Introducing Locations: A New Multi-Layered Framework to Keep Students Safe

The first step to keeping students safe is knowing where they are. But with so many different places they could be, both on-and-off campus, it can be challenging to make sense of it all and ensure the correct procedures are being followed to update their location.

Until now. Introducing the Location Manager.

The Location Manager allows you to organise and map out all the possible places your students could be while still under your duty of care. You can organise locations into different hierarchies and use custom rules to ensure the correct procedures are being followed to account for your students.

Ultimately, The Location Manager provides you with greater insight and control for your student accountability processes.

From Destinations to Locations

First things first, why did we update the destinations model and how will these changes help you in the short and long run? Let’s take a look.

Here’s the old destinations manager

While the old way of managing destinations was somewhat simple, it could get very confusing very fast. Having one giant list for all your destinations made it difficult to really understand where your students are from a high level. Customers kept telling us they wanted a more holistic view of who was on-and-off campus.

Enter: The Location Manager

With the new location manager, you can now organise all your possible on-and-off campus locations into a simple hierarchical format. Giving you a more holistic understanding of where your students are.

How it works

From the location manager, you can organise your different locations with Zones, Locations and Sub-Locations.

Zones sit at the top of the locations hierarchy. They serve as a way to group your locations into different “On-Grounds” (On-Campus) or “Off-Grounds” (Off-Campus) zones. For instance, you could create a Zone for all your “On-Campus” locations, another one for approved “Off-Campus” locations and another for all your “Residential” dorms or houses.

Within each Zone you can add a number of locations, each with their own address, lat long coordinates, specified type (ie. building, floor, room, outdoor facility etc) and privacy options.

And if that’s not clear enough, you can even create Sub-locations to nest locations within other locations. Are you sick of hearing the word location yet?

This new location model provides you with a way to organise everything into a logical and practical manner. Best of all, it gives you the opportunity to be as brief or as detailed as you need to be. It doesn’t matter if you only want to keep track of students within general buildings or get right down to specific classrooms, you can do it all with the Location Manager.

Tying it all together with “Interactive Locations”

Locations are like the central nervous system for school safety. They’re integrated into every leave request, permission, check-in and sign-out process, and play a pivotal role when it comes to keeping track of where your students are.

That’s why we decided to build “Interactive Locations” - a way to connect all your workflows to specific locations, making it easier to understand, manage and control your core processes.

Here’s how it works…

Check-in Methods

With a range of check-in options available, you now have the ability to manage and control how students are checked-in to different locations from one screen. This granular level of control allows you to customise safety parameters to your liking.

Multiple check-in options give you the flexibility to build a layered system for keeping track of your students. Alternatively, you can also choose to restrict or limit check-in options for special locations that require stricter processes. Either way, the choice is yours.

What’s more, all your connected Passes (formerly known as leave types) and Checkpoints are displayed within the same screen. Giving you full visibility and control of all the workflows and processes that are related to each location.

Required Passes

Some locations, such as the health centre, starbucks or the mall, may require special permissions or additional information to be submitted before students can leave or be checked in. To ensure that you are able to fulfill your duty of care in these situations, we’ve provided you with an option to make passes required for specific location.

When this option is turned on, staff and students will be required to follow the procedure defined in the specified pass. This means that student locations cannot be updated without submitting the required information and reduces any chance of mistakes when it comes to checking students in and out.

In-Transit Tracking

As part of this update we’ve also made it possible for you to record how long it takes a student to reach their next location. We call it “In-Transit” tracking.

Sometimes you need to take extra care when students are moving between different locations. For instance, they might be travelling a long distance and you need to ensure they arrive safely, or you might be sending a student to the principal’s office and you need to make sure they don’t take any detours along the way.

Whatever the situation, In-Transit tracking helps to identify when students are taking longer than expected to get somewhere, so you can respond and quickly resolve any concerns.

Like Check-in Methods, In-Transit tracking can also be customised to your liking with several different options and settings.

Drilling Down with More Powerful Filters

While the new location model helps to provide you with more control over your processes, it’s biggest value lies in the new and improved filters. From the homeboard, you can now filter through your students by zones and specific locations, giving you a more accurate understanding of where your students are, both on and off campus.

In addition to filtering by location, you can also filter to see which students are in-transit, where they’re in-transit to, and keep track of how many visitors you have in your boarding houses or dorms.

But wait, there’s more!

You can also use multiple filters at the same time. Filter students by group, location, in-transit destination, house, pass, watchlist and more, to drill down into focused student segments and truly empower your team to keep your students safe.

Get Started Today

To get started, head to your admin console and open up the location manager. All your existing locations should already be there so you can start re-organizing and configuring your check-in rules right away. For help transitioning to the new location manager, read our help articles below:

• Understanding and Transitioning to the New Location Manager
• What is an Interactive Zone or Location?
• What's In-Transit?
• Mapping out Campus - Creating Zones and Locations
• Adjust your leave setup to incorporate new locations and the check in/out methods

If you’re interested in learning more or have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or book a time to chat with our team here.