When adding a new book to your catalog, there’s a new “Scan ISBN” button that allows you to quickly scan the ISBN barcode.
Look up Book Details by Scanning the ISBN Barcode
QuickSchools will then search the Google library, and pull details for the book, which you can use to create the book record in your QuickSchools Library App:
Book Details retrieved by Scanning the ISBN Barcode
Note that books pulled from Google will also contain an image of the book.
Generate Barcode and Label
When adding a book, you now have the option to generate a Barcode by clicking on the “Generate” button:
We recently released a new feature related to the Online Payment modules on June 6 (with improvements on July 6). Schools in the United States that subscribe to QuickSchools can now collect payments from students and payments via ACH Bank Transfer.
This feature is in BETA: If you would want this enabled for your school, please contact our Support Team.
There are separate settings for Credit Card vs. ACH Bank Transfer. And you can decide whether to absorb the transaction fee, or to charge a convenience fee to the payer.
Student Paying Online
Once you’ve connected your account to Stripe, Student make payments directly from their Student Portal:
Several minor improvements for this release, plus a few general improvements to our Master Scheduler. Here are the latest improvements in QuickSchools:
Master Scheduler Improvements
Support Alternate Bell Schedule in PDF Section Assignments
Mass Email PDF Section Assignments
Improve how teachers without departments are displayed in Step 4
Improve general performance for large data sets
Option to Paginate Step 4
Freeze Left Pane for Step 5
Optimize Summary Reports
New Importer to link Teachers to Courses for Enrollment Period
Bug fix when taking for attendance for multiple Subjects in the same period
Bug fix for Section Attendance Pie Chart on Student record
Miscellaneous bug fixes in Admissions module
Miscellaneous server performance improvements
Student ID Card
We’re really excited to announce our new capability to print/generate Student ID Cards. Student Cards will leverage our existing PDF templating engine, allowing ID cards to be customizable by school.
Sample Student ID Card generated in QuickSchools (Beta)
You will have options to hide areas of the Student ID, but any further customizations would need to be done by our support staff.
Several minor improvements for this release, plus a few general improvements to our Master Scheduler. Here are the latest improvements in QuickSchools:
Online Payments modules for Students and Parents supports ACH via Stripe
Master Scheduler Improvements
Schedule PDF after Step 5
Freeze Panes for Steps 3 and 4
Advanced Search in Step 5 to search for students with unfulfilled course requests
Performance Improvements for large data sets
Improved support for Summary Reports
Bug fixes related to deletion of courses
Remove option for “Distributed Courses” from Step 5 scheduling algorithm
We are building a new feature called Period Zero Attendance, or Daily-Equivalent Attendance. What this essentially means is that QuickSchools will track and report a daily attendance equivalent, based on period or subject-based attendance. This will be an optional feature for schools that track period or subject-based attendance.
How does it work?
Schools will continue to take attendance by period or subject. However, for every school day, each student will be marked with an equivalent daily attendance. So for example, if a student is marked present for 5 out of 7 periods, QuickSchools will convert this to a daily equivalent, based on certain rules. As a result, the student may be marked Present, Absent, Tardy or Half Day Present for the day.
This daily attendance will be stored in Period Zero (hence the name “Period Zero Attendance”). When reporting attendance, the system will use / display the Daily Attendance by default. And the period / subject attendance is merely recorded for tracking / informational purposes only.
How will the Daily-Equivalent be calculated?
By default, the QuickSchools will use the FIRST attendance record as the Daily Attendance. This means that if a student is absent for the first period, but present for the remaining periods, the student will be marked as Absent by default. An administrator can then change the Daily Attendance to Present or Half Day Present based on rules set by the school.
Later on, we will provide different default calculation methods. Some possible options we are considering:
Orchestra will maintain the same simplicity and ease-of-use that has been synonymous with the QuickSchools brand. You will find many common elements between the two brands to maintain consistency in the user experience and of course, Orchestra too comes included with our awesome Live Chat support.
Several minor improvements for this release, plus a few general improvements to our Master Scheduler. Here are the latest improvements in QuickSchools:
When re-assigning sections to another teacher, you can now view/select which sections to re-assign in the Master Scheduler
Master Scheduler Improvements
Refactor Screens for standalone Orchestra Master Scheduler Plan
Expand support for Constraints (by row and column)
Improve how sections are re-assigned
Improve Summary Report support for Master Scheduler
Improve flow for deleting courses
Support Bulk Removal of Course Requests by Report
Support multiple sections in a single period, in student PDF
Miscellaneous bug fixes
Other General Improvements
Include attachments when copying Lesson Plans
Improve Google Drive Integration support for large data sets
Improve how Summary Reports are run concurrently
Support Gradebook Category in Report Creator
Fix initial authentication connection to Canvas
Fix Delay when Changing Password
Fix Time Zone Difference when creating Live Stream events
New Orchestra Subscription Plan for Master Scheduler only, includes
New Login Page
Updated Footer and links
New Features Page
Display Section Assignments in Student and Parent Portals
New Printable Section Assignments PDF
Improve Course Catalog Importer to support updates
Other General Improvements
Email Templates from Student Profile (see below)
Automatically Match Courses in Google Classroom Course Mappings
Ability to disconnect to Google Classroom
System checks for existing emails for new Trial Sign-Ups
Miscellaneous Fixes when creating new Trial Accounts
Generic Importer for Tests & Assessments (BETA)
Custom Background Image (BETA)
Improve reporting on Lunch Ordering app (for Pending/Cancelled Orders)
Improve how announcements can be hidden
Improve display of transactions on Billing History page
Support Enrollment Date in Students API Resource
Continue Framework Improvements for Emails
Fix Non-School Days on Attendance Calendar for Group Schools
Fix Scheduled Google Classroom Sync
Fix Gradebook Template with Scale Score
Fix Displayed Date for Attendance Not-Yet-Taken Notifications (BETA)
Email Templates from Student Profile
We have long supported Email Templates, for various modules. We’ve not extended this support to the student record:
When accessing a student record, there is now a “Email Profile” link, that will allow you to use Email Templates to send emails. For more information on our Email Templating capability, check out the link below:
We understand how busy a Teacher’s day can get, and how this may lead to them forgetting to take attendance in QuickSchools. To resolve this, we now introduce a new feature — the Attendance Dashboard.
This feature is in BETA: If you would want this enabled for your school, please contact our Support Team.
This new feature would display the periods of a given day where attendance is Not Yet Taken. It is applicable for Homeroom, Period, or Subject-Based Attendance, and allow the Global Attendance Takers to either (1) Take attendance on behalf of the teacher; or (2) Send an Email notifying the teacher of the attendance yet to be taken.
To know more about our Attendance Dashboard feature, please see our Support Guide linked below:
