Alvin DeSilva's Report Card with Subject Specific Criteria

In the example above, we’ve created a report card for Alvin DeSilva using the “Three Four Galore” Report Card template. Alvin is taking English and Math. And under English, you’ll notice that he also received evaluations for Reading, Writing and Speaking. You can configure your own criteria for specific subjects, as this article describes.

The first step is to select a Report Card template that has a section for “Subject-Specific Criteria”. If you go to the “Report Cards” > “Setup Report Cards” menu, you can click on “Change Template” to select a different report card template. The selected template will appear on the left, with configuration elements on the right. Look for the “Subject-Specific Criteria” section on the report card.

Choose a Report Card Template with a Subject-Specific Criteria section

The next step is to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the “Setup Report Cards” screen, and make sure the Subject-Specific Criteria module is turned on. Just click on the “Turn it on” link.

Turning on Subject-Specific Criteria

Once the module is turned on, you will see a new “Setup Subject-Specific Criteria” sub-menu appear next to “Setup Report Cards”. Clicking on it will show the screen below. You’ll notice that this module has 2 sections. The top section shows all the subject templates, while the bottom section shows all subjects, and the subject templates assigned to those subjects.

Screen for Setup Subject-Specific Criteria

To create a new template, just click on “Add Subject Template”. On the pop-up, you can create additional text fields or dropdowns. Here’s what it might look like:

Creating a Subject Template for the Subject-Specific Criteria

Once you have created a few subject templates, you can then use the table below to assign these templates to specific subjects. Just click on the third column next to the subject name. A dropdown will appear. Then select a subject template from the dropdown, or click on “—CLEAR TEMPLATE –“ to clear the template.

Select a Subject-Template for a Subject

And that’s pretty much it. Come chat with us if you need help with anything

Reset your Zoom

Often times, you may have your browser zoom turned on and you wouldn’t even know it. One of the symptoms is that the screen is cut off to the side. A quick remedy to reset your zoom is to hold down the CTRL key and press 0 (the number zero). That will reset the zoom for you.

Reload the Module

In some cases, if you lose your internet connection momentarily, a screen may not have completely loaded, leaving it blank. A quick remedy for this is to reload the module by holding down the SHIFT key and then clicking on the menu item. This will reload the Flash files from the server again

Clear Your Browser Cache

If you’re still having problems despite the fixes above, or if your Live Chat window is missing, you should try clearing your browser cache. Clearing your cache forces the browser to reload web pages again, including the Live Chat widget. The steps to clear your browser cache will differ slightly based on the actual browser. Check out this link for the exact steps:

http://www.wikihow.com/Clear-Your-Browser’s-Cache

Try another browser

If all else fails, try another browser. We highly recommend Google Chrome. Mozilla Firefox is a good alternative as well. And if that still doesn’t work, send us an email at support@quickschools.com, or chat with us, and we’ll do the best we can to assist.

We’re hopeful that a lot of these problems will go away once we upgrade to HTML5. Rest assured our engineers and our support staff will continue to strive to make your experience with QuickSchools a pleasant one.

Is the software secure?

Yes, we employ standard SSL Encryption, which is what banks use for their online portals. All passwords are encrypted, even in the database. We consistently monitor for external attacks, and employ standard protocols for network and server protection.

Will my data be safe?

We use database replication to keep a real-time backup of all accounts. Each account is also backed up nightly to a separate location. You can read more about it here.

Who owns the data?

The data is owned by the respective schools. We have no right to the data. You can request that your data be deleted at anytime. Data from expired / cancelled accounts are also deleted automatically after 60 days.

Will my data be shared with others?

No, your data will absolutely not be shared with others. All software maintenance and support is done in house, so your data will not be accessed by third party vendors.

What if I want to leave?

There are no cancellation fees. You can cancel at any time. You can also download an XML backup of your data before ending your subscription.

Is there a contract?

No, there is no contract. You can start or end your subscription at any time. We do require payment every month to keep your account active.

Will you charge me more later?

We have held the same price since our official launch in 2009. And we have no plans, immediate or long-term, to change our pricing. This is our way of staying competitive in the market place.

Is this a stable company?

Our company was established in 2003. We originally built custom solutions for large supply chains, which allowed us to develop and test our own software platform using J2EE as our core technology. We branched into education in 2007, and officially launched QuickSchools in August 2009 after receiving VC funding earlier that year. Since launching QuickSchools, we’ve removed ourselves from the custom software development market and are focused completely on the smaller school market. We’re now expanding aggressively into North America.

Made for smaller schools

We’ve peeled away at the complexities that make larger systems difficult to use, and we’re left with a simple and easy-to-use school management system. With our focus on simplicity, we can ensure that everything works well.

Start with a basic version that works off the bat (even produce report cards within minutes of signing up), and slowly customize specific modules to fit your needs. Most schools don’t need a lot of configuration, and can start using the system right away. You can also start using certain modules first, and roll out the other modules later as you get more comfortable.

Even though we’re designed for K-12 schools, our subscribers include language schools, after school programs, small colleges, and vocational/training institutes. If you’re a small school, or if you like a simple system that’s easy-to-use, you have to try us out!

Exceptional Service / Support

You won’t know it until you try it. Our Live Chat support agents are amazing, and they’re available to all users, all the time. Don’t believe us? Come chat with us. We’ll help you get started. And if there’s a feature that you want that we don’t have, our Live Chat agents will send your feedback to our engineers for consideration into a future release. We prioritize new features and enhancements based on demand, and we don’t charge anything extra for it. It’s all part of your subscription.

We hope you’ll give us a try. To sign up for a free 30-Day trial, select a plan from the Pricing Page at the link below:

http://www.quickschools.com/quickschools/pricing

As a SaaS vendor, our value proposition is very different from traditional installed software. If you don’t already have a school administration system, or are thinking of changing from a traditional installed system, here are some advantages for using a SaaS-based school administration system such as QuickSchools:

Software that grows with your organization

If you’re going with traditional installed software, one of the first things you need to think about is the hardware: What kind of servers do you need, and how many? If you only have 50 students, does that justify buying a large server? And what happens as you grow? Will you need to buy better machines? With a SaaS-based solution, we take care of all that for you. You pay based on the number of students in your account, and we’ll grow the infrastructure as demand for our service grows.

Software that is available anytime anywhere

SaaS-based software is almost always web-based. So as long as you have an internet connection, you have access to your schools information. You don’t have to worry about setting up a network for multiple users to access your system. And for students and parents who want access to grades and report cards, this is a critical feature.

Software that evolves

When buying traditional installed software, you’re usually locked in to the version that you originally purchased. And when a new version comes out, you don’t get it unless you pay for it. And even when you do, the upgrade process is not necessarily an easy one. Upgrades when done improperly can be painful. With a SaaS-based solution, upgrades are automatically included in your subscription. It is part of our service to keep the software current and competitive within the market place. And our technical staff will make sure that all accounts are upgraded smoothly and painlessly.

Software that keeps your data safe

One very important feature of SaaS is that we keep your data safe from harm. What happens if there’s a fire? What if the server hard drive gets corrupt? At QuickSchools, we keep a real-time backup of the database in a separate server using a process called replication. If our main servers fail, a back-up server can be brought back up in a short period of time. We also run nightly backups of all accounts, which are stored at a separate location. This is all done automatically of course. So your data is always safe in the event of catastrophic failure.

Software that is well supported

Another high cost item that needs to be factored into traditional installed software is IT personnel. Software applications need to be maintained. What if something fails in the middle of the night? You’ll need to call your IT guy to fix it. And depending on the complexity of the software, you’ll need an equally qualified and equally expensive IT person to help you maintain it. SaaS vendors employ IT experts to make sure everything runs smoothly. Our IT experts will tend to not only basic support and maintenance issues, but to other important areas, such as security and new feature development.

These points speak to the SaaS vs. Traditional software aspect of school administration system. We’ll discuss what makes QuickSchools unique in another article later this month. Please stay tuned. Please feel free to comment on other advantages (or disadvantages) of using a SaaS-based solution.

One major improvement slated for 2012 is HTML5. Yup, you heard it right! QuickSchools is moving from a Flash-based front-end to HTML5. Soon you will be able to run QuickSchools from an iPhone or iPad. With new advances in web technology, we feel it’s time to make this upgrade.

This is a tremendous change; one which we hope will benefit all of our customers. There are many other benefits to using HTML5, and we’ll announce more about it as we get closer to the release date.

In the meantime, on behalf of everyone here at QuickSchools, I’d like to wish everyone a Happy New Year. Thank you for supporting us. And we look forward to an even more productive and prosperous 2012.

Watch more videos on our YouTube channel

If you already have your data in Excel format, you can already import your data by mapping the columns in your Excel file with fields in the database. However, if you want to save time with the mappings, you can rename the column headers, or use one of our sample files below:

• SampleStudentImport.xls
• SampleTeacherImport.xls

One thing to note:

If you notice extra fields in the mapping dropdown, which you do not see on screen (like “EPF”, and “SOCSO”), most of these are actually deprecated (i.e. old) fields which we no longer support. These fields currently still exists in the database, but they will be removed in a future release. Other fields like “Race” and “Religion” are hidden fields, which we can activate if needed. For the complete list of active/valid fields for import, please refer to the sample files above.

Here’s an example:

We recently posted a rather lengthy article on how to set up a QuickSchools account if you don’t have academic terms. Non-overlapping academic terms make it easy for schools to control which information (grades, subjects, enrolment, schedules, etc) is active, and which is archived. But this method of doing things impedes on the flexibility for QuickSchools to cater to schools that don’t have academic terms.

So how would we make the system both flexible enough to cater to schools that do not have academic terms, while still allowing the control for the term-based schools to easily move between academic terms?

This is one of the many challenges we face as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendor, where all customers work off the same code base. Rest assured, our engineers are continually looking for improvements that will work well for everyone.

We welcome suggestions to improve our product and services. If you’re not sure about something, come chat with us, or send us an email at support@quickschools.com.

QuickSchools is always looking for new conferences to attend, especially conferences that are attended by our subscribers. Send your suggestions to info@quickschools.com, or write in the comments below.