Category: News and Announcements

New Parent Messaging Board for the Parent Portal

Azroy Kandan8 Comments

QuickSchools is excited to announce our new Parent Messaging Board, available on our new HTML5 interface. For those of you still on our older Flash version, here’s a good reason to upgrade the HTML5 version.

When a parent first logs into their Parent Portal, here’s what they can see:

QuickSchools Parent Portal
QuickSchools Parent Portal

Notice that in additional to seeing multiple students from the same Parent Portal account, parents can also see upcoming events, and messages posted by the school. Links that appear on the message board are also clickable.

If you are a school administrator or teacher that wants to post an announcement to all parents, you’ll need access to the Parent Portal module. Here’s what the Parent Portal screen looks like for administrators:Read More »

Upgrade your QuickSchools account to HTML5

Azroy Kandan8 Comments

If your login page looks like this, then CONGRATULATIONS! You’re on the new HTML5 platform! WOO HOO!

New HTML5 Login Page
New HTML5 Login Page

If not, have your school administrator contact us via chat or email, and we’ll upgrade your account. If you’re a student/parent/teacher who’d like to access the HTML5 version while the school is still on the Flash version, come chat with us, and we’ll give you a special link that will take you to the  HTML5 version of your account.

Here are some advantages of the new HTML5 version over the previous Flash version:

New features will be built on the new HTML5 framework, and the previous Flash version will be phased out. Here are some other new features in the pipeline for HTML5

  • Parent-Teacher Communication
  • Online Payments

We should mention here that the HTML5 version currently does not support Internet Explorer (IE) 8 and below. So you will need at least IE9. But we highly recommend that you try out Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, as these are excellent browsers.

As always, let us know what you think of the new design. More improvements are on the way!

UPDATE: January 31, 2013

We’ve upgraded all remaining schools who were still using the Flash version to the new HTML5 interface. For more information, read here.

Updated Transcripts Module for HTML5

Azroy Kandan8 Comments

Hello all,

I know it’s been a while since we last posted an article on our QuickSchools blog. Believe me, there are a tonne of improvements coming very soon, but we’ve just been too busy to tell you about it. The HTML5 release is in its final stages of beta testing. In fact, all new trial accounts automatically get the new HTML5 version. Existing subscribers can request to be transitioned to the new HTML5 version whenever they’re ready.

So let’s go over some new improvements in the transcripts module. Here’s a screenshot of our new “Basic Transcript” template that will be replacing the “Generic Multi-page Transcript”:

New Basic Transcripts on HTML5
New Basic Transcripts on HTML5

Here are some highlights:

Read More »

Adding Chat to Zendesk: Real-time web technology with Firebase

Azreen Latiff1 Comment

Together with our upcoming HTML5 release, we will be introducing more and more real-time features into QuickSchools. The web is getting social, and we need these real-time features in order to make social features work.

This is where a service called Firebase comes in. They offer a fantastic service that allows developers like us to have access to a secure & scalable real-time backend. But before we roll it out in our main QuickSchools product, we tried it out in our internal Zendesk customer service portal. Like many customer-service oriented companies, we use Zendesk internally to manage customer tickets.

Read More »

QuickSchools at ISNA Education Bazaar

Azroy KandanLeave a comment

We just wanted to say a quick thank you to all the folks who visited our booth at the ISNA Education Bazaar, held at the Westin O’Hare in Chicago IL this past weekend. It was a great event, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Azreen at the QuickSchools booth, ISNA Education Forum 2012

The Songket boxes from Malaysia proved to be a great hit amongst the visitors. And people seemed to really enjoy the surprise we had inside.

Tower of Songet Boxes View of Songket Boxes

We were also able to showcase the new HTML5 interface to some of our visitors. It looks great on the New iPad you see here.Read More »

6 days until we close nominations!

Azroy KandanLeave a comment

Just a quick reminder: The nominations for the 2012 QuickSchools Teacher of the Year will be closing in approximately 6 days (on Sunday April 15, at 11:59 pm PST). It’s not too late to submit your nominations. Remember, the winner will receive a New iPad (iPad3). Show your support for your favourite teacher, by nominating them for the award.

Here’s the link to the nomination form:

http://blog.quickschools.com/2012/03/28/quickschools-teacher-of-the-year-award-details/

References for ISNA schools

Azroy Kandan1 Comment

The ISNA conference is just a few days away. I just thought I’d share some references and quotes from a few of our ISNA schools.

Daarul Uloom Islamic School, Peoria IL

Website: dupeoria.org

“The Quickschools program has made computation of grades, generating report cards, and communication among teachers much easier.  The program is user friendly and the customer support is always quick to answer our questions and very helpful.  We have seen great benefits from using Quickschools this year, Alhamdulillah.” – Principal, Daarul Uloom, Peoria, IL

Al-Noor Sunday School, Bossier City LA

Quotes from staff:

“Amazing and very friendly customer support taking us step by step on any task we get stuck on. Their almost constant availability online and rapid responses have saved the day for us on many occasions :)”

“Since we started using Quickschools secretary work became much more efficient and creative too:)”

“Very honest, patient and straightforward people masha’Allah, thank you very much!!!”

Read More »

School doesn’t start for several months, so I’ll subscribe later?

Azroy Kandan2 Comments

It’s approaching the end of the school year, and many schools are on the look out for a great school management system. Of course, for most schools, the academic year doesn’t start until August or September which is several months from now. But it doesn’t hurt to be on the look out for one now, right?

So you sign up for a free trial, and by the end of it, you decide “Hey, this is great! I want to subscribe”. But at the same time, you don’t want to start paying now while school is not in session (by the way, we do require payment every month to keep your account active).

However, there is an alternative, which many of our schools take advantage of:Read More »