Release v19.1

To assist with schools migrating to the cloud and utilising CSV based data uploads, we have enhanced our user data store. Now when you use the ‘Schoolbox’ connector for your external data, you will have access to the full complement of Schoolbox user profile features including; Parent and Staff Directories, Emergency Contacts, Medical/Legal Alerts, and Student Flags.

This important update will ensure that, as we develop connectors for SIS cloud APIs, they will be able to access and utilise the full functionality of Schoolbox. In the near future we will be releasing connectors for ISAMS, TASS, Kamar, and Sentral. These API based connectors will utilise this new data store and benefit from all the new features available.

This update means a few changes to the method of uploading user profile data, so make sure you check the new user guides for the Schoolbox Connector.

The new assessment calendar provides an oversight of student workload and assessment to teaching staff. Not only will it show assessments, it will also display the rest of the school calendar in the same view, so you can make sure nobody schedules an exam on Sports Day.

With filters and views designed to handle the large quantities of assessments that your school is setting via Schoolbox, you will quickly be able to find any issues in the assessment schedule for your students.

You can access the Assessment Calendar via the Calendar page as well as from the Course List page, Course pages, Unit pages and Class pages by selecting the 3-dot menu. 

After publishing your news, it is always reassuring to see it being read by your community.  With this latest release we have added statistics to every news article.

Now you can see information on how many times the article has been opened, by which roles and when. We have also included a graph that shows how your readers accessed the article. 

We have found a new weather forecaster to provide us all the information we need to populate the Weather component for dashboards. With the new API, we have modernised the design of both the weather page and dashboard component. The new look works well on mobile devices for checking the weather on the run. Superusers can add the weather component to dashboards from the Administration Area.

To support our schools running Clipboard, we have added support to bring all your Clipboard scheduled fixtures into the Schoolbox calendar. Now your parents and students can see the details of their own game schedule. 

Of course this integration isn’t specific just to Clipboard, you can now utilise this same functionality to bring any user specific VCAL feed into Schoolbox. So, if you have some other user calendars floating around the school - now might be the time to bring them into Schoolbox.

Rubric users will love the new layout for viewing rubrics on smaller devices. We’ve made it so that a rubric on a tablet or even a phone displays in a way that you can clearly see the capability and indicator directly above the descriptor! Super useful!

And the Class Markbook is even more useful for managing student feedback data - we’ve added an indicator to the class markbook when a mark is in draft state!

UPS improvements

• Improved UPS log output:

  • changed colours 

  • condensed output

  • properly display group changes

• Automatically cleanup UPS logs older than 1 month.

Other improvements

• Updated rubric DB schema so it reflects common terminology.

• Student marks can now be added by copying from an external spreadsheet.

• Class pages can now be associated with a year level.

• Plagiarism scanning renamed to "Similarity Check", now also optional per assessment.

• Improved security and performance of pastoral care system.

• Added ability to permanently delete a file from Schoolbox.

• Altered the news audience browser to refer to ‘composite’ audiences, rather than complex audience.

• Added ability to change language for spell checker, now supporting:

  • English (Australian)

  • English (British)

  • English (USA)

• Added support for marking multi period attendance in Synergetic.

• Added due date to Synergetic markbook sync.

• Removed HumanEdge connector - replaced by SchoolEdge.

• Academic reports feature renamed to Documents and can be configured to use custom profile buttons to display a single document category.

• Added ability to enter new lines into capabilities and indicators.

• Files will now show last modified date and person, rather than just created date.

• Added new config option to control how teachers are displayed on a student profile page. You can now only show direct teachers of the student if multiple class codes exist.

• Added support for copy and pasting from Google docs into editor.

• Improved validation when publishing all marks to ensure it is clear which marks failed to publish.

• Added student self-reflection to the top of the submission detail page to make it clear that a self-reflection exists.

• Updated calendar list view to new look with simpler filtering.

• Added new calendar event detail page; notifications will now land on this page.

• Added basic support for Google Course Kit.

• Created new table lu_year_level; Used for filtering assessment calendar based on year level.

• Removed field task_id and task_instance_id from submission_box (due work) and assess (quiz); Field no longer used since code refactoring of assessments.

• Renamed rubric tables; To ensure alignment with front-end terminology

  • rubric_criterion_usage => rubric_indicator_usage;

  • rubric_criterion => rubric_indicator;

  • rubric_descriptor_mark => rubric_indicator_mark;

  • rubric_group => rubric_capability;

  • rubric_group_usage => rubric_capability_usage;

  • rubric_group_mark => rubric_capability_mark;

  • curriculum_node_for_rubric_group => curriculum_node_for_rubric_capability;

  • curriculum_node_for_rubric_criterion => curriculum_node_for_rubric_indicator;

• Renamed rubric fields; To ensure alignment with front-end terminology

  • rubric_capability_mark.rubric_group_id => rubric_capability_id

  • rubric_capability_usage.rubric_group_id => rubric_capability_id

  • rubric_indicator_mark.rubric_group_mark_id => rubric_capability_mark_id

  • rubric_indicator.rubric_group_id => rubric_capability_id

  • rubric_descriptor.criterion_id => rubric_indicator_id

  • rubric_indicator_usage.criterion_id => rubric_indicator_id

  • curriculum_node_for_rubric_capability.rubric_group_id => rubric_capability_id

  • curriculum_node_for_rubric_indicator.rubric_criterion_id => rubric_indicator_id

  • submission_box.rubric_group_marks => rubric_mark_per_capability

• Removed deprecated fields from rubrics;

  • rubric_indicator.grouping

  • rubric_indicator.parent_id

  • rubric_indicator.parent_type

  • rubric_indicator_mark.return_id

• New User Profile Tables

  • sis_user_profile

  • sis_user_profile_parent

  • sis_user_profile_student

  • sis_user_profile_staff

  • sis_user_profile_relation

• Removed deprecated tables;

  • Plagscan_document_migration

  • student_submission_file_crocodoc_archive_log

  • newsGroup

  • newsCampus

  • newsUser

  • news_items

  • subject_news