Online Grades and Attendance

New Features Implemented:

1484220 Offer Drop-down for school list at login
- This new option can be selected via the Admin config interface.
1167376 Tools for deleting/viewing/editing data
- Multiple Admin Interface tools for viewing, deleting, editing, exporting class, student, teacher, parent data

General:

- Online Grades 3.2.1 requires MySQL version 4.1.x or later due to the use of subqueries.
- New Online Grades web site deployed since last release http://www.onlinegrades.org
- New documentation center online at http://docs.onlinegrades.org
- Beginnings of context based help added. We now have several "help" links that go to the improved online documentation.

Bugs fixed:

1522715 10+ Digits in SID don't work
1501388 Multiple Parent Center Prefs bugs
1501387 Allow student to change pref not saving
1468164 Can't add admins

Hello from Online Grades!

The 3.2.1 version is currently in development. In addition to several small bug fixes from 3.2.0 the major addition we are currently working is improved tools for deleting, editing, and managing student, teacher, and parent accounts. In addition these tools will help manage viewing a removing the course and grade data in Online Grades. You may find these tools useful late spring/early summer, which is when the new version should be available.

***One requirement for these new features to work will be to have MySQL version 4.1 or higher.*** To generate some of the new information we are using sql subqueries, which were introduced with in MySQL with version 4.1. Please check your server or hosting setup now so that you are prepared when new new features are available. If you need help feel free to post to the forums.

There has been some interest in a file upload/storage facility built into Online Grades. This would allow teachers to upload assignments for students to download if they have lost their copy of the assignment. If this is something your school is interested in please consider if you or someone on your staff could help with the planning (ideas, rough layouts), development (writing the php code), or testing. See Feature Request # 1179210 at
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1179210&group_id=127473&atid=708662 for more information about the request and feel free to make comments there or in the forums.

Sourceforge.net had problems with their CVS (development file storage/revision control) for several weeks but these have now been resolved and so it is now again possible to download the current development version of Online Grades via CVS. See http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=127473 for more information and feel free to post to the forums or email if you need help.

--Sam

Welcome to the Online Grades 3.2.0 release. We have made many improvements and are excited to release our best version yet! There are several major new features in this release:

To your teachers, the main difference they will see is the teacher memos. They will need to migrate their current teacher memo to the new per-class teacher memos. The old teacher memos will still be visible to the teachers but not visible to students.

Administrators will appreciate being able to change all the common configurations options via the administrative web interface. In addition, many administrators will like the new semi-admin logins that give restricted access to the administrative interface (restricted to one school and limited options).

Parents are now able to have their own login into Online Grades. If they have more than one student with grades in Online Grades they only need their single login to access all their students' grades.

New Features:
1424122 - Time Zone offset per school - Requested by Benton High School
1167384 - Switched to a mostly web based configuration.
1179209 - Memo for each class - Requested by Christian Heritage School
1179212 - Parent Login - Allows parents to have a single login for one or multiple children. - Requested by Christian Heritage School
1189351 - Anchoring Left Navigation so that is no longer pushed down the page when the main content is long.
1320617 - Semi-Admin User - Give basic admin ability without giving full admin access. - Requested by rahenkamp
1199499 - "Delete All Classes" button for teachers
1262189 - Split Offline Feature - Added the ability to turn on and off any login section independently
1395588 - Update DB, import for New Grade book Fields (class level teacher comments, student free text comments, attendance)
1408310 - Display Attendance Information for Students
1406996 - Configurable SMTP Server for OG generated emails - Requested by jfouks

The Online Grades development has entered a feature freeze in preparation for release. No new features are being added at this point, only bug fixes. Three schools are testing the new version "in production" and there have not been any major issues. We are updating the documentation and hope to release at the end of the month.

We know it's been a while since we have posted any news but we've been busy. We have been working hard over the last couple of weeks getting new features and developing new relationships with different grade book vendors. Here is a list of the things that are currently in the CVS version of Online Grades:

* Parent Center Now Available
* Added IP Restriction to Student Mailer; helps prevent abuse
* Updated Magpie RSS Reader
* New CSS Based Menus & Layouts
* Added mailto hyperlinks for email addresses
* Added More School Based Options
* Split Offline Feature (Now you can turn off sections of OG)

We are happy to announce that PPGP now has support for Online Grades; you will need version of 4.5 or later to have support for Online Grades. For more information you can visit http://www.pggp.com/onlinegrade.htm or http://www.onlinegrades.org/gb_soft. PPGP is also offering Online Grades hosting for their customers, once again for more information please visit their website.

While we don't recommend running any CVS version in a production environment, we do encourage everyone to check it out. The Online Demo is always updated with the current CVS version and that is an easy way to take a look at the new features. The parent center is now available in the demo. See the demo page for more information.

If you are interested in helping out please contact us. Even if you don't know anything about PHP you still can help. We have documentation that needs updated before we release this next version; if you would like to help email me at beauhuber [at] users [dot] sourceforge [dot] net. The Online Grades development team will be continuing to work on this version for a while longer before we plan on making a release.

In addition feel free to post feature requests or bug reports to the online ticket trackers or comment on the ones that are already posted online. See https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=127473.