Author: Ezekiel

Quickschools Basics: New User Guide

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As with many other systems, there are certain aspects of Quickschools that all users need to be familiar with. Below, we share details useful to all new users, including:

Logging In

Before you begin using Quickschools, you first need to be invited to join the school’s existing account. Only school administrators will be able to send an invite, so you may need to contact the school directly.

The invitation will be sent to the email address the school has on file for you. The email will include the school’s unique URL, your username, and your temporary password. Be sure to save the URL as it will be needed to log in in the future.

The email will provide you with details on how to log in

After you follow the link provided, simply enter in your username and password to log in.

Enter in your username and password to log in
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Private Messaging: A Summary

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Among the many communication features we offer within Quickschools, Private Messaging is one we expect to be increasingly utilized as schools transition to a virtual setting. If you have not used this feature before, here’s a quick summary on what it offers.

Private messaging is available on the upper right, next to your name

Before you begin using it, you’ll want to make sure that the feature is properly configured. Teachers and Admins can message each other right away, but it needs to be enabled for Students and Parents. These settings can be found while configuring the Parent Portal and Student Portal in the “Turn Features On/Off” page:

Configure the Parent Portal and Student Portal to enable Private Messaging
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New App: Attendance Taking by Parents

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There is a new app available in the Quickschools App Store named the “Attendance Taking by Parents” app. The idea behind the app is pretty simple – it allows parents to take attendance from the Parent Portal for their children. For schools that are transitioning over to a virtual or hybrid system (partially on campus), this new app may come in handy. Here’s how it works:

When the app is installed and configured, parents will see a “Take Attendance” button below the student basic details:

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Use Case: Single-Term Yearly Gradebook

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The Admin Columns feature has given our users the ability to add grading columns to all gradebooks in one go. There are many other benefits to the admin columns that you can take advantage of in Quickschools. Two little known features would be the ability to specify date ranges, and the meta-id field. In the following example, we demonstrate how you can setup your gradebook using only a single yearly term, while having the gradebook broken down into multiple terms.

To that end, QuickSchools offers an add-on service to build custom templates for you. And with a custom Report Card template, you can make use of the Gradebook Default Columns which provide more structure in the way grades are transferred from the Gradebook to the Report Cards.

With ONE single yearly term, each subject will have ONE cumulative Gradebook for the entire school year, allowing teachers to use grades from the entire year when calculating final grades for each academic term and the final school year.

In the screenshot below, we have an admin column for each quarter in the year. These could also be configured as trimester or semester, depending on what’s needed for your academic year setup.

Each of the admin columns has a date range specified, as well as the meta-id. The meta-id is provided by our support team, and designates a particular column in the report card template. This allows the grade in the gradebook to be passed along to the report cards systematically.

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Do I Need Academic Terms?

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An important aspect of the QuickSchools system is the concept of Academic Terms. An academic term is used to manage all subjects/courses that a student is enrolled in within a specific time frame. This containment is important in order to easily manage a group of students that all start/end courses at the same time. It is also important that these academic terms do not overlap, as the system can only support one term to be active at any time.

So what if a school does not have academic terms? There are still courses with multiple students starting and learning together, but some courses run for a week, others for a month, and so on. This is more typical for vocational schools that offer private courses like a Photography School, or a Barber/Beauty School. In this case, we recommend having just ONE academic term, which you can archive on a yearly basis.

This set up works if:

  • Students learn together in groups. All students within a course start and end together, but also go through the same curriculum (i.e. not Self-Paced)
  • You have courses of varying lengths.
  • You want to track students as cohorts, even though the same cohort of students may leave the school at different times (because of the length of their courses)
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Interested in an Online Demo?

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We designed QuickSchools to be as simple and easy-to-use as possible. With on-screen video tutorials, online manuals, and live chat, schools can easily jump in and try things out all on their own. We even offer a free trial with complete access to all of our features to get started.

However, if you prefer to see QuickSchools live in action, or if you have more complicated questions to ask, you can schedule an online demo with us. Demos typically last between 20-40 minutes. Here’s what our standard agenda includes:

  • School Details
    • Share basic information about your school. We’ll then tailor the live demo to fit your requirements.
  • Why Quickschools?
    • We’ll discuss what makes Quickschools different compared to other Student Information Systems.
  • Live Demo
    • We’ll demo some of our features! The features highlighted will be specific to your needs.
  • Pricing Information
    • Our pricing information is available here, which we will briefly review.
  • Q&A
    • Here’s where we’ll take on any questions you may have.

If you are interested, you can request a demo via chat, emailing us at support@quickschools.com, or by scheduling via the link below:

Schedule a Demo!

Online Forms Importer

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We have a new importer available in Quickschools, this time for the Online Forms app. The importer allows you to create new submissions within a form packet. You can then manage each submission as you normally would. The importer is currently in private beta, so you’ll have to request it via chat or email. Here’s how it works:

A new “Import” button is made available for all form packets:

The mapping process is the same across all of our importers. Just map the fields from your excel file to those in your form. To make things easier, the drop down will show the form name first just in case you have similarly named fields in other forms.

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Attendance Calendar for Holidays

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In case you missed it with the release of Sprint E20, there is a new Calendar feature in Quickschools that is readily available to all schools.

As an administrator, you can now define the holiday calendar for each academic term that you set up. In addition, the feature can also restrict data entry for attendance. This will prevent teachers from inadvertently adding attendance data on days students are not expected to attend.

Here’s a quick guide on viewing and configuring the calendar:

  1. Under the “New Semester Setup” > “View All Semesters” menu, you should see a new “Calendar” link for each term:
New “Calendar” link when configuring an Academic Term
  1. Clicking on it will bring up a calendar for the specified start/end dates defined for the term:
Set up holidays and other non-school days on the Calendar
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Use Case: Term Grades

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With the release of Sprint E21 in late November, the option to access previous term final grades in the gradebook was made available in QuickSchools. In case you are wondering the benefits of this new feature, here are a few use cases you can reference as an example:

Compare Current Grade with Previous Term

The previous final grade can simply be added in to compare with the student’s current final grade.

In the example above, we see that the current Q2 grade has fallen compared to Q1.
Term Grades Averages

With the previous final grade added to the gradebook, custom formulas can now be created to calculate the student’s current semester average (previously only accessible via report card calculations).

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New Admin & Principal Meetings

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If you are a new principal or administrator using Quickschools for the first time, we’d like to invite you to schedule a free training session. In your account, you may have noticed the following announcement that was posted today:

This announcement will be available over the next 2 weeks. In order to schedule a meeting, click either the red “Request Form” button, or the “CLICK HERE” link, to complete the form:

We hope to get you up to speed with all of the available features in your account. We’d also like to take this opportunity to learn about the features you are interested in, as well as gather any feedback you may have about your current experiences with Quickschools.

Do note that a typical meeting can range between 20-40 minutes. If you are unavailable to meet, please click here for a helpful guide.