Out With The Old And In With The New: Why We Needed To Rebuild And What It Means For You

Since early this year, we have been busy re-building Boardingware from the ground up and last month (September 2015) we were finally able to release the new system. We're sorry for the inconvenience and we would like to thank you for your patience.

For some of you, it may have been a bumpy ride so we wanted to take the time to share with you why it was necessary and how this update will affect Boardingware in the future.

The main reason for this update was because we want any boarding school from around the world to be able to use Boardingware, and our old system had too many technical limitations which would not allow us to do that. There were just too many things that our schools needed that we couldn’t build with the tools we had.This left us no choice but to start again from scratch.Overall our new infrastructure allows us to do everything much better than before. We’ve equipped ourselves with powerful tools and a strong foundation so that we can provide you with the best features for your boarding school.Here are 4 exciting area’s of improvement that our latest build has now made possible:

1. Keep Your Data Close To Home

After collaborating with schools from around the world, we learnt that some countries -depending on their data regulations - are required to store their student information within a specific geographical region. This proved to be a problem for us because we previously stored all of our data in the East Coast of America.Clearly this wasn’t ideal for schools in Europe or Australasia, and as a global company, we wanted to do better. So we decided to set up servers in three different regions - United States (Virginia), Europe (Northern Ireland) and Australasia (Sydney).This has allowed us to bring your data closer and improve data transfer speeds to provide you with a better overall user experience.Holding multiple servers also means we can conveniently schedule down-time for when your region isn't using the system. That way, you won't lose access to Boardingware when you need it most.But most importantly, it will give you the peace of mind that your school’s student information will be stored in a region that best suits your data laws.We’re proud to say that our customers can store their data closer to home and it’s rare to find software companies that offer multi-national data storage. But we believe it’s a key step towards building a product that boarding schools around the world will love.

2. Your IT Managers Will Love You

Most schools have their own school information systems (SIS) which previously, have not been fully compatible with Boardingware, and this has created issues around double data management and timely information transfer.So one of our main goals has been to put an end to this, and we are almost there!We have already started the integration process with some of the leading SIS’s in the world and we will be announcing the integrations as they become available.With this new integration, setting up Boardingware will be a breeze for you and your IT staff. At the press of a button, lengthy setup times will be eliminated and any student information updated on your SIS will also appear in Boardingware.This removes any confusion around which system has the most recent student information - no more double-checking and juggling data across two systems.Now you can sleep easy at night knowing that Boardingware will be consistently up to date with your latest student information when you need it most.

3. No More Waiting

At Boardingware, we strive to make your administrative tasks as quick and easy as possible, so you can focus on spending more quality time with your students.So when we realised that it took approximately 12 seconds for changes in our system to update across all your devices, we knew that there was a lot of room for improvement.To improve the speed and accuracy of our system, we adopted the use of “Websockets” which basically allows us to share information across multiple devices virtually instantaneously.Now updates can occur in approximately 0.01 seconds. That's 1200 times faster than before!Being able to see changes in real time should eliminate any chance of delay in your productivity, allowing you to spend even more quality time with your students.Additionally, instant confirmation of any changes will also help to clear up any confusion within your team, and we believe, that this will help to build unity within boarding schools in a way that has never been possible before.

4. More Options To Choose From

Currently, Boardingware is accessible through our popular iPad app and our mobile-friendly web app, and soon, you will able to access Boardingware directly through a smartphone app.Now that we have set up a scalable infrastructure to build off, we can finally start to develop Boardingware across new platforms that you will love to use.For instance, rather than using SMS to notify your students, Push-Notifications will help you to easily communicate with your residential team, students and their parents, directly through the app itself.We want to make using Boardingware even easier than it already is and having an application designed specifically for your smartphone will give you the freedom to care for your students like never before.

Looking Forward

These are just a few key areas that our recent update will allow us to improve but there is also so much more we have planned. We are excited to move forward unhindered by our previous technical constraints and can’t wait to take Boardingware to the next level.We want to thank all our amazing customers for bearing with us during this transition. We love working with you and can’t thank you enough for your support.Stay tuned for more awesome updates!If you have any questions or thoughts please feel free to leave a comment below :)PS. Make sure you've updated to our latest version of Boardingware.If you aren't using Boardingware yet and would like to learn more, feel free to visit our website, or schedule a free demo here.[marketo-fat form="1107"]