News & Updates

Mark Alerts as Checked and Add Custom Ones

By Paolo Dona — Aug 24, 2010

A few weeks ago, we released the new alerts feature.
Alerts are useful. They let you know when you need to take care of a specific issue—for example, when a student has low attendance, or her visa is about to expire.

Alerts are shown in a list using easy-to-spot colour codes.

We’ve updated the alerts system to make it easier to use:

1) You can now mark an alert as ‘checked’

As your alert list grows, it becomes annoying to have to scan through the list to find those requiring action. Alerts can now be marked as ‘checked’, after which they will no longer appear in your list.

Once you have dealt with the alert, mark it as checked ticking off the checkbox on the left hand side.

We will record who has checked the alerts and when.

Checked alerts are archived and hidden from your list. You can always see who has checked what and when by following the ‘show checked’ link in the upper right-hand corner.

This will keep your alert list tidy and allow you to only focus on what remains outstanding.

2) Alerts are shown in your dashboards

The database is checked automatically every night, and new alerts are generated when appropriate.

To ensure that you don’t miss important notifications, the top five alerts are shown in your dashboard. These are the first things you will see when you log in.

Similarly, student-specific alerts are shown on the students’ dashboard.

3) Create your custom alerts

NiftySchool covers a number of standard alerts, including visa expiry dates, low attendance, courses expiring, and so on.

More alerts will be added over time. It is likely that you will have specific needs that aren’t covered by the platform. The good news is that you can create your own alerts.

Custom alerts work like appointments in a calendar. You specify a description and a due date and the system will notify you on the given day.

In this way, you can, for example, check a student’s progress halfway through his course, remind your staff to make an important phone call, or confirm an appointment.

You can create and view your custom alerts from the Alerts tab, following the ‘Custom Alerts’ link.

We hope you enjoy the updates. Please feel free to tell us about the alerts that would be useful for your school.