News & Updates

Database Upgrade: What Has Changed

By Paolo Dona — Jun 08, 2011

This morning we released the first upgrade to the NiftySchool database, as specified in NiftySchool: Transition To More Flexible Scheduling.

Let’s take a look at what the ‘surface’ changes are:

1) Callan lessons have been split in two

We used to treat Callan lesson as a single two-hour unit, with two different teachers assigned.

We have now changed this to two individual lessons. This makes it easier to compute the teacher schedule and, very soon, to cancel or reschedule lessons indipendently.

In the student attendance, class registers and room planner screens you’ll now see Callan lessons represented individually.

2) Teachers are automatically assigned to lessons

By settings a default teacher for a class, their schedule will now be automatically updated for all of the future lessons (including today’s).

Previously you had to manually specify teachers’ schedules on a weekly basis, which was tedious and error prone.

Now you only specify changes from the standard schedule.

Also, the teachers monthly summary is now more useful as it shows the total number of hours assigned for future lessons as well.

3) Missing lessons alert

The ‘Missing lessons’ alert has been updated to correctly check for three missing attendances in a row.

This is now computed on a ‘per-class’ basis, so you will get one alert per-class/per-student (eg: if a student is enrolled in two classes and doesn’t show up for three days, you will get two separate alerts).

This is important as the student could have different schedules on different classes and a generic computation of ‘missing for three days’ may have led to incorrect alarms.

4) Updated attendance codes and colors

In the class register screens you will now notice a few slight changes in style.
Attendances will be marked as:

• Gray if the student is not supposed to attend on a given day/lesson
• Red if absent
• Red with ‘A’ if the absence is authorized
• Red with ‘H’ if the absence is authorized because of a public holiday

The new compact markers make the weekly view less crammed and visually more clear.

5) Re-introduced lesson date-picker

We re-introduced the lesson date picker.

Now you can quickly browse to a given date’s register. If in weekly mode, you will be taken to the relevant week.

Other changes are on their way, and we expect to roll out a number of other minor tweaks and updates in the next few days. Should you notice any error, please contact us at info@niftyschool.com or on skype (niftyschool).