I'm building a school MIS, what's next?

[speedypro]

Thanks. Im using ruby on rails with a MYSQL DB (all instances on one server: everything). I'll be moving to a tenancy setup but that's way down the line. Not looking to go advance during an evaluation mode.

[PotNoodleTech]

Might not be such a good idea, thinking about it, to divulge the inner workings of the MIS in a public forum.

[speedypro]

Might not be such a good idea, thinking about it, to divulge the inner workings of the MIS in a public forum.

It's early days and things change

[PotNoodleTech]

It's early days and things change

 

Ok just making sure we don't get sued at some point in the future for discussing your intelectual property a'la most MIS providers

[dmj]

Thanks. Im using ruby on rails with a MYSQL DB (all instances on one server: everything). I'll be moving to a tenancy setup but that's way down the line. Not looking to go advance during an evaluation mode.

 

Everything in one instance is a reasonable choice, but if you want to scale consider:

 

Using postgres over MySLQ - it's far more advanced for the sort of features you will need going forward.

For example, you will want to dynamically scale and patch the instance with a downtime of microseconds. Good luck with MySQL.

Also consider having Rails send read only data to a different URL, so that you can segregate your read only and write only DB connections

[dmj]

Also consider instrumenting with OpenTel from the start. You will thank me for that later

[speedypro]

Ok just making sure we don't get sued at some point in the future for discussing your intelectual property a'la most MIS providers

😂

 

 

Using postgres over MySLQ - it's far more advanced for the sort of features you will need going forward.For example, you will want to dynamically scale and patch the instance with a downtime of microseconds. Good luck with MySQL...

 

I'm proficient with MySQL and I do get what you are saying. You have the experience in this sector and knows what information is required. I'm here for knowledge and feedback and I'll change it to PostgreSQL. This saves me from issues down the line.

 

To all others, thanks for finding the bugs on the website ie someone messed with the DOM and changed the title to "Rev" (before it's now supported) and some others. Yes, I've seen them 😉

Edited January 30, 2025 by speedypro

[speedypro]

One-off payments section is changing to look more like an e-commerce. Same like an e-commerce, a school will see all orders with their statuses (design inspired by Shopify). Can view order by dates but custom dates is being worked on. Can leave a customer (parent in this case) note and staff-only-comments. I hope this minimal setup is enough for a school.

 

I'll do the same for the meals but it needs a huge change to allow discounts should a parent has a child/ren that goes to the school and could use discounts for meal and/or for the one-off payments. Any recommendations? At this stage, I'm 100% flexible on changes. BTW the graphs are using fake data for now.

 

[JamieUK]

I would be happy to test your prototype if and when you get there, I have best part of 10 years experience in the education MIS sector.

 

Good luck!

[speedypro]

There are significant changes to the website, made over the school term (last week).

 

 

• New Meal and one-off order pages
  
• Display meal images
  
• Display one-off item images
  
• Add meals with dates it's available (Commences tab)
  
• User registration*
  

 

*For registration, I've limit registration to a uk school email address to reduce the noise. If you are keen to not use the demo and would like to invite someone (as test parent/carer), you can but only if you register. The demo account would not be able to send emails which means who you've invited wont be able to use the system. If you would like to register, but not use a school email address, send me a PM of the email address you'd like to use. Please note you must have access to this email address as you'll need to confirm the email address.

 

I believe by "letting you in", I could get things done much faster with the help of your feedback. Should you register, invite someone which they would become a parent. From there you could simulate what happens when that parent adds a child, top-ups etc.

 

Have another look at the demo account to see what's new.

[speedypro]

This process was a huge learning curve and I thank everyone for their input, from the start of this thread. Since I got more feedback, I've decided to take a step back with Tuicamp. It's the "lots of hardware" needed that got me to rethink my approach. Who has the time to manually record hundreds of students at meal time? Who has time to manually add/update the menu list? All this information has led me to rethink. I will be adding some APIs at some point but Tuicamp may remodel to be something else. Maybe I'll look at offering this service to schools where they would own the software etc.