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Compass Customer Communications - Weekly Product Updates

Compass Team

Friday 17th March, 2023

Ability to Export Comment Bank

You can now view/download the Comment Banks to proof-read and review before using it in other areas of Compass.

Navigate to the Comment Bank Editor module via the Teaching and Learning icon, then select the export icon. From here, you will be able to select the specific Comment Banks you would like to export from either the School Wide or Private Comment Bank.

Friday 9th December, 2022

Custom Groups - Attendance Page

With the addition of the new Custom Groups section in the Attendance page, you now have the ability to view Profile Pages for each Custom Group that you have (as configured in People Management). This allows you to view detailed analysis of the attendance for the students in each Custom Group. 

New Attendance section for Custom Groups

Furthermore, you can set up Pulse for ‘Custom Groups - Profile Pages’ to monitor attendance and behavioural trends of the students in each Custom Group!

Pulse widgets for Custom Groups

Friday 2nd December, 2022

Medical Condition Information - Anaphylaxis Report

We have included medical condition information in the Anaphylaxis Report in People Management. You now have more data to look at when you are wanting to get a report specifically for students that have anaphylaxis.

Agenda Item Templates - Minutes

Adding new meetings in Minutes just got faster. You now have the ability to add agenda items from templates to save time when setting up meetings.

To do this while you are in the Minutes:

  1. Click Agenda item templates > New template
  2. Add in the template details
  3. Click Create

Then when you’re completing the set up of your new meeting,

  1. Click the Agenda item tab
  2. Click Add agenda item > Add agenda item from template
  3. Select the relevant agenda item(s)
  4. Click Add agenda item(s)

Downloads Tab - Semester Reports

We have added an extra tab to Semester Report cycles called 'Downloads' which allows you to know the status of your downloads. Now each time you request a download, whether it is an individual report from the Enrolments tab or 'Report PDFs (Ungrouped)' or 'Report PDF's (By Form)' the status of the download appears in this tab.

Friday 25th November, 2022

Export Custom Groups - People Management

You can now select a Custom Group in People Management and export the users that are in that specific custom group!

Example of Custom Group export

From the Organisation menu, go into People Management and click on the Custom Groups tab. Click on the ‘Selected Groups’ icon. You will notice a new option to export users in Custom Group(s).

Export settings option under 'Selected Groups'

Friday 11th November, 2022

Mobile Apps Update - New Navigation Experience for Students

Similar to the updated navigation experience for Parents that was released early this year, we have updated the navigation experience for students.

As part of this new experience, we have introduced:

- A clutter-free navigation bar at the bottom of the screen.

- Updated Newsfeed and Schedule for Students.

- Shortcuts to allow for more straight-forward navigation to frequently used features.

- A more page that provides students easy access to various modules.

This change will be rolled out to all schools in the next few weeks.

Push Notifications in Chronicle! 

You can now send notifications from Chronicle in push notification format. This then allows you to use any or all 3 communication methods (Email, SMS, Push) to alert parents and/or students of content recorded through Chronicle.

Like most other areas where SMS and Push notification both exist, there are a number of eligibility types to choose from.

When you open a Chronicle template and go to the Communications tab, select either Parent SMS and/or Student SMS, and there is a ‘Send option’ drop down menu. Here, you can select for this message to be sent as an SMS (standard charges apply), Push Notification (Free - user must have the Compass App downloaded and notifications enabled in the settings), or Push Notification where available, otherwise SMS.

The attendee grid in the Details of a Chronicle entry will indicate included students’ and/or their parents’ eligibilities for the above settings, so that you can identify if anyone in a particular Chronicle entry will not receive a notification via the setting you have chosen (e.g. they don’t have a mobile number recorded in Compass or don’t have the Compass app downloaded).

We hope you enjoy this update designed to streamline your communication workflows.

Friday 4th November, 2022

Merge Rolls - Attendance

You can now enable 'merge rolls together for a session if the classes are assigned to one teacher'. This means if you are a teacher who teaches multiple classes in the same session, you can now mark one roll with all attendees from all classes rather than marking individual rolls!

If you would like to enable this feature for your school, please reach out to our Support team.

'Skipped Class' Flag - Chronicle Digest

You can now set up your Chronicle Digest to track when a student was marked present in a session, but on the same day marked not present (unexplained) later on. This will allow you to track if any students are being truant.

Wednesday 27 October, 2022

Gender Pronouns for Staff, Students and Parents

You can now set gender pronouns to display in the Compass portal. This can be enabled for staff, students and parents.

You can manage this in the settings under the People Management module.

You have the option to bulk update pronouns based on the assigned gender in the student account:

  • Male (He/Him)
  • Female (She/Her)
  • Not Specified (They/Them)

Note: This will not overwrite any already set pronouns in your People Management.

Friday 21 October, 2022

VCE Attendance Data - Progress Reports (VIC SCHOOLS)

You can now include VCE specific attendance on Progress Reports. This will display on the students progress reports PDF and on students profile page in their Progress Reports tab when the cycle is selected to display. 

From the Teaching and Learning Menu, go into Progress Reports and click on the Cycles tab. Click on the pencil icon for the cycle you wish to import VCE attendance data. You will notice a new option to import VCE Attendance Percentage

Meetings on User Schedules - Minutes

All attendees of a Meeting now have the ability to see the Meeting within their Compass Calendar allowing staff to manage and keep track of their meetings in one place!

Clicking on the Meeting in the calendar will take you to the meeting in the Minutes module.

Friday 14th October, 2022

SA Spelling Test Results - Analytics

Schools now have the ability to import their SA Spelling Test results into Analytics!

From the Teaching and Learning Menu, go into Analytics. Click Add Analytics Cycle and select the Cycle Type 'South Australian Spelling Test A’ or ‘South Australian Spelling Test B'. See that there is a ‘Choose File’ button to be able to import a CSV for both 'SA Spelling Test A' and ‘SA Spelling Test B’.

Friday 7th October, 2022

UI Uplift - Attendance Dashboard

To provide a more streamlined experience for users, we are excited to announce an uplift to the Attendance dashboard! This change is now available to everyone. Please note that there are no changes to the functionality of the Attendance dashboard. See before and after screenshots below!

Teacher Names - Semester Reports

We have a very exciting update for Semester Reports! You can now manually enter/edit teacher names on reports!

From the Teaching and Learning Menu, go into Semester Reports. Click into a Report Cycle and go into Cycle Settings. You will notice a new 4th option’ for 'Teacher Name(s) on Report’. Select the new option 'Manually select teachers' and click Save.

Scroll down to the section 'Classes in this subject'. See new options to select the teacher(s) of each class (defaulted to the current lead teacher of the class). This new update will display the manually selected teacher(s) on the downloaded reports!

Parent Student Teacher Conferences - Face to Face and Online Options

With this new highly-requested update released by our Customer Love team, schools can now offer parents the option to choose between a face to face or an online meeting in the Conferences module. This change will hopefully alleviate some burden on administrative staff, as parents will no longer need to contact the school directly to arrange for a different conference type.

Staff can be allocated a Face to Face and/or Online Location. When both options are enabled, parents will be able to nominate their preferred option.

Users in the PstAdmin permissions group will be able to create Face to Face and/or Online locations for staff.

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Wednesday 21st September, 2022

Login and Security Update

Dear Schools,


We hope you have had a great term 3 and are all looking forward to a well-deserved break. During the T3 school holidays, we will release a new update to enhance security for all Compass portals.


Compass is always working to ensure that we are maintaining a high level of data security and this new change will provide users will more control over their own security. You will now see there is a new option under the cog icon called “Login and Security”, which has replaced the “My API Key” page.


This page will provide you with your API login key, like before, but it will now also show you every device that you have logged into Compass on and will provide you with the ability to cancel sessions. This will forcefully log you out of any of the devices listed. In addition to this change, Compass will now send notification emails about successful logins attempts as per the image below;

Compass will also make a mapping change for all Victorian CASES21 schools. 

We have updated the Eduhub import so that if a staff member does not have a “Business Mobile”, it will then import their “Personal Mobile”. This will ensure that all staff have a mobile phone listed against them in Compass so that your school can enable 2FA easily for staff if you wish to do so.

Your school may have already had this in place, but this is now out in all schools.

Top 3 security tips on maintaining good security hygiene from our team here at Compass!

1) If in doubt, change it out. If you are concerned that your password has been compromised, it’s always a great idea to change the password immediately. To practice good security hygiene it's recommended to change your passwords every 3 months.

2) Don’t write it down. Writing down your password to make sure you remember it is one of the most common ways accounts are compromised, especially in the school environment. If you have done this is the past, we strongly recommend changing your password immediately.

3) Review all successful logins to ensure that it was you that logged in. Compass will now email you every time a login has been successful, if you suspect that someone has access to your account, or you don’t recognise a device cancel the session, and reset your password. If you would like to know more about practising good security hygiene please follow this link to our Security Help Centre.

If you have any concerns please feel free to reach out to our support team.

Kind regards,

The Compass Team

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