conditions of the students
- Organise additional events for their group
For more information on using this new feature please see this article
2. Integrated Self Service Reports
What’s new?
Using the latest Microsoft Power BI Integration, we have now enabled self service reports within the SchoolsBuddy system. There is no longer any need to login to a separate report server, the reports will be available a dropdown list, view, print and export data to .xlsx or .csv formats.
Why?
SchoolsBuddy is hosted on a full Microsoft Azure server so it made sense to make the switch to integrate to their own embedded PowerBI reports solution. The benefit is more reports will be available to you on a self-service basis without the need to use a separate system or request those from us directly.
More...
Initial Reports will include Finance reports for reconciliation and person roles reports AND Student Group Roles reports which is a common request following allocations and the going live of containers.
Many more reports will be added over the coming days and weeks. Please request particular reports here.
3. Childcare Voucher Checkout Option
What’s new?
Care containers will now offer the option to allow for users to 'pay by adding all to their childcare voucher balance'. At this stage we have simply added the option so instead of being forced to pay an amount upfront parents can click a button to charge the amount to their 'voucher balance'. There are warnings to tell users what the button does but you will need to keep an eye on these initially.
Why?
In response to multiple requests from schools to support the use of Childcare Vouchers.
More...
The button which parents will see looks like this:
This 'payment' option will be available to schools if requested. This can also be adapted to record a staff-parent booking of a chargeable activity where the staff-parent does not have to pay, with the button being labelled as required such as the example below: 
Please let us know if you would like to offer payment via Childcare Voucher / Staff Parent Balance
Also included in this release - General Bug Fixes
- Linked events status changes issues corrected
- Date filters corrected to stop strange 'jumping' of dates
- Clear events for calendar/diary when staff members are no longer admins of a group/activity
- Paging on events in diary to handle loading on iOS App when lots of events for one use
If you have any questions or require support with the new features please do not hesitate to get in touch.
June & July 2018
Excitement Scale (as much as software can be exciting!):
*** very exciting
**exciting
* nice to have
no stars - you probably won't notice
*** Linked Events (for preference based CCA / After School Activity Programs)
We can now handle scenarios whereby activities occur on multiple days of the week and the same students must be in all occurrences. (Only support single time slot at present, i.e cannot support events at very different times)
Parents or students cannot select other activities for the same preference for other days if they have already selected the multi-occurring activity on one of the other days.
- Simple interface to add occurrences
- Allocation processes seamlessly handle multi-day allocation
- Parents receive notifications as if they have booked the same group on 3 days.
- When events are generated only 1 group is created with events generated on multiple days, which will simplify ongoing management of the activity groups - i.e only need to add or remove students from one group and they will be automatically added/removed to/from all the day's activities.
For guidance on how to set up linked events click here
*** New Dashboard
We have finally been able to remove our old home tab. No more unnecessary notifications, or a second location to do the same task (such as create groups, send communications). We have been wanting to do this for many months but needed other elements to complete before we could do so. We have more work to go such as moving the process of organising events and sending invites etc to the existing events tab of a container or within the register/events tab but for now and for the next 6-8 weeks Organising gets it's own tab on the top bar of tabs!
Key elements of the new Dashboard are as follows:-
- The welcome message will become integral to this dashboard but also the new mobile dashboards. Therefore welcome messages must be set or parents, staff and students see a blank element on their dashboard.
- Parents and staff will have a simplified view of what is important to them - with one click access to take them to more detail.
- For Parents & Students - Invites/consent, unread message counters, fees balance (if fees active for schools), upcoming events and a link if bookings are open. This is v1 and this dashboard will receive a lot of attention over the coming weeks and months, as we make this more intelligent and add in more components that parents could move around, show and hide and also all additional filters.
- For Staff - For standard non-admins this will show them a list of events that are important to them and with one click will see the register view! Speedy registers, everyone wants that!
- Fully responsive so this will also be available on mobile devices which will particularly be useful for those parents that activate their account via their email received on a mobile device.
***Advanced Filtering for Activity & Instant Booking Containers - Determine who can book but now with pre-requisites and NOT filtering
We want to be the best Activities Management System in the World. We think we have a good solution but we strive for advanced features to make your lives easier hence we have created pre-requisites and not filtering for all groups within any container be it a preference based sign up or any instant book. The real uses of this could be:-
- Swimming complexities. Allow pre-requisites of a swimming level rather than just filtering by grade and gender. i.e Swimming Mon 3-4 Level 2's and 3'd Grade 4 and 5's.
- Additionally those new students that are able to book onto the activities that no level is required this can be achieved by making those groups only available to Whole School but not those who have a swimming level group. Reduce admin with new starters.
- To restrict a set of students (and their parents) to book an activity which may happen because:
- Outstanding debt for a particular group
- An activity is so popular you do not want to allow those who are currently in the activity or were last year to book on it again
- Music level based groups
- More...
** Weekly Preferences
For smaller actviity programmes it may be overkill to offer daily preferences as parents are ever selecting 2 or 3 activities across the week. If this is the case then there is now the option for weekly preferences. This will allow only a maximum of 5 selections across the week but if you are only offering 1,2 or 3 activities per day to the students then this would work much better for your allocation process. This will result in more students getting their true preference 1 rather than them have 3 or 4 preference 1s for each day.
Please ask our team for more information and which options are best for your programme.
** New Diary/Calendar Component
We have created new Diaries/Calendars for all,
For students/parents this is a simplified view of the event in one scrollable page to better handle mobile situations.
For staff this enables quick access to take a register. No more going through the reception/registers tab. If the staff member is a group admin then they will see all events for that group in their diary regardless of whether they are the organiser of the events. This allows more people to take registers. This logic is taken forward into our new apps due to launch later in August 2018.
***New APPS Update
Our new mobile apps are VERY CLOSE. Final testing and approval required by Apple. Expected to be launched in August 2018.
- Both iOS and Android apps will allow all staff to take a register very quickly.
- Apps will be able to be used from a new specific 'External Coach/Provider' role who will only be able to see their groups details not the entire school.
- Parents can make CCA / Preference and Instant Book bookings from the app (this is actually an element of mobile web responsive so this can now be done from the web on mobile!)
- Parents can make payments from Checkout, PayFort and PaySafe Providers. Stripe is possible but only on iOS!
- Standard other features are view messages, view payment balance, view bookings and diary and any invites/consents for activities or events.
*New Site Guidance
We understand that many of our admin users are not daily users of SchoolsBuddy and we are implementing a live walkthrough and training / self help tool to provide instant support and walkthroughs. We are striving to make the site easier to navigate and easier to create the right sort of event/container for your needs but as SchoolsBuddy features sets grow, and has done quickly over the last 2-3 years we are always playing catchup slightly on that so we hope this will help in the short term.
You will notice the odd pop-up, video and guidance tour appear - this is all part of the site guidance and all our passion to ensure that our users have the best experience possible.
Multi-Day Events in Diary/Calendar
The diary/calendar views now fully supports showing multi-day events. i.e a school trip running Monday to Friday will now show on all days with the correct start and end dates and times.
New Font
To give the application a little visual update we have removed some dead space so that more screen should display more on smaller resolution monitors and also we have changed our core font. Something a little more stylish, modern and fresh!
May 2018
Brand New Message Centre v1 (further enhancements planned for August/September)
- New User Interface - inbox style
- Single messages rather than messages stacked under group / year. Both views available to see all messages for a group
- Advanced search features including showing only messages with attachments
- Ability to star favourite or important messages
- Fully mobile responsive
- Archive messages to clear inbox
- Staff members can view sent items
- Send communications from the Message Centre tab
- Administrators can view all messages by year/grade or group (with search)
- Message centre counter shows true unread count.
- Read flag to accurately show if you have opened the message (will be available for staff to view read receipts in v2).
PayFort Integration
Payment gateway for UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt
Parent Redirection available
Option to divert parents to Activities & Clubs (Sign up / Bookings) tab upon login. The tab is now always available regardless of whether there are open containers or not.
Parents Evenings / Parent Teacher Conference Update
Any staff can now block out their own appointments slots.
Custom Forms on Containers
This development is in v1 and only functions for specific form types but allows data to be collected at the point of users accepting terms & conditions on any container booking.
Personalised School Footer Links
Each school can now have a number of personalised footer links which will allow for linked to additional information such as payment terms, privacy policies etc.
Two column user panel
Improved visibility on lower resolution monitors when viewing users.
Add Group
New and improved create group data entry.
Bug Fixes
- Google Calendar Integration Bug Fix - Improved timezone support
- IE11 Navigation fixes
- Message centre time stamps on messages updated to allow for timezones and BST adjustment
- Checkout.com payment identifier in SchoolsBuddy now easier to search and find in Checkout portal (for refunds)
- & symbol displaying correctly
- Wonde integrated schools - updates for medical conditions updating all conditions each night.
April 2018
Mobile Responsive Bookings & Payments
In readiness for our new mobile apps our payments and bookings pages have been made fully mobile responsive. This includes the ability to book for parents evenings, instant book and pay events and also preference based selections for after school clubs.
CSV Export for Registers
You can now export any single register as a CSV file (able to open in Excel / Google Sheets)
Amber Register Status
Often attendance registers are taken in advance to mark students as excused. When these registers are saved they now show as amber in the list of registers so you can easily identify those registers that are not complete.
- Amber Tick - some attendees have been saved with a register status but not all
- Green Tick - all attendees have been marked with a status
- Red Tick - parents have been notified of an absentee
School Trip Preference (single selection list) Containers
If you need a preference based container to allow parents to select preferences for School Trips and not just after school activities this is now possible. A subtle difference in how to the use of the system and for the parent viewing the available options it is clear and concise. A single list without the day of the week or time visible.
Additional Payment Gateway for Asia
We have now integrated with an additional Asia specific payment provider and we can now offer school payments to many new countries in Asia including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, India (& Australia).
Please note: This service does not involve an overseas international transfer of funds. All funds are collected locally and deposited into a local bank in the same country.
Communication Method used now visible
Visibility of this from the event | details tab can help be used for training and to understand if auto-notify or notify only was used during the creation of an event.
Customer Support
Support site fully switched over to new Support Bee support system with integrated ticketing system. Parents now view a different support system to staff to avoid overload and confusion. This is accessible from the support link at the bottom or the 'help docs' button on the right hand side. We hide the help docs button on mobile responsive sized web browsers but the support link is still accessible from the website footer.
Bug Fixes
- Parents which have been refunded a payment and have a zero balance against an event no longer receive the chase email in error.
- ISAMS Subject Classes now linking the correct teacher
- Restoring staff now restores them correctly with Organisation Staff roles.
- Adding locations refreshes list automatically.
- Date filtering on when containers could be visible in the future has now been corrected.
MIS / SIS SPECIFIC
Managebac singlesign on (+ Partner)
We can now offer single sign-on for our Managebac users. We have become a Partner with Managebac and are their globally recommended provider for activities management and fee payments.
Powerschool Subjects Imported
We can now automatically bring in Powerschool sections (subject classes) to allow for class level filtering for Parent Teacher Conferences (Parent Evenings)
March 2018
Rapid bulk group creator for parents evening
You can now quickly create all of your parent evening groups in seconds based upon your registration groups or subject classes (MIS integration permitting)
Parents can cancel parent evening bookings
Parents can now edit their own bookings themselves. Should they need to cancel and rebook this is now possible. Admins have the ability to switch this on and off at any time.
Attendance Overview tab
Within Reception / Registers there is new tab named Attendance. Simply select the date range and group and it will show a printable / csv exportable overview of a groups attendance.
New parent view for bookings/activities signup
Brand new view for parents / students when looking at containers. This also render much better on a mobile phone browser.
iCAL Timezone fix
You can now view SchoolsBuddy events in your own calendar. Use the link from Profile | Diary screen to get the iCAL link and see the instructions.
Or click here to view instructions.
New code fields for groups
This will allow for a group code (used for importing back into specific MIS / SIS) and billing code (used for finance reports/exports) to be added to any group.
Adding a manual fee using the blue head icon can now send a parent notification
Great for adding additional fees but it now can send the parent a notification. Especially useful when you are editing a charge and need to create a charge on another group instead.
New Communications User Role
Control who can send SMS and school wide communication without needing to give them full admin rights. Available for Super Users under Staff Roles tab.
New Medical tab for events and groups - overview of all groups members medical conditions
Much like the existing guardians tab we now have a similar tab for showing all medical records in one page for all of the students within a group or event.
Making more sense of your containers
To allow you to keep your containers for longer and to know which ones you want to archive we have now changed what is displayed under your 'activities, clubs, ECA, CCA tab (this is often called different names at each school!). All active containers are displayed at all times until they are archived regardless of the date range filter. This will help with reusing containers for parents evenings and other uses.
February 2018
SchoolsBuddy Calendar Feed
Do not use unless your school is location in the GMT Timezone - this will be fixed asap to allow for the calendar feed to correctly use the correct timezone of the school location.
SchoolsBuddy calendar can now be linked and viewed within Google, Outlook, iOS, Mac or Windows calendars. Easily view your SchoolsBuddy or ClubsBuddy diary within your regular electronic diary.
To learn how to do this in Google calendars click here
For iOS mobile devices click here
For Apple Mac calendars click here
For Outlook.com calendars click here
Multiple organisers can organise per event on the Web
This used to be restricted to just one organiser, we have now modified this to enable all group admins to be able to organise all events within a group.
Please note: Multiple users should never access and ‘organise’ the same event at the same time to avoid and data syncing issues.
Reception / Registers | Registers / Events tab now filters to your own events
By default when a staff member accessing the registers / events tab via Reception they are now presented with just the events that they are the 'organiser' of. This setting can be changed to see 'All organisers' and all the events will show again. Please note that if you change this setting it will save the setting automatically so the next time you goto that screen it will filter on what setting you had last.
Admin staff for example could have it set to all but a member of staff that takes 1 register a week this will be much easier for them to find that attendance register to take.
Staff redirects
Make it easier for staff users to take registers with as few clicks as possible.
Different user types can be directed after login to a specific tab. Staff could all be automatically redirected to the Reception / Registers tab. This also works on mobile. Simple registers in minimal clicks. This combined with the above feature could mean 2 clicks for your staff to take a register for an event!
Contact us now if you want to add this feature to your account (use contact us link on the top right of this page)
Sending Notices with Attachment
Parent / Staff & Pupil notices can now include attachments.
SMS Filter - save money on SMS
When sending SMS you can now choose to not send to those users who have downloaded the app. This gives you an option to reduce your costs for non-urgent messages.
Please note: Users can opt to not receive notifications from SchoolsBuddy’s apps.
Subjects for Parents Evening
We can now filter by your subject classes if we integrate with a compatible school management system. These currently include: ISAMS, Managebac, Capita SIMS, Arbor, Integris, Double First / Engage, WCBS and more. This enables secondary schools or those schools which require parents to select multiple appointments for the same student to only be presented with those group (teachers) that they are supposed to be booking with.
Container Admin (CCA / After School Club Programs)
- Change the page size to all and this will save the next time you access that page - ideal for those with large activity programs to manage.
- Limit the number of FREE allocations per container
- Date picker can now go backwards, useful for opening and closing containers.
Timesavers
- General speed improvements, especially for staff accounts
- Delete on mass - ‘mass delete toggle’ possible when deleting events via the Reception / Registers | Registers / Events | Details (right hand tab) | Delete Button
January 2018
Parents Evening UI Improvements
Our parents evening module is now suitable for secondary / high school parent evening / conferences as well as junior / primary schools. In the coming weeks we will add advanced filtering based upon subjects.
We are working through SIS integrations including ISAMS, Managebac, Capita SIMS, Engage and more.
- New parent selection page (visual page with time slots clearly marked to allow sequential booking to allow speedy schedule building.
- Existing events view updates; staff can easily view availability of staff and block out events.
- Manual booking page updates; same visual view to allow easily manual booking
- Staff schedule screen updated to include new summary columns (available, booked, blocked)
- Ability to "block out" events; making them unavailable to book but still visible in schedules for staff & printouts.
- Booking basket page updated to better render free events (also printable for parents to print their schedule).
Activities Management (CCA / ECA / After School Clubs Admin)
- Auto allocation rule - set a maximum number of allocations per container (per student). Either from all groups or just FREE groups.
- Display group pupil counters when events have been generated.
- Display status of join requests on the group overview page.
- Allow ability to ‘manage groups’ when the containers are live (add and remove pupils to groups).
- Display +/- differences from original allocation to current live number of pupils per group.
- New join requests tab to see and manage join requests.
- Join requests option to hide from parents / pupils when the groups are full.
- Now lead group organiser identified in live groups, ideal for reporting.
- <p" style="box-sizing: inherit;">HTML descriptions for containers & groups within containers.</p">
- Day of the week now compulsory when creating a group.
- Status warnings to avoid any accidental changes to group status.
- Pagination added to container groups tab page. This will help navigation between large programs.
Instant Book Events Management
- New faster creation of groups & events with more logical options to avoid mistakes (inc. block bookings vs single event booking)
- This mass event generator will soon be able to allow multiple setup of sporting fixtures
- Mass event generator can create events for multiple groups at one time, using the group staff member, location as defaults.
- Clash management so you are warned if you try and create events that already have events created.
- Show a count of the number of events on the ‘Publish Events’ screen.
Event Management
Now edit, cancel & delete events from the same location (Reception | Registers | Click on the event and select the ‘Details’ tab on the right hand side of the screen. You can edit a series of events (except date / time ), or cancel & delete events.
Attendance Registers
- Now add pupils to attendance registers ‘on the fly’ (only from Reception / Registers). This will also add them to the group for future events.
- Ability to send absentee notifications to Parents.
- Only available via Reception / Register method of recording attendance.
- Optional to have the button on or off for your school.
- Warning box pop up before anyone would accidentally send these out. They are not automatic
- Method if via email only. (Email template customisable)
Message Centre
Admin staff can now view all messages sent by anyone within the message centre and can delete if necessary. In effect this is a log of all messages sent via the Send Communications feature.
Reception Features - Groups
- Groups tab includes a view of 'My Groups' by default.
- Groups tab enables managing of staff and pupils, sending communications and viewing past communications
- Reg Groups tab now shows all events on one day not just the next events (can also be printed).
- Ideal for elementary / primary schools knowing daily schedule for all pupils within a single registration class / home room
Reception Features (General)
- Staff Schedule (within Reception & Signup Admin)
- Display number of groups a staff member is an group admin of.
- Display number of events they are involved with within the date range.
- Allow Staff to view their own Parents Evening / Conference Schedule.
- Staff Roles Permissions (Super User)
- Control your own staff roles for Admins, Fee Admins, Absentee Alerts & Join Request / Signup Admin.
- Predefined search queries includes lists of users without email address & options for those without mobile phones (ideal for pre-SMS setup).
- When viewing a parent now shows the parent diary, showing all children's events in one diary.
Administration
- Super user access can now control staff roles.
- Control your own staff roles for Admins, Fee Admins, Absentee Alerts & Join Request / Signup Admin.
- Dedicated Fees admin ensures Fees visibility is only to that dedicated role and not all admins.
- Join Requests now can be administered from within Reception tab (only administrators, or group admins can accept / reject their own groups requests).
- History of Join Requests (who accepted/rejected and when)
- If restoring a previously deleted person now gives option to restore all linked accounts (parents and guardians)
Visual
- Can now change the highlight text colour for the web to avoid colour clashing.
- More notes / text fields now converted to HTML to allow advanced formatting.
Staff Features
- Staff Schedule (within Reception & Signup Admin).
- Staff Roles Permissions (Super User).
- Permissions to not allow regular staff members to edit group memberships for pupils.
- Staff diary in Reception | Users | Staff Searches.
- Staff Notices.