Firefly Users - Feature Request

[Danp]

I’ve had a couple of support tickets with Firefly as I would really like a new feature to attach documents to a pupils page for only them and their family members to see it. This would be along the lines of School Reports.

 

Our MIS is WCBS PASS and the only way to pull documents through from this to Firefly is via the report function, but to create the sort of files needed would be a huge headache.

 

The sort of documents we have already thought would be useful to post would be and I am sure there would be many more if and when we could start using this

 

Future Timetables

Exam Timetables

IEPs (Individual Education Plan)

 

The way I see how this could work is if there is an area on the pupils page and if we can upload to that via script from the server.

 

Something like, as long as the file name starts with the unique reference and they are saved in a folder on the same server as the cloud uploader it pulls the files though.

 

Any thoughts on this? Any other schools interested in something like this?

[dhicks]

Our MIS is WCBS PASS and the only way to pull documents through from this to Firefly is via the report function, but to create the sort of files needed would be a huge headache.

 

Firefly has a plugin feature that allows you to add functionality - we use it to display reports (PDF documents) to parents, which sounds very similar to what you're aiming to do. We are using a locally-hosted install of Firefly without using the Parent Portal module, so linking parents to pupil accounts is a bit on the clunky side, I'd hope things would be a bit simpler if you're using the Firefly parent portal.

[Danp]

Firefly has a plugin feature that allows you to add functionality - we use it to display reports (PDF documents) to parents, which sounds very similar to what you're aiming to do. We are using a locally-hosted install of Firefly without using the Parent Portal module, so linking parents to pupil accounts is a bit on the clunky side, I'd hope things would be a bit simpler if you're using the Firefly parent portal.

 

That part is not a problem, reports are fine to show parents. It's other documents I really need to be able to upload and display to it.

[dhicks]

That part is not a problem, reports are fine to show parents. It's other documents I really need to be able to upload and display to it.

 

Our pupil reports are simply PDF documents (produced by School Manager MIS, which isn't directly supported by Firefly). As far as the plugin is concerned, it's just showing a PDF document to the user - by the sound of things, pretty much what you are aiming to do. This assumes the documents you want to show to the parents are available somehow via a database query or similar (in the case of School Manager, pupil reports (and other documents associated with a pupil's record) are stored on the filesystem on the MIS server, which we can expose as a share to the Firefly plugin to read from). Not sure how WCBS stores / accesses documents, but that's probably the first bit to figure out, followed by how you match a given document (assigned to a pupil) with a parent account.