July was a challenging month in Compass’ hometown, Melbourne, with news that rising COVID-19 cases meant a return to Stage 3 Stay at Home restrictions. Projects we had been working on perfecting during the last lockdown suddenly became much more timely again, while we balanced our commitment to enhancing Compass for school communities in jurisdictions unaffected by restrictions. Needless to say, we have had a very busy month.

From kicking off a brand new feature to new attendance filters to make your life easier, we’ve packed the best bits into this month’s Product Update Blog.

Reminder: Discussions launch

In case you missed it, last week we made our brand new remote teaching and learning tool available to all Compass schools, inviting you to keep the conversation going with Compass Discussions.

Discussions allows students and their teachers to have conversations in a forum-like environment within Compass. Teachers can instigate classwide discussions on topics without requiring all participants to be online at the same time, while students can seek clarity from teachers and their classmates on coursework. You might not all be in the classroom together, but Discussions allows you to collaborate as if you were.

Single sign-on (SSO) - NSW public schools

In recent months we’ve been working closely with the NSW Department of Education to further and strengthen the level of integration between Compass and the DoE’s own network. Single sign-on (SSO) is the next step in that process. From August, users at a handful of pilot schools will notice a new orange icon next to the sign-in button on their Compass login page, from here they will be able to use the department’s SSO service. It’s a simple change, but one we think will be of great benefit to new staff when logging on to Compass, presenting them with a login screen they are familiar with.

Attendance filter: identify students that have not been accounted for

Keep an extra keen eye on absent students who have not been accounted for! You can now choose to filter your unexplained absence list to only include students who are truly unaccounted for, meaning they have no overlapping unmarked rolls. This additional filter will also be useful for school administrators who wish to view or follow-up absences before all rolls have been marked, filtering out students who may have an overlapping school event or instrumental music class with an unmarked roll.

Ability for Event Admins to see draft events on their schedule and calendar

‍Nobody likes it when events on their calendar clash, that’s why we’ve made it possible to view events on the schedule that are in ‘Draft’ or ‘Approval’ stages, ensuring that enrolments and the allocation of staffing are all in order and teachers and students don’t find themselves double-booked. Following feedback from schools, we believe this is the next step in taking your entire events management process online.