Let your students sign themselves out from your houses or dorms

You Decide: Allow your students to sign out from their own devices with Boardingware.As ex-boarders ourselves, we've been dying to make something that the students will really love and today we think we've finally done one...When 3.30pm comes, it’s madness on boarding school campuses all over the world. Most will require students to sign in and out on a paper logbook, or they’ll use Boardingware’s Kiosk Mode. However, both of these methods require students to (reluctantly) make their way back from class and sign out from the dorms.To avoid this problem, some schools allow their students to just text a staff member to tell them they’re off. This is normally for well-known local destinations or school commitments and even though a text does the job, it requires tedious data entry or re-entry for the staff member.So today, we’re excited to expand on our leave workflow capabilities and allow schools to let their students sign themselves out from their own devices.As a Boardingware Administrator, you can simply visit the ‘Manage Leave’ page within the school management section of the web application.First, I recommend that your school is clear on what destinations students are allowed to go to using this method. Once you have decided, you can set your default destinations in the Form Builder section of the Leave Type setup page.

This will allow you to add to your default destinations and select which ones can be used. You can see here that I have left mostly school commitments and local destinations.After you have confirmed this, then visit the ‘Workflow’ page and simply ‘allow’ students to sign out as seen below.

After you have saved your workflow, students will be able to immediately begin using this leave type! Check out the workflow from student sign out to what you see as a staff member below.

From a staff’s perspective you will simply see that student is signed out. And this will be instantaneous as long as you’re connected to the internet so there will be no confusion as to where that student has gone.For those of you that haven’t used this kind of workflow before, I would recommend giving it a go on a small test group of students and test the results. It should help to reduce congestion during the ‘after school rush’ and reduce the demand for your staff’s attention, allowing them to focus on discussions with students that are going to places that aren’t common or require more information.If you have any questions or feedback, please comment below!Happy Boarding,PaulPS - It’s important to note that this will not allow students to sign themselves IN from their own device as we believe that could open schools up to risk, so for now, that’s still in R&D.[marketo-fat form="1107"]