Announcing Multiple Active Passes for Day and Boarding Schools

Managing student passes has just become more flexible and seamless with Orah. We’re excited to announce the release of our Multiple Active Passes feature, designed to improve how schools manage passes for students across both day and boarding environments. This update resolves a common challenge for schools using Orah for attendance in both settings, ensuring that overlapping passes no longer conflict with each other.

The Problem: Overwritten Passes

In schools that use Orah for both day and boarding, overlapping passes often created issues. For example, a day school might issue a pass for exam leave, while the boarding school issues a pass for after-school leave. Previously, creating a new pass would automatically end the existing one, which caused confusion and extra work for staff managing both environments.

The Solution: Multiple Active Passes

With this update, schools can now enable multiple active passes for students. This ensures that different passes can coexist without one overriding the other, making it easier to manage attendance across day and boarding environments.

Key Features of the Update

New Setting: “Automatically End Pass When Location Changes”

1. A new setting within the pass settings allows schools to control whether passes are automatically ended when a student's location changes.
2. By default, this setting is enabled to maintain the current behavior, but schools can disable it to allow multiple passes to remain active simultaneously.
3. Support for Adding Multiple Passes
   • Version 1 Release (Live): Staff can add multiple passes via the Orah web platform, and students and parents can activate multiple passes based on pass settings.
   • Version 2 Release (In development): The ability to create multiple passes will be extended to the staff iOS app and the Checkpoint app.

Use Case

This update is especially beneficial for schools with both day and boarding programs.

For instance:

• A student might be issued an exam leave pass for the day school while also being issued an after-school leave pass for the boarding school. With multiple active passes, both passes can remain valid without interruption.

New Setting: “Adding Locations are Now Optional When Ending Pass”

• Staff/Student users no longer need to add a location when ending a pass.‍
• Previously, adding a location was mandatory. Now, it’s always optional.‍
• Changes have also been made when student, staff, and parent users add passes.

What’s Next?

The Multiple Active Passes feature is now live for staff using the web platform, with additional functionality for mobile apps coming soon. A full announcement will be made to all customers once all features are fully rolled out.

We’re confident this update will streamline operations for schools and reduce the confusion caused by overlapping passes.

As always, we’d love to hear your feedback. If you have any questions or need assistance, reach out to our support team using the chat in the bottom right hand corner of your screen.

Stay tuned for further updates as we continue to enhance your Orah experience!