Virtual Update 2021 Q&A
Question | TASS Comment | From |
|---|---|---|
How do we put in an after hours support request? | After hours support is only available for TASS Cloud customers. Log a Technical Services Request form the 'Support' page on the TASS Hub.
| Annie & Sam |
How do we get access to the forum? | Head over to forum.tassweb.com.au where you can register for an account. | Annie |
Why do we limit votes? | We have different trust levels which reward users for being active. The votes have been recently increased significantly to the allow everyone to vote on what they want. | Annie |
When will 56 be available? | Beta: December/January. General Release: April 2022. | Annie |
Can we have the banners in a place to have these auto loaded? Like a dropdown of templates to choose from | Banners can be added into Email Templates in Email Settings (System Admin) so you might be able to use this program in some capacity to achieve this in the short term. | Annie |
Will there be the ability to define standard templates for the new email images/banners? | This is currently possible. We will continue to expand in this area. Head to: System Admin > Utilities > Email Settings: Email Templates tab to setup a template. | Annie |
Would love parent lounge tasks for more things :) | This is coming! We're expanding the new 'Items to Action' concept to include all areas that require action by the parent:
| Annie |
Can the heat map be easily printed out? | Unfortunately there's no printing option at this stage. It's designed to be an interactive tool. | Annie |
Does a Health Check cost users anything? | Yes, you can check out our Professional Services Menu on the TASS Hub which includes the price. | Annie |
When are you going to change the name "Teacher Kiosk" to either "Staff Kiosk" or "Staff Portal"? | We're gradually making these changes (to Staff Kiosk). Some schools have the default login image on Staff Kiosk which references Teacher Kiosk. If you do, you can change this through TASS.web System Admin > Utilities > Product UI Maintenance. | Annie |
What if we fund an enhancement and then it's that good that it becomes a standard in TASS? So we pay for other schools to benefit? | Click here to read through the Funded Enhancements FAQ. | Annie |
We recently implemented Address Validation and Heat Mapping. How do we see the Heat Mapping info please? | Head to: Enrolments > Enrolment Information >Enrolments Worksheet : once you load the worksheet, drill down on student numbers and you'll see the 'Heatmap' option. | Annie |
If there is something that is pretty well voted for in the forum but not on the road map how do we go about making is a co-funded feature? | You can contact me directly! | Annie |
Can split families (complex) change the permissions without the other parent knowing? | I'm guessing you're referring to the Student UD Areas. The 'other' parent won't receive a notification but until that update has been accepted through TASS.web, a warning will appear against that UD field in Parent Lounge. | Annie |
Can Parents view/add/update attachments in the new UD areas ib Parent Launch Version 55? | Yes, you can! | Annie |
What was the date for the V55 update that includes OAuth ? Or will that be part of the general V55 release in September ? | This enhancement will be included in a V55 patch release, after the General Release in September. | Annie |
apologies if I have missed this in an update - but can illness entires be entered direct from kiosk rather than web | Not through Staff Kiosk, no. Students can register themselves as entering into the Illness Log through the Self Registration Portal (released in v54). | Annie |
Including keyword substitutions? | Yes, keyword substitutions are included in the new PTI Email Templates. | Annie |
How long does a quote usually take to come through for a funded project? thanks | This is dependent on the requirements and if the solution is clear. At times, we're able to give you a ballpark figure quite quickly i.e. a couple of days. The FAQs have been linked which include the entire process. | Annie |
Hi. Is write access to records going to be made available in the various Tass API as it was mentioned in the schoolbox demo. Is there a timeline for this? | One of the items we will be looking at as a part of the Academic Reporting & markbook overhaul is result write-back from LMS platforms which is a highly requested feature across our customer base.
| Annie |
Can you talk more on the casual timesheets enhancement? Could this work for additional hours by staff? | Obviously a full time employee (e.g. a Maths teacher) does not need to fill out a timesheet for their normal pay, but if that employee works additional hours elsewhere (E.g. coaching the swimming team on evenings and weekends) then they could use the Online Timesheets system to track, process and have approve additional hours. | Craig |
Any plans for a complete accounts payable solution instead of requiring external solutions such as Filebound being required? | This is dependent on your requirements. TASS does have a workflow in place for accounts payable which many schools use without outsourcing to another solution. I'd suggest getting in touch with the Customer Care team with your requirements and we can talk about what's possible. | Annie |
Visibility of employee notes through staff kiosk part of the employee enhancement project? | This is something that we have on our roadmap. We haven't decided on a timeframe yet but we've noted the interest from the Virtual Update. | Annie |
Any plans on making Parent Lounge more engaging and accessible to parents? We have diverse community. Would be great to have a way to embed tips/guides. | We'd love to hear your ideas on what you'd like to see in this space. We've seen a lot of schools use 'School Links' to share tutorial videos and guides by creating a new dedicated category. | Annie |
Any plans to make the LMS more usable for schools who use Google Classroom? | It'd be great to hear about what you're struggling with in this space and we'll see what's currently possible. Reach out to Customer Care and they have a chat with you. | Annie |
Can Parents still access Parent Lounge after a student leaves, if a refund is required? | Yes. In Parent Records > Setup Information > Parent Lounge Setup, there's a 'Number of Days after date of leaving to display departed students' setting. | Annie |
Any plans for procurement Contract management functionality? | This is not currently on the roadmap, no. If you can reach our to Customer Care, we'd be interested in learning more. | Annie |
Can you provide preferred banner size for Marketing Departments? | 580 pixels in width. Images will scale and readjust to fit. | Kate |
Can a student self check-in be done via a QR code? | No. A QR Code could be used to redirect students to the self registration system, however the software requires an admin login and printer selection before students can interact with the system. | Annie |
We use PPC for our ID card solution. Are there APIs the PPC team could use to connect to staff and student data? Maybe as an integration partner? | PPC would need to use the Student Details API to extract basic Student information. To insert Alternate ID values (typically used for ID cards) the Data Upload Utility API would need to be utilised. | Annie |
Extracting staff data for census is incomplete (FTE) if you don’t have the payroll product. Is there any other way to include/have staff FTE? | This is a manual process that involves merging the F.T.E value from your (non-TASS) payroll/employee system. | Annie |
Will the email banner system include school definable footer templates to apply globally to staff? | In System Admin > Utilities > Email Settings, the school is able to configure an Email Signature, Email Signature Image and Footer Text. | Annie |
Does the Markbook re-write include the ability for high end mark calculations, or will the markbook remain "passive". | As part of the Academic Reporting 'shake-up' we have flagged support for 'Z score' and 'Estimated Score' calculations in the Marbook. | Kate |
Will you consider having a google type "database" for all queries posted to TASS (not knowledge base or How To) - more of a general error and troubleshooting queries? | We've created a FAQ section which are published in the hub for this purpose. We regularly expand these based on customer feedback and tickets logged with TASS. You can also use the search in the Knowledge Base which searches all articles. | Sam |
With all the talk on security and data loss, any chance we can lock the API access to certain IP Addresses, or failing that, countries? | You can restrict API requests to a specific IP address by entering the IP address into the Application Server field in the API Gateway Maintenance program. | Sam |
Can we get some notifications when TASS staff are accessing our servers. Or have access to a log of activity? | Access to your infrastructure only occurs within the terms permitted by the Service Level Agreement and the Software Licence Agreement, which include responding to support requests and providing services. Changes in your environment will only be made with your authorisation. You can review login history for users (including the root user) using the Audit Logs Grid program. TASS retains internal logs of customer site access. | Sam |
Will the features be similar to competing products - eg. Digistorm | We'll be asking schools to join a Special Interest Group where you'll be a design partner. This will drive a lot of our decisions and confirm what we have flagged. | Annie |
Would we be able to buy for seperate modules for an app, eg parents, teachers, students etc. | That's our current proposal, yes! | Annie |
Software Roadmap Questions
Question | TASS Comment | From |
|---|---|---|
Is SMS replies directly back to TASS on the cards? Rather than SMS email replies? | It's something we've discussed but haven't scheduled or investigated. We'll note the interest. | Annie |
One thing we note is that changing / editing Comms rules does not trigger a time stamp change on the record or an audit entry. Given the risks that this raises with court orders etc will this be addressed? | We'll bring this to the software planning meeting to discuss. | Annie |
Is the heatmap available for current students? | Not yet. We've flagged the interest from the Virtual Update and we'll add this to our roadmap. | Annie |
I don't see any mention of the Forum highly voted for entry "Calendar sync in eDiary". it is the biggest pain for us rather than many of your other enhancements. | The ability to sync the calendar / eDiary to Outlook and iCal is something that's been highly requested and voted for on the Forum. We definitely acknowledge the need for this to occur and TASS is looking into possible solutions for this complex enhancement. We'll post an update on this as soon as we can. | Annie |
Google Calendar sync etc | ||
Plans to sync timetable calendar with outlook? | ||
Any plans to provide ability for calendars / timetables to be exported to ical format ? This would be great for parents / staff. | ||
Any planned updates for calendar, specifically ability to update via api? | ||
Are there any plans for enabling the calendar to sync with other calendars such as Google | ||
It would be amazing in the UD Area to Parent Lounge that the same functionality by provided for Teachers Kiosk | We've flagged the interest from the Virtual Update and discuss at software planning. | Annie |
Any plans to have version control on UD fields in the future? | UD fields are currently tracked and changes can be seen through the Change Logs Grid. The UD Areas are not currently tracked when updating through TASS.web but they are tracked when updated through Parent Lounge in v55. We can see why users would like to see historical information on the Student Record. | Annie |
Any plans to add UD fields to auditing? | Yes, the changes are already been tracked, the data just needs to be exposed through the grid. We'll be adding this in. | Annie |
With the bank rule enhancement - will this work for internal bank transfers as well or just external charges / receipts? | At the moment this functionality will only work for external charges and credits due to underlying nature of the bank transfer journal. | Annie |
Will Student Deposit Refunds grow for Refunds to parents for other account areas where we have to refund parents for an event that didn't go ahead? | This would be beneficial! The other area that comes to mind is Extra Curricular. It's not currently on the roadmap but I do know that other schools have requested a software solution for this. | Annie |
Has there been consideration for making some student data fields updatable in Student Cafe? For example, mobile phone fields. | Yes, we discussed this as a part of a solution for students who were about to become Past Students and we identified that schools needed a way to collect personal emails and mobile phone numbers. We'll bring this up again! | Annie |
Any scope of work within the budget component within finance? Online budget application, notes, attachments etc? | This is not currently on our roadmap. Reach out to Customer Care - we would be interested to learn more. There is a funded enhancement proposal to increase the approvers for budgets and enhancements to a report that includes the audit trail and purchase order. This has not been confirmed yet. | Annie |