Class Charts Logins - Comments?

[petben]

Hello, our school has just bought Class Charts (EduKey) for behaviour, seating plans and homework.

 

They are apparently launching SSO for staff account next week, but for students to login they allocate a random 8 digit mix of numbers and letters, which the student then needs to write down (too complicated to remember). No other authentication to login, just the code. It's 1995 all over again....surely this isn't right or legal. Surely this is going to be a massive PITA.

 

They also have no 'code reminder', 'email me my code'. Just a message saying 'we cant help you, please contact your schools IT department'.

 

anyone use Class Charts and can comment. Am I fretting needlessly??

 

Thanks

[jonnykewell1]

That's daft especially as staff can sign in with Office 365. Students don't use class charts here just staff but that seems a little daft.

[DaveJ2717uk]

Been using classcharts here staff and students for a couple of years, no hassle at all. from my side. The logins for students are printed out and given to form tutors to give out to pupils and the parent codes are sent out with instructions on how to login/register. in that two years I've have to give pupils their passwords 3 times, and talk a parent through clicking on the forgottem password link on the website once. Been really straightforward from my side, our office might tell you a different story:)

[psydii]

Well its nearly 2022 and ClassCharts still don't have the option for Students to log in via 365 / Google.

 

Frankly ridiculous. I totally get that a pin code is great for on-boarding students from schools that haven't worked out their front from their back, but we've been through a period where pretty much every school has onboarded to one of those platforms. We had all our year 7 and 12 logged on to 365 back in August - and now have had to double that onboarding process to get them into Classcharts.

 

We're busy. If we set up single sign on, its because we don't want to spend three weeks issuing and supporting separate authentication systems. TBF its the admin and pastoral teams that do most of the heavy lifting, but its lifting that shouldn't need doing.

 

:grumpy:

[howartp]

Totally agree.

 

However for kids, as well as the initial mail-merge to email, we set up a PHP script on IIS that kids can log onto with AD and get their code, so we don’t have to keep looking them up.

[Liam]

I agree with this..,

 

I have automated every other process with 2fa and then this code system is really grating on me. Why do it for staff and not students??

 

Makes no sense!

[lmgtfy]

Our school is looking to move to ClassCharts, is this backward login code still the only option in 2023 please?

[Mako]

Apparently so. We've strictly made it a non-IT issue though. Pastoral staff, and techncially teachers (although there's a training-issue there), can all issue codes so students don't need to come to us and can almost instantly get their access.

[WannabrewUK]

Our school is looking to move to ClassCharts, is this backward login code still the only option in 2023 please?

 

Make sure its setup correctly and keep an eye out for data issues.

 

I wasn't involved at all with the setup here, the project was headed up by a member of SLT who was the initial master administrator. when they left Classcharts decided to make me the master administrator and default write back teacher without telling me. two years later we found that over 15000 comments had been written back to our MIS as myself, rather than the teacher who issued it.

 

Classcharts never appologised and were unable to explain how this had happened. It's has never been fixed.

[PotNoodleTech]

Yep got classcharts here and still using silly codes they forget in 10 seconds, rather than their own google accounts that every single pupil know, has and uses on a daily basis.

[lmgtfy]

Joyful news thanks everyone haha. I really hope it does other stuff better than ePraise and it just doesn't look more shinny than what we've currently got.

[WannabrewUK]

We've found the staff and student sync to be unreliable and support to be slow and a bit sub-standard.

 

But it does make pretty graphs

[NeilF]

Hi,

I think the write back to the default teacher happens when the teacher who initiated the event is not 'synchronised with your school management system'. When you look at a list of teachers in ClassCharts you will see that not all have the left/right arrows next to their name. These teachers have been created manually and they are the ones who are responsible for the mis-labelled comments.

[DrCheese]

Teacher account management is pretty rubbish as well - It will sometimes pull through the teachers home email from SIMS & create the account with that instead - So you have to manually verifiy & check.

 

To warn against this, Classcharts has a massive warning at the top saying "To check the domain before sending out" - ok fine but you could... easily fix this by allowing us to specify an approved domain instead?

 

Also, although teachers CAN sign in via 365, they have to sign in with ordinary accounts instead & then manually link up themselves after. Why? Who knows. Is it 2023 or 2014?

[Mako]

Teacher account management is pretty rubbish as well - It will sometimes pull through the teachers home email from SIMS & create the account with that instead - So you have to manually verifiy & check.

 

I don't disagree with you, and any software developer should be able to counter this, but I would cut them some slack on that. I find this grievance is more to do with how people hook into the SIMS data. If their Home e-mail address is also their 'Main' and 'Primary' e-mail address in SIMS, then it will likely pull that. I have a few similar systems (SchoolCloud in particular) that do the same and have to keep reminding Admin then when updating personnel records, to ensure the work e-mail is the 'Main' and 'Primary' one, and it avoids any issue.

 

This could also ruin certain reports if you were to generate data and it used their work e-mail instead, but I've yet to encounter such a thing as staff are very rarely contacted via Home e-mail addresses.

 

I'd say it's easier to point the blame at SIMS, but they are both at fault, not just ClassCharts.

[CTIDTech]

I agree with Mako - having the data in the MIS in shipshape order prevents many mishaps down the line.

We use ClassLink to roster the data ourselves with all our partners (apps etc) and this helps us sense check and validate all the data being shared before sharing any. If the data is not kept correctly or staff don't follow procedures as directed, we can spot this easily and resolve. It is so easy for the team to get distracted or pulled onto other tasks though and I have to remind myself that they didn't do it on purpose!