As we approach half term we thought it would be an ideal time to highlight the updates our team has produced over the past couple of months. We’ve devloped some fantastic plugins for our school websites along with plenty of improvements to the efficiency our sync services.
Website news
As well as general updates to our codebase to ensure it works as efficiently as possible we have also released a host of new plugins and features. Here is a quick insight into what has been developed:
- New policy/document manager plugin
- Multisite functionality for the policy/document manager plugin
- Vacancies plugin
- Login link shortcode
- Started development on a parents evening booking system plugin
Policy manager plugin
We’ve developed a plugin that allows you to manage all of your policys (or other grouped documents) directly from within your school website. This offers an alternative to our existing plugins that allow you to display the contents of either a Google Drive or One Drive folder directly onto your school website. With this final addition to our policy management offering we now offer solutions for any approach of managing doucments on your website.
Our plugin allows you to create groups in which you can assign doucments uploaded to your school website, this allows you to not only manage policies but also other potential groups of documents such as letters home, newsletters etc. Once you’ve uploaded a group of documents you can simply paste a provided shortcode into a page and then voila, your documents all appear in a user friendly interface. Interested? Take a look at our guide on setting up and using the plugin here.
Policy manager multi-site functionality
After the policy manager plugin was released we started work on an update that would allow users to display a group of documents across more than one website. The advantage of this update is that it now allows a trust to manage a set of trust wide policies from one single location. The trust can then display this group of policies/documents across every school website for easy document management.
Vacancies Plugin
The second plugin we’ve released is a vacancies plugin, this allows you to add and display current vacancies on your school/trust website. We know there are some great options and methods of advertising vacancies already out there such as services like MyNewTerm but we are providing schools with a free alternative to displaying vacancies on their school website. The plugin allows you to easily create a vacancy, add instructions, set dates for it to display and also assign any relevant documents to a role. Each vacancy added is then displayed in a user friendly template until the close date is reached.
Take a look at our documentation on setting up and using the plugin if you are interested.
Login link shortcode
We know there are some customers who do not have a need for the login bar on our websites as they do not use the single sign on, MIS sync and apps management services we have intergrated with our websites. Usually we would just turn off the bar and then provide a more subtle login link to access the backend of the website. We have now developed an option (located in your smartOptions panel) that allows you to grab a login link shortcode, this can then be placed anywhere on your school website for easy access. Simple but effective this now opens the doors for all sorts of alternative and creative login options.
Parents evening booking system
In early development stages but we have started work on a parents evening booking system that will be inbuilt into your school website. This leverages the abilitys of WordPress so that the timeslots can be displayed in your website, confirmation emails sent and also an admin interface to setup and customise the event. Parents will be able to book a slot and will receive confirmation upon success. Teachers will be able to cusomise the amount of slots avaialble, the length of slots and also add in any requried breaks.
Take a sneak peak below:
Half Term is here!
We hope you all have a well earned half term break! Keep an eye out for future updates from the team and don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any queries or suggestions!
Team realsmart