Strengthening Security with Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): What School Admins Need to Know

Update (New Date: February 24, 2025)
The rollout date for mandatory Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) has been rescheduled from February 17 to February 24. This blog post has been updated to reflect the change.
Please review the details below to ensure a smooth transition.

At QuickSchools, we’re committed to keeping your account secure. That’s why we’re enforcing Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)—an extra layer of protection to ensure that only authorized users can access your account.

To help you navigate this update, we’ve answered key questions about the upcoming 2FA rollout: 

Stay informed and secure–learn more about 2FA today!

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New Release – Oct 3, 2024

As mentioned in our previous release on Sept 10, the next few QuickSchools releases will focus more on system stability, performance and maintenance, with a few bug fixes where needed. 

Full list of improvements are below:

General Improvements

  • SFTP via Summary Reports
  • Bulk Email Schedule for “Courses & Sections”
  • Bug Fix Search Email History for Online Forms
  • Bug Fix Online Form Status Checker when used with Student Tags
  • Bug Fix Map Students and Teachers for Canvas Integration
  • Optimize Loading Time for Recipient Lists

Beta / System Improvements

  • Read-Only Gradebooks (Beta)
  • Transfer Grades from Gradebook to Chronos Transcripts (v2)
  • Improve Notifications for Assignment Submissions by Students
  • Improve Data Monitor Framework
  • Improve Reporting for Chronos Transcripts
  • Improve Email Validation
  • Improve mechanisms for Data Maintenance
  • Reduce system errors
  • Bug Fixes for Parent Teacher Conference App (Beta)
  • Bug Fix Notifications when teacher with School Admin role is deleted/deactivated
  • Miscellaneous Improvements for DevOps
  • Miscellaneous Improvements for App Store Management

New Release – July 10, 2024

Today’s QuickSchools release focuses on a few system / framework improvements around security, performance and maintenance, with general improvements to the Orchestra Master Scheduler and Student Information System. 

Full list of improvements are below:

Master Scheduler Improvements

  • Bug Fix Display of Section Limits when limit is set to zero in Course Catalog
  • Show Rooms assignments for Courses based on Departments in Step 1

General Improvements

  • Auto-map Courses to Schoology when a new semester is activated
  • Increase timeout for archiving old Homework when a new semester is created
  • Increase timeout for XML BackUps
  • Fix display in Student Listing when Nickname is not provided
  • Bug fix display of configured PDF Template for Report Cards and Transcripts
  • Bug fix search for “Your Students” listing

Beta Improvements

  • New Data Monitor Framework (v1)
  • Refactor Migrate to Next Year (for Courses & Sections)
  • Framework Improvements for Anonymization (on-going)
  • Support “Weight Type” and “Excluded from GPA” for Course Importer
  • Support multiple Graduation Tracks
  • Improve Security for Support Agents (Google Authenticator)

New Release – June 20, 2024

Today’s QuickSchools release focuses on the Orchestra Master Scheduler, with general improvements to the Student Information System. 

The full list of improvements is included below:

Master Scheduler Improvements

  • New Enhanced Room Management module (Beta)
  • Refactor Year-Long and Next Course Functionality
  • Auto-Drop Section Enrollments when Student is deactivated
  • Auto-Delete Section Enrollments when Student is deleted
Enhances Room Management for Orchestra Master Scheduler
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New Release – Mar 5, 2024

We’re back to a normal flow for engineering improvements. Today’s QuickSchools release focuses on the Gradebook, with some minor improvements to the Master Scheduler, Attendance and API. 

Full list of improvements are below:

Master Scheduler

  • Relabel Step 4 button to “Import External IDs”
  • Relabel the “Lock Sections” checkbox in Step 2 to be more descriptive
  • Bug Fix “Bulk Course Requests” in Step 2 for locked course requests in previous Enrollment Periods
  • Bug Fix Advanced Search in Step 5 for Students with unassigned duplicate course requests

Gradebook Improvements

  • Low Grade Alert for Gradebook (see below)
  • Gradebook expanded option to share or copy columns between different subjects
  • Bug Fix Minimum Score from Admin Column
  • Option to submit grades from ALL gradebooks to Report Cards (Beta)
  • Option to bulk show/hide Gradebook in “Manage Subject Availability” (Beta)

Other Beta Improvements

  • API Improvements for Engage CRM and Mobile
  • Option to Bulk Set Attendance for Subject-Based roster
  • Report Creator support for Total Attendance by Period
  • Bug Fix Teacher Listing when a school is removed from a Group School

Low Grade Alert

We have a new Alert for the Gradebook, allowing you to notify parents of low grades. This feature currently works only for the default Grading Scale. Here’s how it works:

  • Enable the School-wide Alert under “School Profile”
  • Configure the low grades under “Grading Setup”
  • Notification for teachers when saving the Gradebook
  • Notification for Parents
  • Opting out of alerts for Parents

Enable the School-wide Alert

Under “Settings” > “School Profile”, there is a setting under “School-wide Alert Settings” for “Gradebook – Low Grade Alert”:

Enable the School-wide Alert

The alert is disabled by default. You can opt parents in or out by default. Parents can still opt in/out individually once the feature is enabled.

NOTE: This first version currently supports Email Alerts only. In the near future, we’ll be adding support for this alert to the “Home by QuickSchools” Mobile App

Configure the Low Grades

Under “Grading Setup”, there is a new setting called “Low Grade Alerts” where you can configure the Letter Grades and Codes that warrant an alert:

Read More »

New Release – Feb 16, 2024

quickschools software release feb 16th 2024

Our focus for the past few weeks has been on the New Policy for Sender Email. And so the QuickSchools release for today is limited to improvements our API for Zapier and Engage, plus some general bug fixes and improvements to our general Student Information System: 

General Bug Fixes / Improvements

  • Bug Fix Gradebook Comments with Special Characters from Canvas
  • Bug Fix Private Messaging when called incorrectly from the browser
  • Improve experience when choosing “Other Balance” for Online Payments

Beta Improvements

  • API Improvements for Engage CRM and Zapier (WebHooks)
  • New Report Creator calculations for Section Attendance

New Zapier Integration App

We’ve been focusing on adding WebHook support to our Zapier Integration App over the past several releases. We finally introduced Instant Triggers in v2.0.0 earlier this month. With this latest release, v2.0.1 will now support district-wide webhooks. You can export more documentation on our Zapier Integration App in the coming weeks.