STEARsoft User Guide

Technical administrators

Installation

When using a STEARsoft Cloud Server, most of the installation will be done for you.
Once up and running, your teachers may find it useful for you to put a link to the start page from an existing school web page.

Technical setup

When you first log into the Administrator section of the STEARsoft web interface you will be led through a setup wizard. There are several steps to the wizard. Most stages are self-explanatory, but here are some points to be aware of:

The year start day should be more thought of as the date when you want to start putting together classes for the next academic year, so will more likely be the day after the end of an academic year. The actual effect of this date is that all students and all classes automatically promote up a year on this date.
The date format you specify is purely visual. Individual users can change it should you have a mixture of tastes.
Choose the days of the week structure you will use (only include days when attendance will be marked).
When setting up times (periods) of the day, give short period names (one or two letters) to keep registers compact. Only specify teaching, or form period time (when a register might be taken). Don't fill up timetable space with break and lunch time information.

'Houses' and 'Forms' give two independent ways to give a group of belonging for each student. These work best if not made specific to a year group; so 7A, 7B, 7C..., 8A, 8B,..., 11E, 11F is a poor implementation. A,B,C,D,E,F is good. You will always have the year-group information close at hand to identify groups precisely, and this non-specific method has the advantage that in going from one year to the next, everything automatically updates and stays correct (provided students aren't all reallocated). Most schools will only have either a house system, or a more abstract form numbering or lettering system. You do not have to use both systems, or even one.
Because a form or house is only a label that can be given to a student, these two attributes aren't required in a structural sense and are only there to provide useful information. This means that you could be inventive and change their meanings without affecting the working of STEARsoft. For example, you could use them for alternative groupings such as town of residence, or previous school or gender.
Both Forms and Houses are shown in alphabetical order automatically in any lists.
Follow the suggestions and help on the 'Customise options' screen.
Add the teacher accounts. Easiest is to copy-and-paste this data en-masse from a spreadsheet. If using the STEARsoft central student list, ensure that the individuals who will administer the central student information are made 'Power teachers'. You should also make at least one other teacher an Administrator (maybe yourself with a different username, email address and password) - this gives you backup access to the administrator area should you forget your main administrator login details.
STEARsoft has an account activation system: You can initially generate an 'account-activation-code' for a teacher. They will use this account-activation-code to set their own password when they first log in. The most secure way to set this up is to enter the email address for each teacher and to use the password manager to automatically generate and send private, individualised account-activation-codes to each teacher. The password manager also lets you specify a level of password strength. Once up and running, if you (or a Power teacher) ever resets a password for a teacher, STEARsoft will generate an account-activation-code for you to give them. The teacher must then use this account-activation-code to set their own password using the web interface. Note that teachers cannot set or change their password using the STEARsoft mobile App. They can of course use a web browser on a mobile device to do this though.
You will need to use the list of teachers to designate "Power teachers". "Power teachers" are usually people at a reception area who take phone calls from parents regarding sickness etc. and who oversee attendance. You designate them by changing their user group to "Power teacher". Note that that doesn't give them access to the main administrator pages, but lets them edit other teachers' attendance sheets and adjust some central things, such as ammending student details and adding new term dates.
Related to this, you need to ensure that read/write permissions for teacher classes are set up correctly for "Power teachers" to edit them as necessary. The defaults are sensible and may already work as you wish, but if you need to adjust things, use the "Edit class access rights" link from the administrator side option panel.
Finally, to make everything work, you will need to license the software. An initial trial period will have been set up for you, but to extend this you will need to press the "Activate license" button on the main administrator page after logging into stearsoft.co.uk to purchase an appropriate extension.

Data and Backups

Your Data is regularly backed up automatically as part of the Cloud Server service. This is not for your own use, but to enable STEARsoft to restore your data in the event of some problem at the server end, such as failing hardware or a software error. Should you detect such an issue, please contact STEARsoft (eg via the forum) as such restoration of data is not automatic.

Whilst these regular backups are not available for your use, if you have a disaster (mistakenly deleting important data), STEARsoft should be able to recover these situations. This should be a rare occurance and may cost something, depending on the complexity of the restoration of data required.

Individual teachers can take a Backup of all their data (a snapshot really) which they can restore back to. This can be a wise thing to do before making big changes.

You should also obtain your own backup of your data. Although you can use the the options on the 'Counters' tab within the 'All School Data' section to do this manually, it is recommended to set up a scheduled daily download of backup files using the Reports backup option in the Administrator area. Details about this feature are found on the page itself. Actually automating the process at your end will take a bit of technical knowledge (to schedule a task in windows for example), but once set up will add continuing resilience.

Security of data

In short, your data is secure despite going over the internet, provided you keep passwords secure and use the two-factor authentication feature. For details, read on below...

If a password is repeatedly entered incorrectly, the offending device (computer/phone/tablet etc) is BLOCKED and its details are recorded. Once blocked, it can only retry a different password once every two minutes. If there are BLOCKED devices, a menu option will appear in the Administrator area to give details.

Data is fully encrypted using HTTPS and authenticated with the inbuilt authentication capability in modern web browsers. This means that data cannot be changed during transfer (changes would be detected). Being fully encrypted, a 3rd party is unable to 'snoop' to see what data you are reading/writing either. As with any password system, this security is based on your username and password being secure and difficult to guess. In the event this fails (and your password is correctly guessed), the two-factor authentication step means that the user whose account password has been compromised will receive a notification email alerting them to this. If it is correct usage on a new device, then the email will give a pin code to pass the second step of authentication. In addition to this, user passwords are never transmitted as they are. Only a 'digest' is passed (which is also encrypted), both when setting a password and when logging in. This means that no actual password is stored on the server, so even with full access to the server, passwords cannot be determined. It is not possible to tell a user what their password is. The only option is to reset it to something new.

Synchronisation with an Apple iPhone/iPad/iPod-touch is also over a fully encrypted HTTPS connection with two-factor security used here as well. Within a synchronisation, each individual bit of data is also authenticated and checked for tampering.

If you use the emergency data upload feature, that data is also sent over the public internet and stored on a separate STEARsoft server. This data is encrypted using the 'Advanced Encryption Standard' (AES) and a 256-bit key. The key is synchronised to iPad/iPhone devices. The encrypted data stored on the internet will then require such an iPhone or iPad with the synchronised key to decrypt and display the emergency data. Note that your encrypted emergency data is held on a separate server in the UK (United Kingdom) and that only the most recent 'Emergency' page is stored; each upload overwrites the previous one.

Remote upload (Automated uploading of data from an external database)

STEARsoft Cloud Server has a feature to enable data to be uploaded from your school database in an automated fashion. This keeps your pupil data, class lists and timetable information up-to-date in STEARsoft on an automated daily basis.

This is an advanced feature that will require STEARsoft to come and make a school visit to aid with setup.

A separate mini-server will be deployed at your school to facilitate secure, safe data uploads whilst keeping your school safe too. The deployed mini-server will access your data on your network through the standard ODBC interface. It will then upload this data to the STEARsoft Cloud Server.

The reason for this process is as follows: By accessing your data from within your school, you do not need to make your data accessible to the outside world. It can remain hidden safely behind your firewall. You also have physical control over the accessing device (mini-server), so know that in an unforeseen situation you can switch it off to close down any access to your data. So the mini-server reads the data from your server and then 'sends' the data to the Cloud Server, which it can do without having to adjust or compromise your firewall or school security; it is like accessing a website... This upload is encrypted and also authenticated with a secure public/private key mechanism to ensure that the data can only be sent to your Cloud Server and that the data being uploaded is from an authorised device (the mini-server). No data is saved on the mini-server, so if it is compromised it does not contain any sensitive data. It also doesn't store the credentials to access your school data; it only has half the credentials, the other half coming from the Cloud Server during authentication.

Anyway, setting this up is currently not available as a DIY process, but requires us to make a site visit and work with you to ensure you are happy with all security aspects and that we get it running smoothly for you.

So please get in touch continuing 'Cloud Server' email communications you have already had, or through the forum. Don't post any personal details, but express your interest and we'll respond via your Customer email address.

Custom web panels

You can configure STEARsoft to show your own custom web panels in the Student information page and in the main attendance sheet view. If your school system has additional data available via web pages, this is an easy way to leverage that. For example, you could show much fuller student record details on the student page, with a link to further information. On the attendance sheet you might display trip or exam information relevant for marking attendance codes, or have links to class photo lists or grades or a separate electronic messaging system if you aren't using the inbuilt STEARsoft one.

On the Administrator page, on the left panel select Customise options. As well as options to customise what codes are available to teachers to use, the web-panel customisation entry is done here. You will require some basic knowledge of HTML to do this. However, to give you some starting ideas, here are a couple of examples:

Example 1: trip details alongside attendance sheet
<iframe src="https://myschool.net/admin/DisplayTrips.aspx?GroupCode=$1 width=610 height=400"></iframe>
Notice the use of $1, which inserts some class-specific data. See the Customise options page for details.

Example 2: Further information alongside student details
This information is more flexible, being able to go at the top or bottom of the page. Using both, you can be clever to put information at the side, or anywhere else:
In the first custom section (top) put:
<table border=1><tr><td>
In the second custom section (bottom) put:
</td><td align=center><h2><a href="http://myschool.net/admin/PupilPage.aspx?id=$3">School database</a></h2><iframe src="http://myschool.net/admin/PupilPage.aspx?id=$3 width=800 height=600"><iframe></td></tr></table>
Notice the use of iframe again and $3 in this case.

The top custom panel (at the right side of a class attendance sheet) is also shown on iOS devices (iPhones, iPads and iPods). When this custom option is used, a 'custom' button appears at the top of the class attendance view on iOS devices. On touching the custom option a web screen is displayed showing the custom panel contents. If the custom panel includes an iframe panel with the src url enclosed in double quotes ("), then this web page is shown directly without any surrounding html not in the iframe.
Example 3: Custom class details on an iOS device
This text won't be shown <iframe src="https://www.stearsoft.co.uk"></iframe> and neither will this, an iOS device just extracts the url and shows the STEARsoft web page.
As before you could use $1, $2 etc to jump to relevant information for the class.

Power teachers (eg reception staff who access and oversee all attendance registers)

The information here is to be read in conjunction with the information for Teachers. As a Power teacher you ought to know about all the things that teachers can do. Partly, because many of the tasks they do, you will need to be able to do as well (eg viewing and marking attendance), but also because if you are aware of what they can and cannot do, your actions will tend to support them more effectively. For example, if you know they are seeing an automatic message to chase an absence note, you don't need to duplicate this. On the other hand, if you know that they are unlikely to notice a student having gone over a critical absence threshold, you may want to draw attention to it.

So, in short, read the section for teachers as well as the bits here which supplement that.

Setup and first use

Follow the same steps as the teacher setup to start STEARsoft, make a shortcut link, change your password etc.
The differences are that you probably don't want the status window, and want any short-cut link you create to go straight to the "All School Data" section.
Within the "All School Data" section, click on the Settings tab to access links to set up term dates and to adjust what the legal meaning of the different attendance codes are. Both of these processes should be self-explanatory and have instructions on the pages that appear. We recommend not putting in too many terms in advance, because it will encourage teachers to generate registers for those future terms, which may well end up being incorrect if there is a timetable change.
Also in the settings tab, you can set up your absence threshold values. For more details on this, see the teacher section for Viewing school-wide attendance.
Provided the Administrator has enabled the 'Central student list' (in the Data control and locks page), you will see a 'Central student list' option in the Settings tab. Follow the process to 'Add new students' from which teachers will make their class lists up from. If in the future you need to correct any student data, once corrected, follow the 'Propagate to teachers' process. Alternatively, if student data already exists in the teacher accounts, or via an ODBC source, you can use the 'Extract' or 'Import' processes to generate the central student list.

Day to day use

Most of your use is likely to be centred on the "All School Data" area. The main "Attendance summary" screen in this area gives you a summary of which pupils have been marked absent. This is also where you will access all attendance sheets from.
Click on the class name to get into the attendance sheet. Provided permissions have been set up correctly, you will be able to adjust attendance marks and codes and add notes as necessary. It may depend on your school deployment, but it is normal for you to be able to edit the priority am/pm registers, but not be able to alter the lesson by lesson class registers.
Read the teacher notes on how to mark a register.
Check what the school policy is, but you may need to be responsible for using the print tab each morning to print out the absent students to have that information in the event of an evacuation. This procedure is likely to be different to any previous procedure you may have had when using paper attendance registers. It may also be useful to be aware of the Emergency uploads feature that your administrator can enable to give further resilience in an emergency situation. To access this remotely stored data will require an iPhone or 3G-enabled iPad. Such an iPhone or iPad will also need to be regularly synchronised to ensure they have the necessary electronic keys for decryption. You should synchronise every week (when a new key is automatically generated, there is a 10 day overlap, so provided you always sync within 10 days, you will always have a valid key).
To send a school announcement, click on the Send announcement link in the Settings tab. The page for this allows you to send an announcement to the whole school, to a particular year group, a class, or certain students. By default the announcement will only go to Priority classes, but this can be changed. Announcements appear at the top of class attendance sheets. The announcement you send is only valid for the times you give, so will automatically be removed when no longer valid. If you wish for the same announcement to be repeated, use the repeat option rather than having to send the announcement repeatedly yourself.

School-wide flood-fill of attendance data

This feature is reached by clicking on the Flood-fill attendance link in the Settings tab. Note that this option will only appear if it has been set up within the Administrator area. By reading data from your school database, this suggests flood-fill options on a school-wide basis. It needs to be set up in the Administrator area to connect correctly over the ODBC interface, but will then for example list all students known to have an exam along with a suggested attendance mark and code. It could also be for students on a school trip, anything else that might be set up, or a mixture even. Note that this screen only deals with one attendance session at a time; either morning or afternoon of a particular day. It defaults to show the current time and day, but you can change this if necessary. Be aware that if you click the button to save the suggested marks it will over-write the current attendance marks, with no undo option possible. As with normal attendance sheets, you can change the suggested mark by clicking on it. Although there is no drag or right-click functionality on this screen, you can hold keyboard letters and click to apply codes.

Reset the password for a teacher account

This feature is reached by clicking on the Create an account-activation-code for a teacher link in the Settings tab. Note that this option will only appear if it has been enabled on the customise options page within the Administrator area. By giving a teacher an account-activation-code, you enable them to set a new password. This process disables the current password, forcing the teacher to set a new password before being able to continue using STEARsoft.

Whole school attendance flood-fill

This feature is reached by clicking on the 'Whole school attendance flood-fill' link in the Settings tab. This allows you to mark the same code or attendance state for all students in the school, or in a particular year group. This can be useful for whole-school closures.

Release a teacher's synchronised mobile device

This feature is reached by clicking on the 'Release the synchronised mobile device from a teacher account' link in the Settings tab. Only one mobile device (such as an iPhone) can synchronise with a teacher account (this ensures fast, trouble-free synchronisation). When a device is first synchronised it becomes associated with the teacher account it synchronises with. The associated device can be changed; to do this, you use this feature to 'Release' the associated device. The teacher account then becomes open for any device to synchronise. The next device that synchronises will have to do a full (slow) synchronisation, but will then be the associated device for subsequent fast synchronisations. If a teacher tries to synchronise more than one device to their account, they will get a message suggesting that they can come to you to 'Release' an old device that they have now replaced. This screen is where you effect this release.

Purge deleted students

This feature is reached by clicking on the 'Purge deleted students from priority classes' link in the Settings tab. If this option doesn't appear it either means you're not a 'Power teacher' or the Administrator has not enabled this feature (The Administrator can enable this in the 'Customise Options' screen). If a student is added to a class and then deleted because they never actually joined the class, although they are correctly blanked or removed even from attendance sheet screens, they can spoil summary data screens. To remove the student completely, you can use this purge screen. Note that their attendance for any days that appear in the attendance sheets must be marked as 'not on roll' (a horizontal bar) for the option to appear. As well as administering this centrally, teachers can do this themselves on the 'Class Details' tab of the relevant class (see this more detailed help for teachers).

Extracting statistics

When in the "All School Data" area, click on the "counters" tab at the top.
The output options here should be self-explanatory, but note the following:
The 'Last x weeks' buttons are determined by the 'Long rang' and 'Short range' you specified in the Settings tab
When opening the 2nd option that produces a .csv file, choose to save the result as a file rather than opening the result directly in your browser. Opening these spreadsheets in your browser can be painfully slow. Saving to your desktop and opening separately should be fast though.

The top option is a useful validation exercise which will help you hunt down and correct bad or missing data before you use any of the outputs. Be careful not to run this for dates in the future, as it will produce an enormous report listing thousands of blank entries in full detail. Also be aware that like the other reports, extracting this information can take a while (perhaps a minute), so requires patience and shouldn't be done at a busy time when others may be using STEARsoft in a time-critical way (eg near registration time).

The 2nd option (Download student list of attendance totals) may well be the most useful to you as it simply gives the raw data you probably want for each individual student. These are the column headings of the extracted data:

Student = School ID/role number.
Name = Student name (surname, first name).
YearStudent = Year group of the student.
YearClass = Year group of the priority (registration) class they are in.
Class = Priority (registration) class the student is in.
DateFrom = Start of date range for these statistics, determined by report settings or when the student was in this class.
DateTo = End of date range for these statistics, determined by report settings or when the student was in this class.
TotalPoss = Number of possible attendance sessions (this does not include sessions with a code that is considered 'Not-counted').
TotalAuth = Total of all present sessions, other educational activity and other authorised absences.
TotalUnauth = Total of all unauthorised absences.
TotalPresent = Total number of sessions marked present (does not include other educational activity).
TotalOtherEdActivity = Total number of sessions marked as being in other educational activity.
TotalAuthAbsence = Total number of authorised absences that were not considered other educational activity.
PercentNotAbsent = Percentage of marked sessions that are present or other educational activity (excludes blank entries for this calculation).
Blanks = number of sessions with no attendance mark.

Note that:

TotalPoss = TotalAuth + TotalUnauth + Blanks
TotalAuth = TotalPresent + TotalOtherEdActivity + TotalAuthAbsence
If a student moves class, they will appear twice. Check the date ranges are correct and manually add the totals.

The 3rd option downloads the full attendance sheets for all priority classes in text form. This can be used to archive your data in a reliable format and can be used should the data be needed in the future (eg for a court hearing).

The 4th option gives more intermediate breakdowns (week by week) which may be useful if tracking a particular issue. This option also has an option to produce a report for a student (enter their school ID number), and at the very bottom gives a breakdown of totals for every type of code.

The 5th option gives totals for each student (like the csv 2nd option), but by being able to sort it in different ways you can quickly identify students that have a high rate of absence or lateness etc. You have two custom counter options as well.

Note that these counters use the definitions found in the "Customise Code letters and Statistic groups" page to categorise attendance codes appropriately.

Teachers

Setup

You should have received an email with your username, an account-activation-code and a URL (web address) to get started. Enter this URL (address) into your web-browser address bar (or click on the link given to you).
If there is a "Teacher login" link on the page that appears, click on it. Otherwise you may have been given an address that takes you straight to the next step anyway.
You will initially be prompted to enter your username and activation-code. You'll also be asked to choose a password. Your username and this new password that you choose will be the details you use to access the system.
If your classes have not already been set up for you, you will need to do this yourself. STEARsoft will prompt you through the necessary stages. Though most information, by its nature, must be entered bit by bit, entering student data can be done en-mass. You can experiment a little bit with this by using the back button freely on your web-browser. When entering student data, though you can input many students all at once, it is most efficient to enter them a class at a time, and immediately assign them to their class. This means it is best to create your classes before adding students. Also look out for the option to copy students from an existing class created by a different teacher (or even yourself). If someone else has done the hard work, you can take it with a few clicks. Once you have created all your classes, you can also specify your timetable. Specifying your timetable is necessary to create accurate blank attendance sheets. Use the double feature if a class continues for more than one lesson. Not only does this look neater, but only one register entry will be automatically generated. For more detailed guidance on these processes, please use the tutorials on the STEARsoft website.
Back at the main page, though you have classes and a timetable, you need to go through the "make registers" process. This creates blank attendance sheets with correct time and date information. So Click on "Make Registers". Select the classes you will want to mark attendance for by ticking the check-boxes, then press the 'Create now' button. This uses the default options which are fine for most situations. If you want more control over the date-range when sessions will be created, click the 'advanced register creation' link. In the advanced screen, if you want to mark attendance for all classes you teach, tick the boxes against whichever terms you want registers for. When using this method to make your registers, it is best to just create registers for the current term. This saves you having to delete everything if your timetable changes next term for example. Leave the dates unless you want to back-date creation and fill in historical data. By default only dates for today onwards will be put into your blank attendance sheets. When you're happy with the classes and terms you've selected, press the Generate Selected Registers button. For both the normal and the advanced page, the next screen confirms the process by telling you what has been generated (or if there were any problems, what they were).
The link to "status window" back in the options panel on the main page gives a small window to track registration progress through each day. Having this small window open will remind you if you forget to mark attendance for a class, and give you quick links to go straight to relevant attendance sheets. Click on it now to see this screen.
Having a shortcut to the status window described above can be useful. The icon at the start of the address bar in your web-browser can be dragged to your desktop to do this. This process puts a shortcut on your desktop which you can double click on to go straight to this screen.
Taking that one step further, you can drag another shortcut to the "Startup" folder found in the "Programs" folder under the start menu. To view this, right-click on the windows start button and choose "Explore". You should see a "Programs" folder in the appearing window. Double click on that, and then on the "Startup" folder that will appear. Drag the icon, as above to this folder. The status window will then automatically appear when you start your computer.
Note that closing all your web-browser windows has the effect of logging out of STEARsoft. Do this now, and check that you are happy with the process of starting STEARsoft again using whatever shortcut you may have saved. You will probably do this daily, so it is worth spending a few moments now to make sure you have a fast easy way to start STEARsoft. To further speed the startup process, you could tick the box on the username/password prompt to remember your password.

Marking basic attendance

To open an attendance sheet, click on the appropriate class name in your timetable on the main page.
To mark basic attendance, click on each entry to cycle through present, absent, late and then other options.
To flood-fill all entries in one go, click the default box at the top of a registration period. This again cycles through options to mark everyone present or absent etc. This top box only changes the entries below that you didn't already mark - it's a "...and mark the rest as..." option.
To add a code letter or attach a written note, drag an attendance entry down a bit (or pretend to). This process pops up a box to allow you to jump straight to any attendance state, to put a code letter in the register, or to attach a written note. On the web interface you can also access this with a right-click. Hint: If this doesn't work straight away, check your browser isn't blocking popups.
To add a code to a range of dates for a student do the same process, but dragging horizontally along the same student row will gradually highlight a number of entries. When you finish the process, the box that pops up will affect all entries you highlighted. This is useful to add an absence code for a whole week for example.
An alternative way to add a code letter is to hold down the required letter on your keyboard, and then click on the entry that needs the code. This feature only works on the web interface.
Another way to access the codes popup box is to click on the date at the top of an attendance column (web interface only). You can move through the class with the << and >> arrows. If using this screen to mark attendance for the whole class, tick the box between these arrows to automatically progress as you mark attendance.
There are also keyboard shortcuts for the codes popup box. Use P,H,/,1,<SPACE>,<ENTER> for present, O,A,0,N for absent, L for late, other letters for an absence with code and [,] to move backwards and forwards without marking anything. These keyboard shortcuts only work in the web interface and only when the codes popup box is open. You can customise these codes in the Edit Preferences screen
When you have marked some attendance, you need to press one of the "Save" buttons to send the data to the central server. It doesn't matter which button; they're all the same, just plentiful so there's always one to hand in the cases when attendance sheets get large.
If you try to close the register sheet without saving, you'll be prompted to save what you've done, but it is better to actively do it using a save button.
Pressing the "Show notepad..." button to the right of an attendance sheet toggles display of an area where you can keep notes for the class. The Save button saves what you write here as well as your marked attendance data. For classes which can be adjusted by other people (typically am/pm registration groups accessed by reception/office staff), this notepad area can provide a simple communication route. Please be aware that it is a simple system, so if two people make changes to notes at the same time, one set of changes can be lost.
Use the Repeater mode to forward fill attendance sheets with known repeated patterns. For example if certain students are part time, mark them as 'no session' (horizontal black bar) when they're not in school for the current week and press 'Save'. Then use the 'Goto register for...' option at the top of the attendance sheet to show the whole term. Enter 'Repeater mode...' and pick 'every week'. Then drag-select the 'no session' marks you've just entered for the current week, and they'll be copied across in the same pattern for the remaining weeks of the term. Then click 'Stop Repeating' and press a 'Save' button. You can use the same process if the same set of students get afternoon home-study or are educated off site at the same times each week. You might just enter and repeat the 'letter' code to remind you rather than actually marking them absent too.
It's worth looking at the tips at the bottom of the main screen which remind you of some of these points and a few extra things besides.

Understanding information displayed

Flashing Red Exclamation marks on your timetable indicate missing attendance data. They will appear for all classes in the past over the last two days (today and yesterday) and will also include the current class in progress if you're more than half-way through the session. If you don't like these exclamation marks, you can switch them off in the preferences screen (click Edit Preferences at the top of the Options list on the main screen).
Yellow highlights on your timetable indicate the current class in progress. If you're in between two sessions, there will be a period when both may be highlighted.
In your attendance sheet view for a class, yellow highlights on the date at the top of the sheet simply highlight today, to help you fill in today's register (not yesterdays, or last weeks)
The Attendance sheet view by default shows the register for the current week plus the previous two weeks. Look for the drop-down-list and Go button at the top to view a whole term instead. You can also click on the << and >> arrow links to scroll backwards or forwards 2 weeks at a time.
Next to the top save button, also in the attendance sheet view is an area that can show green, red or yellow. This is to indicate that you have made changes that need saving (Red), that you just pressed save, and it's in the process of saving (Yellow), or that it's successfully saved (Green).
The little bracketed i (i) next to student names in attendance sheets is a link to incidents for that student. See the section below on incidents.
Yellow highlighting on a register entry indicates a written note for that entry. On some browsers, if you hover the mouse over the entry, the message will appear in the status-bar at the bottom of the screen. Unfortunately many new browsers prevent this feature as it poses a security threat if abused by rogue web-sites. With such browsers you will have to drag the entry down a bit to bring up the box showing the text.
Messages with tick-boxes next to them appear in the top left of your attendance sheets. They are an automatic to-do list, and you should keep on top of them. As soon as you have dealt with a message, click the tick-box to remove it. For primary (am/pm registration) classes, they will be reminders of absences requiring a code, or blanks that need filling in. For all classes they will also alert any inconsistent attendance from students in the class. For example, if you marked a student absent in your session, but the same student was marked present earlier in the day, a message will appear here to alert this. Instead of clicking on the tick-box, clicking on the message takes you to relevant details when there's a link. A note of warning; this feature will highlight missing students who more often than not will have a good reason for not being at your class. While getting used to the power of this new feature, it would be prudent to use it as a prompt for investigation rather than immediate rage!
Late, early and late/early symbols are possibly new to you. They are tiny clocks set at 3 o'clock. When the clock is at the left of the entry it means late arrival. When it is at the right of an entry it means early leaving. If there are two clocks (one at each end), it means the student arrived late and then left early. For primary (am/pm) registration, you will only use the first one (late arriving), but you may find the others useful when marking class attendance in other lessons.
Cycling through the present, absent, late etc. options, you eventually get to a solid horizontal black bar. This means cancelled session, or student off roll (left the school or class). It is the equivalent of the # code in the UK. Do not use this for things like unexpected school closures, as they have particular codes that need to accompany a standard absence mark.
School announcements may appear from time-to-time as a banner at the top of your attendance sheet. To change the appearance of announcements, click on the announcement to go directly to your preferences page. There, you can choose whether they should be static, scroll up or scroll left. If you are feeling brave, you can click the advanced option to 'tweak' the details to adjust size, speed, colour etc. If you get in a mess, and it stops working, just click back on one of the 3 standard options (your advanced adjustments will be lost).

Updating student details

Open an attendance sheet by clicking on a class, then click on the student name you are interested in. Alternatively you can click "List all students" on the Options panel to find the student you are interested in, and again click on their name.
Clicking on a student surname opens a page with all their details. Adjust as you please - including setting a preferred name. For example if Robert prefers to be called Bob, you can indicate this here.
If it has been enabled by your administrator, you will see an 'Update student details' option on the left panel of the home screen. Selecting this option will compare your students to the central list and show you any differences. If there are differences, there is an option to update your records with the central data.
Note that your school may have prevented you from changing some core details. This is because if they are incorrect and need changing, they should be changed on the central school database.

Good housekeeping

Use the backup feature. The "Backups" link on the main option panel takes you to an area where you can save a complete snapshot of all your data. It's good to do this every now and then, but particularly before you're about to do something drastic (like delete something or adding something even). If you make a mistake, you can go back to the restore point that you saved as a backup. Be aware that other than this backup feature, there aren't any "Undo" features in STEARsoft.
Don't forget about the "Make registers" link in the options panel. You will need this whenever you get to a new term for which you need to generate attendance sheets. Should your timetable change, or you start registering a new class this is also where you will turn to regenerate your attendance sheets with correct dates and times. The options for this process include over-writing existing entries (useful if it's a timetable change). It should be self-explanatory on the page that you do this.
Visit the "Edit Preferences" screen if dates are appearing in the wrong format, if you don't want to show the tips at the bottom of the main screen, or if you want to switch on or off the flashing exclamation marks.
"Purge old data" is something that needs doing after you've been using the system for a year or two. Before you do this, you may wish to do a backup first. The purge screen basically identifies students not in classes (because the classes were deleted). The options to delete unattached sessions (lessons) or classes are unlikely to be needed, as normal operation and deletion tidies all this up anyway. Note that you may wish to keep students hanging around in your system for a while, in case you teach them again later in their school life. You'll then still have their preferred name stored and any other information you've recorded for them.
Depending on how worried you are about security, it is good practise to change your password every now and then. The "Change password" link is also on the options panel.

Viewing school-wide attendance

Click on "All School Data" at the bottom of your main screen to get to school-wide attendance.
This area has tabs at the top to access different school-wide information.
The default opening tab (Attendance) shows school-wide attendance for today. Or rather, it lists the absent students, organised by year-group and class. By default it just shows priority (am/pm) absence, but by clicking on "Show all registers" you can view absences in other lessons too.
Click on a class for the full attendance sheet if you wish to see more details.
View absences for different days using the navigation buttons at the top right.

A feature of this page is an automatic analysis of absences. Each absent student has their percentage absence rate calculated in three different ways. If their rate reaches a threshold (that you can set), their absence percentage is displayed. If it goes above a critical level (that you can also set), the rate is made bold and turned into a web-link which you can click on for the numbers (how many absent in how many sessions).
The different ways absence rates are calculated are short-term, long-term and on the same day (long-term). This third category picks up patterns of absence that always happen for example on a Tuesday. To change the thresholds for these time ranges click on the "Settings" tab. On the "Settings" page you can also identify absence codes which you don't wish to count as absent for this purpose. For example, you probably don't want to include study-leave, school visits or work-experience and similar codes otherwise you'll be seeing warnings for all sorts of legitimate absence which will hide the genuine absence issues.
An optional column can be added by selecting 'Show column' appropriately in the 'Settings' tab. STEARsoft will use the filter options specified in the 'Settings' tab to list students matching the requested attendance state. This might be useful if you wish to indicate students leaving the school site by using a code rather than using the sign in/out system.
The next tab (print) prints out a clean version of this first Attendance tab. It doesn't show absence percentages and has been simplified suitably for printing. It also inserts page breaks between each year group. You might use this to print out a school attendance list in the event of an evacuation; you can then pass each relevant page to different year-groups for checking. It may be that you print this out routinely when your registration period closes to be prepared for an evacuation linked to a power-cut which stops you accessing your computers. Your school should have put in suitable policies that address risk management in this regard.

Tracking inconsistent attendance

STEARsoft provides attendance tracking in 4 stages:

Automatic messages straight to the relevant attendance sheets when a student's lesson-by-lesson attendance is not consistent within a school day.
A daily overview for the whole school, filtered down to show attendance patterns for just the students with something unexpected.
A detailed lesson-by-lesson summary for a single pupil over a whole term which enables long-term patterns to be identified.
Automatic highlighting of absences exceeding a customisable threshold over a period of time, as described in the above school-wide "Attendance" tab.

Note: All of these attendance tracking features require a unique number to be associated with each student, to match the same student seen in different classes with different teachers. This number is what STEARsoft calls "School index". Not completing this information for each student will cause these screens to be unavailable or to give an incomplete picture. There is an option in the "Warnings" tab described below to identify missing or inconsistent use of "School index" numbers.

The next tab labelled "Warnings" is the second stage, for viewing inconsistent student absences for a particular day. It shows either all school students, or just the ones you teach. Using the second drop-down list you can decide whether to show all students with any kind of attendance (or non-attendance) mark. The resulting table shows each student's attendance as marked over the day. Each column represents a period during the day, and attendance is picked up from all classes not just priority am/pm registration.
The other options in the second drop-down-list help you quickly get to the interesting information. Non-perfect attendance means just show rows that include a mark other than present (this will show lates as non-perfect). "Show students with absent mark" is self-explanatory. "Show mixed attendance" shows rows where a student has been marked present at some point (late counts as present), and absent at another point. This is a useful display to pick up students who may be truanting single lessons. "Show inconsistent attendance" again shows rows with an unexpected mix of present and absent. However, when a student simply arrives late to school, so absent in morning registration and the first period, and then present for the rest of the day, this is considered consistent, and so isn't displayed. If the sign-in/sign-out feature of STEARsoft is being used, this information will be used to further check consistency.
To save you having to manually check this page, STEARsoft automatically checks for inconsistent attendance and alerts the relevant teachers using the message system at the top left of attendance sheets (stage 1, referenced above). Clicking on those messages takes you to this screen.
Be warned that when you click on a message to bring you to the "Warnings" page, it will take you to the relevant date which may not be today. Before getting confused about what's being displayed, please check the date shown at the top of the screen.
The detailed single student lesson-by-lesson attendance page can be accessed from several places. Clicking on a student name in the "Warnings" page brings up the screen. You can also access it by clicking on a student name when viewing the Summary tab for a class, or by clicking on the "Lesson-by-lesson attendance" link in the student details screen. Finally, when you have searched for a student in the "Sign in-out" tab, the "Attendance" button takes you to that student's lesson-by-lesson attendance screen. By default, at the top of the lesson-by-lesson screen is the timetable of the student. This is generated using the teacher timetables, so be aware that if a teacher is not using the system, lessons with that teacher will be missing. Click on class names in the timetable to go to the attendance sheet for that whole class. Click on the teacher login name for further details about the class; full teacher name, description and room. In the attendance shown below, click on an entry for details of the relevant class.
As mentioned previously, it is prudent to use this information as a prompt for investigation rather than to trigger uncontrolled rage. There is often a good, logical explanation - possibly even an incorrect attendance mark somewhere.

Signing in and out

Still in the "All School Data" area, the tab labelled "Sign in-out" has a system to record students signing in and out of school. As for attendance tracking, this feature will only work if School Index is used to give a unique number to each student.
Use the Filter to find the student concerned. Once the student is identified, you can enter a reason and then press the appropriate button to sign them in or out.
You can use the filter (find) feature on this page to find a student and then use the "Attendance" button to view their lesson-by-lesson attendance data.
As well as recording sign in/out data in the table on this page, messages also appear in appropriate attendance sheets, to inform teachers of this action.
The data is also used to help highlight inconsistent attendance, as described above. For example, once a student has signed in, STEARsoft will expect that student to then be in lessons. Equally, if a student signs out, warnings won't be given when they don't appear in subsequent lessons that day.

Tracking incidents

STEARsoft has an inbuilt incident tracking system, but think minor day-to-day incidents. These are for your own records (they are not visible to anyone else on the system).
Before you can record incidents, you need to set up some incident types. Do this by clicking on "Edit Incident types" on the main option panel.
Adding new categories (types) should be self-explanatory, however the Weight, Threshold and Expires may need explanation: Weight is like a score. This is used to give every student a total score; you could have more significant incidents scoring higher than lesser ones, or perhaps leave everything at 1. On the web interface if a student reaches the threshold in a given category (type) of incident, this will be highlighted in the class summary of incident data. However, perhaps more usefully, the Threshold is used in conjunction with the Expires setting to alert you to repeating patterns. If for example you put the threshold of a homework incident at 2 and the Expires value as 60, then if a student has two homework incidents within a 60 day period you will automatically be alerted when you add the second (or subsequent) incident.
On the web version, to record an incident, click the (i) link next to a student's name in an attendance sheet. This brings up a screen detailing all incidents you've recorded for this student. (Alternatively, you can click the incidents tab for a class, and then click on the student name.) Click the "Add incident" link at the top to create a new incident. This process is then fairly self-evident, though you have an option to record the incident details against several students at once by pressing the 'Copy incident to other students' button and ticking them (this simply duplicates the information - it doesn't do anything clever like link the students together for that event).
For the Palm® device version, click on a student in a class list. There is then a list of incidents at the bottom of that student's details. Click on an item in the list to edit it, or on 'Add Incident' at the top to create a new one. Unlike the web version, you cannot copy incident details to multiple students, but you do still get the warning alerts when thresholds are broken.
For normal teaching classes, you may also wish to use codes on your register sheets to mark incidents (for example put an e in the register if a student forgets a piece of equipment). Though this has some speed advantages, it is not as flexible or as easy to look back and summarise incident information for a particular student - or for the class even.

Understanding your summarised class data

When viewing a class attendance sheet, there are two tabs ("Incidents" and "Summary") which show summarised data for the class.
The "Incidents" page is a table showing how many incidents of each type each student has recorded. Any count reaching the threshold for its type is highlighted.
The total column is a score depending on the weights you gave each incident type. Other columns just show the number of occurrences of that particular kind of incident. For example if behaviour incidents had a weight of 4 and homework incidents had a weight of 3, if student x had two homework incidents and a behaviour incident recorded, in the table his row would show 2 in the homework column, 1 in the behaviour column and 10 in the total column (3+3+4).
The summary page has the first 3 columns giving totals for overall present/absent and absence percentage.
The following columns repeat the information split down further. eg a row might show 5 absences in the second column which in the following columns might be split as 2 ill one medical appointment and 2 school visits. That means a total of 5 absences, (not 10).
This detail breakdown is repeated in a number of blocks. The first block gives overall totals, and the following blocks repeat the information split by term. You can use the date filter at the top to summarise a particular period.

Class options

Changing the start date of a student

You might want to change the start date of a student if it took a day or two for them to appear in your attendance sheet. By changing their start date back to when they really arrived, you can backdate the sheet to correctly show all their attendance.
To change a student start date, when viewing the relevant attendance sheet, click the "Class details" tab. In the list of students, to the left of each name is the student's start date (in square brackets). To change the date, click on it. Use the left-hand drop-down-list to select a likely date (the dates listed are times when other students joined or left the class). If necessary, adjust the resulting date in the right-hand text-box.

Removing a student who never turned up

The student should automatically be removed for you from your register when you press the "Update data (ODBC)" link on the options panel (this will be dependant on the central school database showing the change). However, the student will still appear in your register with a short period where you kept marking them absent, and horizontal lines everywhere else. After a couple of weeks they will no longer show in the default 2-week view of attendance data, but they'll always spoil larger summaries and attendance sheets. Here's what to do to remove them completely:
At the top right of an attendance sheet, select to view attendance for the whole term. Change any absence marks you put against the student to horizontal bar marks (indicating the student is not on the roll). Once you have all their attendance shown as a horizontal black line, you can go to the "Class details" page where at the bottom, there will be an option to Purge this particular student. You can only purge students who are marked as never having been on roll, so you must change their attendance as stated in order to do this purge. Note that a 'Power Teacher' can do this in a school wide way (see the help section for power teachers).

Adding sessions (lessons)

If you wish to add a one-off extra session (lesson), you can do so using the "Add session..." link at the top of an attendance sheet.
There is also an option in the lower part of that screen to add a block of sessions. This feature uses your timetable and term-dates information to automatically choose the correct dates and times. Alternatively, particularly if you want to create attendance sessions in more than one class, you can use the "Make registers" feature found on the main options panel (back on the main screen). Before using either of these methods to create multiple sessions automatically, you need to ensure that the classes you are interested in appear correctly in your timetable. To edit your timetable, click the "Timetable" link in the options panel, and then "Edit timetable" in the page that appears. Back on the "Make registers" screen, tick the classes you need to make extra sessions for, check that the dates show as you want and then press the Generate button. The sessions will be added according to your timetable.

Deleting sessions (lessons)

To delete a whole block of lessons, use the "Delete lessons..." link at the top of an attendance sheet. This is normally to clear from a particular date onwards, ready to put in entries relating to a changed timetable. The second (To) date is therefore 10 years into the future! If you wish to be more precise about which lessons you are deleting make sure you specify both dates (start and end) very carefully. To be safe in these situations, you really ought to make a backup before doing such things.

If you only want to delete individual lessons, then use the default attendance mark at the top of the appropriate lesson to mark it as deleted. When you press Save, the deletion is done. To show the lesson actually removed, you should refresh your web page (usually F5 is the quick key for this). You can make the top default box show deleted by cycling though options, or by dragging the entry down to bring up a box to select the option directly.

Other class changes

Other class changes will normally need to be made on the central school system. You can then pick up the changes when you do an "Update data (ODBC)" action.

Copying data to Excel

You can copy a class list with basic pupil data as follows. Either from an attendance sheet for the class you want, go to the class details tab and click the "full pupil data" link at the top right of the page, or from the main options panel select "List all students", and use the filters at the top to select the students you are interested in. At the bottom of this student data page is a text box with the information in tab-separated form. Select all of this text and copy it to a spreadsheet program to get nicely formatted information.
In general, if you wish to take tabular information, eg from a summary table, drag select the whole table, and then copy and paste this into a spreadsheet program.

Using an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch

You can use an iPhone (or iPad or iPod Touch) to record and view attendance. STEARsoft Lite is available as a free iPhone App (Search for 'STEARsoft' in the App Store) to try out the interface, but cannot synchronise with a Cloud Server (it does not have the HTTPS secure synchronisation option required). The Full version of the App synchronises with your STEARsoft Cloud Server to then allow mobile attendance recording even without data connectivity. Simply synchronise again when reconnected to the internet. The STEARsoft iPhone App is primarily optimised for class-based attendance recording, but also includes the incident recording features. For whole-school data and analysis you should still use the Web interface, although this can of course be done on an iPhone using the inbuilt web-browser.
Once you have installed the STEARsoft iPhone App, go to the 'Synchronisation Setup' screen in the App and enter your username and password (the same as you use for accessing your data through a web-browser). Add a Server with name: https://. The port number will automatically detect the https detail and change to 443 which is correct. For the first synchronisation, if your data is here in the web-based system, set the Synchronisation option to: 'Server->iPhone'.
Most functionality in the App should be obvious (tap on a class to show it's attendance. Tap on a student for details and to add an incident. etc.) Less obvious are the following:
- Tap on a date to cycle the default attendance options.
- Tap and hold (without moving) on an attendance item to bring up the screen for adding codes and notes. Within this screen you can scroll up and down between students. For each class it offers the 3 most used codes, and the most recently used other code for quick annotation.
- In a register attendance screen, use the two finger pinch gesture to zoom out and in.
- Tap the 'Help' button on a class attendance screen for a list of features and how to use them.
- The STEARsoft iPhone App also allows you to add classes, students, and sessions amongst other things.

Using other handheld devices

STEARsoft can also be used on an internet connected tablet or phone that has a compliant web-browser. Most modern devices are capable, but although usable, the webpages are not especially optimised for small mobile devices. Try it and see though.
To optimise web pages for smaller handheld screens, click the preferences option on the main screen and tick the 'Mini screen' option. You can also specify here how many columns to show in attendance sheets. Note that this particular preference is stored as a cookie so will be particular to the device you are using rather than to your account, which means you need to enable cookies.
On an attendance sheet, if you have selected 'Mini screen' under preferences, a new 'register mode' or 'notes mode' option will appear. Click on it to switch between the two modes. Register mode is as normal, but when in notes mode, clicking on a register entry will bring up the extended options screen for attaching notes or annotating with codes. This is to help support handheld devices for which right-click or drag features are hard or impossible to do.
An alternative way to access the notes/codes screen is to click the date at the top of an attendance column. You can move through the class with the << and >> arrows. If using this screen to mark attendance for the whole class, tick the box between these arrows to automatically progress as you mark attendance.

General tips and features

When entering student data, copy and paste directly from Excel to keep data accurately in columns. No need to export to a csv file first.
To add a note or code letter in a register, click and drag an attendance entry up or down a bit. When using the web interface you can alternatively right-click on the entry.
Click and drag an entry horizontally in a register to select a range of dates for a single student to block-update entries, or add a code letter. Note that any written note added will only be put on the first entry selected.
Set the Main page as one of your favourites in Internet Explorer. It is possible to then drag a direct shortcut onto the desktop or a web-browser toolbar area for quick access.
Closing all Internet Explorer browser windows has the same effect as Logging out.
After backing up your data, move from one year to the next by purging old classes, and adding new ones. Your existing classes then retain all your data.
To have more than one class with the same pupils, or individual pupils in more than one class (eg you teach 7P English as well as registering them, but wish to distinguish the two situations for registration purposes), copy the same boys names into the Add Multiple Students area. Follow through the wizard, and on the fourth screen you will be given the option to use the existing data, updating with any new information you may have entered. At this time, in the last column you have the ability to allocate them to a new class. Note that this is in addition to any classes they might already be in.
Use keyboard shortcut keys: O, P, [, ], and others when the extended attendance options window is open (web interface only).
In web attendance pages, hold down a keyboard key then click on an entry to apply that code where you click.
Right-click on a link and select Open in New Window if you want to do this. This can be useful when wanting to view Help in a separate Window, or comparing two pages of information.
If on a network, you can remotely access these Attendance Register pages. Use the same address you see in the browser Address bar. Your username and password protects from unauthorised access.
Select 'Blank' and click 'go' when viewing an attendance sheet to get a blank sheet that you can print out and use in emergencies or in case of computer failure.

Other features

Register Codes

The page to Edit Register codes is accessible from the options panel in the Teacher web area. The page provides a structured area to note what your register codes mean. The descriptions you give are used in the web-page version of class attendance sheets. When hovering the mouse over a register entry, your description for any code there is shown in the status bar at the bottom of the window. When the pop-up code box is up, hovering the mouse over a code letter will pop up the description you have given in a tool-tip.
You do not need to repeat the same descriptions across each row. STEARsoft assumes the code description you give on the left is the one to use for the rest of the row, unless you wish to over-ride it with a different meaning.