We took a little break from our monthly Product Update Blog as we focused on a number of larger projects over December and January, however we’re back for the remainder of the school year as our team gets to work on a variety of exciting enhancements and integrations designed to make your life easier.

Emergency Management and templates in Bulk SMS

If the last year has taught us anything, it’s that being prepared for challenges or emergencies is essential. While we might not like to fret about potential issues we might face in the future, having the resources on hand to deal with them if they arise makes things much easier in worst case scenarios.

With this in mind, we have added the ability to create and save templates in our Bulk SMS module, allowing you to  quickly and effectively send standardised communications in Compass. We’ve also created a default template to assist with notifications during emergency and evacuation situations, including the ability to target staff and visitors who are ‘onsite’ for a given date as well (this option will only be available for schools who have a Compass Kiosk and are using this to track visitors and staff arrivals/departures using Timecard).

If you do not currently have the Bulk SMS feature enabled in your Compass Community menu , please contact our Support team for a quote today*.

Attendance Note shortcut on the Roll

A highly requested feature, we are delighted to announce we have introduced a shortcut on the roll enabling staff to quickly add an attendance note for a student. This has been designed to save staff time while entering these notes into Compass.

This update will add a simple icon to the roll next to the Chronicle icon. From here, staff will be able to open the Attendance Note module and quickly add a note for a student from the roll. This option will be made available in all Compass portals this week, if this does not appear on your rolls please navigate to the Organisation > Attendance menu, select the Settings icon and enable the “Staff can add Attendance Notes:” functionality.

Faculty Managers in Chronicle Approval Chain

‍You now have the ability to add faculty managers to the approval/notification chain for a given Chronicle template without needing to specifically add them into the template individually.

To use this, simply navigate to the Faculty Managers configuration page via the Admin Tools menu, indicate you would like to include Chronicle in the options and check those managers who should be included in the chain. Per Chronicle template, you can either automatically assign a Faculty to the template, or allow staff to set this upon entry creation. Please see the Chronicle administration Knowledge Base article for more information on how to do this!

Canvas Integration

The turn to remote teaching and learning as a result of the pandemic has led to an increase in interest in learning management systems (LMS), with Canvas being among the most popular choices for schools, particularly for institutions in the private sector. Following popular demand from a number of Compass schools, we have developed an integration that brings together Canvas’ open, extensive learning ecosystem with our functionality designed to simplify teaching and elevate learning*.

Please get in touch if you are interested in this functionality.

*Additional costs may apply.