School Dashboard as online navigation portal

[Silica]

Hi all,

 

Does anyone use a tool or sharepoint as a main dashboard for staff and students to navigate around and find infomation they need or log IT/Facilities tickets?

 

We would also want to include metrix from our MIS, probably written in PowerBI.

 

We are really interested in creating something we can use.

 

Thanks

[dhicks]

Does anyone use a tool or sharepoint as a main dashboard for staff and students to navigate around and find infomation they need or log IT/Facilities tickets? We would also want to include metrix from our MIS, probably written in PowerBI.

 

I'm writing one - the user logs in via OAuth, then gets a simple grid of icons that link to whatever resources the school wants to point users at. I'm aiming to make it customisable by user / group and to act as an OAuth-capable frontend for other applications, so my tool will handle OAuth and pass on authorisation to other applications. I'm currently working on setting up a reporting tool as one of those applications, although written in Python rather than PowerBI. I'm also working on a plugin for Guacamole, so you'll be able to put an OAuth front-end on remote access to desktops or applications.

[Ditto]

In my last school, they had one that was in-house developed in PHP by the senior IT tech as he was learning the language. It worked quite well. The school lost about 80% if it's IT team in the matter of a 3 months (yes, 4 out 5 staff) including the senior IT tech. The remaining member doesn't do any programming so they are stuck going forwards. In-house development can be fantastic, but you need any system well documented and at least one backup person to be able to support it. Commercial solutions may look expensive at times, but should provide a more reliable way forward. I did consider a similar idea at the school before this one, and as a GSuite for Education School, I'd considered a Google sites based solution. I think it is a reasonable compromise not needing full programming skills, but secure and reliable. Edited May 5, 2020 by Ditto

[keyboards]

We've got the school intranet page as a google site with different links etc for staff and students, dead easy to do, works at home too, it's pretty useful

[dhicks]

In-house development can be fantastic, but you need any system well documented and at least one backup person to be able to support it. Commercial solutions may look expensive at times, but should provide a more reliable way forward.

 

Oh, absolutly - everyone should feel free to sign up with my service when it launches and pay me lots of money :-)

[Ditto]

We've got the school intranet page as a google site with different links etc for staff and students, dead easy to do, works at home too, it's pretty useful

That's great to hear. Just a shame I didn't get a chance to get it off the ground but useful to know of a successful implementation as you never know, I might get a chance in the future.

[Ditto]

Oh, absolutly - everyone should feel free to sign up with my service when it launches and pay me lots of money :-)

 

Surely you'll go Open Source for the good of all mankind 😀. He'll be along shortly I'm sure 😉

[3s-gtech]

Yes - in house PHP using LDAPS to auth, pulling data from SIMS and AD. It’s our main information hub, with sub modules for various tasks.

[dhicks]

Surely you'll go Open Source for the good of all mankind 😀.

 

Yes - most of what I'm writing is built on other open-source tools, and it seems like a sensible way to create a sustainable business model. I can offer a pay-as-you-go service to people for whom "all you need to do is set up a Debian server and install the following packages" does not constitute "simple instructions", and anyone more technically capable (and, therefore, capable of thinking of and asking the kinds of questions that need time and effort to answer) is welcome to download the source code and tinker away.