With the increasing demand for Online Learning features, so has our support for integration to Learning Management Systems like Google Classroom improved. It is our philosophy to make incremental but frequent improvements to the QuickSchools offering. Here we discuss some of the recent improvements to the Google Classroom Integration App. These include:

• Time-Out for Manual Sync (Aug 17 Release)
• Viewing / Excluding Archived Courses (Sept 7 Release)
• Handling Unmarked Assignments (Sept 7 Release)

Time-Out for Manual Sync

Previously, when manually synchronizing the Gradebooks, you would get real-time feedback on the status of the run:

However, this process was limited by the browser time-out of 5 min. What we opted to do in the August 17 Release was to extend the timeout to 30-min. This was done by changing the function to run in the background (no more pop-up on completion of synchronization):

If you initiate another Manual Sync while an existing synchronization is running, the same message above will appear.

Because the synchronization now runs in the background, you need to click on the “Synchronization History” link to view the status of the synchronization. You can then view any running synchronizations, as well as view the status of completed runs by clicking on the “View” link on the right-most column:

We will be updating the Manual Sync section to reflect this change in a future release. 

Also note that the timeout improvement is also shared with the other LMS integration apps, like with Canvas.

Archived Courses

In the September 7 Release, we introduced a setting to include Archived courses in Google Classroom:

When this setting is enabled, archived courses in Google Classroom will be indicated clearly, with the words “[Archived]” in the front of the name:

If you do decide the enable or disable this setting, be sure to click on “Refresh course data from Google Classroom” in order to update the contents of the course dropdown

Unmarked Assignments

Unmarked Assignments (or Columns without a designated total marks) are not supported in QuickSchools. So previously, if a course in Google Classroom contains unmarked assignments, the Gradebook Sync would simply skip the entire course. The September 7 release introduces a new setting allowing you to simply skip the affected assignments:

These are the latest improvements to the Google Classroom Integration App. Be sure to check our blog frequently for the latest in QuickSchools.