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 | RVS SchoolTools Plus Rollout
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"SchoolTools Plus" Orientation Website Available Beginning Monday, May 3, 2010
Beginning Monday, May 3, 2010, if you are an RVS SchoolTools administrator, you will be able to use your RVS GradeBook User Id and Password to sign into a "test drive" version of the new, web-based RVS SchoolTools (SchoolTools Plus). You are encouraged to become acquainted with it, to evaluate it and to provide feedback to RVS about it during what we are calling your "orientation period". You can freely experiment with this orientation copy of SchoolTools Plus knowing you will not be affecting your school's official, live data on SchoolTools off-line nor your grades on GradeBook. (Non-GradeBook users: see details about how to acquire a User ID and Password for the SchoolTools Plus orientation website.)
From Monday, May 3, 2010, your ability to access the SchoolTools Plus orientation website will begin within a couple of days of your initiating a SchoolTools (off-line) remote backup. At that point, you will be able to access the SchoolTools Plus orientation sign-in page from a link that will appear on your RVS GradeBook "Welcome" page and also on the rvs101.com home page.
Expect Major Benefits
It is our expectation that upon signing into SchoolTools Plus for the first time, you will quickly recognize the advantages and possibilities of this web based version of the off-line application you have become so familiar with.
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SchoolTools Plus represents a major software upgrade that has involved a multi-year development effort and includes a number of important new features reflecting requests and suggestions from many within our user community. We have been careful in our design of SchoolTools Plus to insure that it includes the full functionality of the off-line version, that your data is securely protected, that you can very easily learn how to use it effectively, and especially that it eliminates all the obvious shortcomings of a non-web-based application. In fact, moving to SchoolTools Plus will end the need for you to maintain any special in-school computer hardware, software and networks, the requirement that you "Sync with GradeBook" when changes are made or when it is time to produce report cards, and the need for you to perform regular backups of your database.
The "Orientation Period"
Remember that, until the end of the current school year, any changes you make to data through SchoolTools Plus will be considered experimental and will not in any way affect your official data in SchoolTools (off-line) nor in GradeBook. This is with the exception of student preregistration and waitlist data only, which will be retained and will become part of your school's official database for use in the next school year. All other changes will be discarded at the end of the current school year. Unless you will be opting to begin within this school year to use on-line attendance and to generate online report cards for the final marking period of the current year (see below), please continue to use SchoolTools (off-line) and GradeBook as you have been up to this point.
What RVS Administrators should do now to be able to access the orientation website:
- The SchoolTools administrator should perform a SchoolTools remote backup and then send an email to RVS indicating that the backup has been performed for your school. Send the email to cheryl.boe@rvs101.com clearly identifying your school and specifying "remote backup completed". (See details if you are not familiar with remote backups).
- RVS will acknowledge your notification and will begin to set up the SchoolTools Plus Orientation database for your school using the data from the remote backup. Allow up to 24 hours for RVS to complete this step.
- RVS will notify you by responding to your original email (or by phone) as soon as the setup process for your school is complete and will give you the web address of the orientation website for your school. Contact RVS if you have not received a notification from us within 24 hours of your performing the remote backup.
- Access the SchoolTools Plus orientation website at the address given to you by RVS in the previous step.
- Sign into the orientation website using your RVS GradeBook User Id and Password and begin getting familiar with SchoolTools Plus.
Invoicing
- You will be invoiced on Friday, April 30, for use during the 2010 school year of SchoolTools Plus and GradeBook (if you are a GradeBook user).
- If you paid $150.00 for a 2009 SchoolTools Plus subscription, you can expect the invoice to include a full credit to you in consideration of our not having made the product available to you until now. The credit amount will be applied as a payment for use of SchoolTools Plus in the 2010 school year. We are indeed sorry for the delay and for the inconvenience you may have had to endure.
Actions for You To Take From Now to the End of the School Year
- Correct and update student contact information on SchoolTools off-line. This will help greatly in our establishing proper family records on the SchoolTools Plus database.
End-of-Year Activites
At the end of the current school year, after the usual printing of year-end reports, you are to make a final remote backup through SchoolTools (off-line). That backup will be loaded into the SchoolTools Plus database in Mid-July and will become your school's official data set for use in the 2010 school year. It is very important that you do not set up the next school year before making that final remote backup. On July 19, you (as an administrator) will be able to go on-line, sign into SchoolTools Plus and complete the set up of the new school year that will have been automatically started for you. SchoolTools Plus will then become accessible to teachers and staff at your school. On-line videos will be available to allow your teachers to quickly learn how to use the teacher-specific features of SchoolTools Plus.
Pilot Schools
You may also be interested in knowing that a number of our schools have participated in a pilot program and have been using some aspects of SchoolTools Plus through their GradeBook interface including:
- On-line attendance entry and reporting
- Report card comments entry
- On-line report card generation
- GPA calculations and reporting
- Honors List Reporting
Contact us if you would like us to enable the above features for your school also (i.e., to enable them within the current school year). This would make it possible for you to produce on-line report cards for this year's final marking period. But please note that, as of the date of this publication, the option to enable on-line attendance and report cards is only being offered to schools within the dioceses of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Check this web page periodically as we continue to add dioceses the schools within which will be able to choose this option.
Key Benefits to You of Our Moving to SchoolTools Plus and of Improved Integration with GradeBook
- All the benefits of using a popular web browser
- An always-on navigation menu allows you to easily go to any section from any page you are currently viewing
- Reports are available in portable document format (PDF), providing much greater control over the printed result of each report
- Report links are available on every page so you can print a report that corresponds to the data on the page you're viewing
- Change teaching and homeroom assignments without having to go into a special "10-step" process
- Sacraments and TerraNova score entry
- Student status options to include: enrolled, preregistered, wait-list, withdrawn and alumni
- Faculty and Staff attendance entry
- For users of RVS Financials: Student lunch orders can be entered from the attendance page
- Additional user types include auditors, assistants and volunteers
- Improved management of user roles allows the administrator to indicate which users will be allowed to view or modify which database content
- Expanded student medical information entry
- Family data entry represents an improved approach to grouping students and contacts
- GradeBook will soon have a family User Id and Password but will continue to maintain individual student sign-in Id's and Passwords
- Report Card related changes will now only be allowed by special request. This is to avoid unintended complications due to accidental deletions and unauthorized changes to diocesan layouts
- On-line videos will show how a number of our pilot schools are using the new GradeBook features:
- Attendance entry and associated attendance reports
- Entry of report card comments (with spell check)
- On-line Report Card generation in PDF format
- Viewing and printing reports from SchoolTools Plus will be faster and easier than it was with off-line SchoolTools as PDF (Portable Document Format) report output offers some real advantages. PDF reports can more easily be searched using key words. They offer more and better print options. And, they can be saved, stored and viewed off-line at your convenience, or forwarded in an email.
Non-GradeBook SchoolTools Plus Users
Administrators at those schools using RVS SchoolTools but not using RVS GradeBook should follow the procedure for performing a remote backup and then contact RVS at cheryl.boe@rvs101.com indicating that you have done so. You should indicate in the email that yours is a school that does not currently use RVS GradeBook. RVS will process the data sent through your remote backup as soon as possible and will reply to your email sending you a web address and a User Id and Password for the SchoolTools Plus orientation website.
Alternative to Remote Backup for Schools for which SchoolTools Remote Backup is Not An Option
Schools that experience technical problems with the off-line SchoolTools remote backup function can go to the web address that follows. At that web page they can follow the available instructions on how to capture their off-line SchoolTools data and upload it to the SchoolTools Plus database.
Alternative to SchoolTools Off-line Backup: http://rvsgradebook.com/stupl.asp?instruct=y
Thank You!
Thanks to our entire user community for your business these past years. Thanks also for your patience, support, advice and prayers as we have worked with you in resolving problems day by day and finally to produce this, eagerly anticipated, major new product upgrade, SchoolTools Plus!
Special Thanks:
- To Sr. Jane, Michelle D., Tom S., John H., Barb D., Diane V. and many others who have quite actively supported and advised us.
- Very special thanks to Sr. John Marie for her prayers and for her willingness and efforts to help her peers, our clients.
- Thanks to Cheryl B., a great in-house customer advocate!
- Thanks again to all!
Best Regards,
The Staff At
River Valley Software
866-878-3799
Security - We take it very seriously!
Protect Your School Data
As with the off-line SchoolTools product you are familiar with, you must be extra prudent in controlling access to your administrative Id and Password, but also to all student information, especially identification information. The same precautions you have been taking with off-line SchoolTools to keep information displayed on your computer screen private and to control access to sensitive printed documents apply equally when using SchoolTools Plus. But as SchoolTools Plus is a web based application and can be accessed from any computer, anywhere, you must be particularly vigilant and diligent when working with it. It is finally your own responsibility to keep the private information you have access to out of the hands of unauthorized viewers.
IMPORTANT: Most modern web browsers provide some form of password saving so that the passwords for websites you visit are automatically entered for you. However, very few browsers store your private data in an encrypted database. Most do so in a readable text file. Therefore, it is important that your users remember that once someone has access to their computer they effectively own that list of passwords. That might be okay for some sites, but it is definitely a bad thing with respect to SchoolTools Plus and RVS GradeBook, just as it is with Internet banking.
We strongly urge you to discuss the considerations mentioned in this section with all faculty and staff members. Choosing not to allow the browser to remember the site's User ID and Password information is the safest choice.
Restricted IP Ranges
An optional security setting (currently under consideration) would restrict access to SchoolTools Plus only if the request originated from the IP address assigned to your school by your Internet service provider. That is to say, the user must be authenticated on (signed into) your school's network prior to signing into SchoolTools Plus. Access to your school's data from anywhere else on the Internet (excluding RVS facilities) would be prohibited.
SSL with Extended Validation
Extended Validation SSL Certificates were created in direct response to the rise in Internet fraud, eroding consumer confidence in online transactions. In 2005, 84% of respondents to a Forrester Research study said they don’t think retailers are doing enough to protect their customers online and 24% did not make purchases online due to security concerns. (Lauri Giesen, "Hand-holding: Fraud-weary consumers look for the seal of approval," Internet Retailer, March 2006.) As a guardian of extremely sensitive information about your school community, you can be certain that all confidential data displayed and saved on-line with SchoolTools Plus originates from and is transmitted to a trusted source.
Extended Validation SSL Certificates give high-security Web browsers information to clearly identify River Valley Software’s organizational identity. For example, if you use Microsoft® Internet Explorer 7 to go to https://www.rvs101.com/stplus, IE7 will cause the URL address bar to turn green. A display next to the green bar will toggle between the organization name listed in the certificate and the Certificate Authority, VeriSign. Other browsers also offer Extended Validation visibility, although the precise visual cues vary from one browser to another.
Database Uses AES Encryption
AES provides strong encryption and, in November, 2001, it was selected by NIST as a Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS-197). In June 2003 the U.S. Government (NSA) announced that AES is secure enough to protect classified information up to the TOP SECRET level, which is the highest security level and defined as information which would cause "exceptionally grave damage" to national security if disclosed to the public. SchoolTools Plus applies AES encryption prior storing personal identity information in the database.
Sample encrypted password: u57BdSw6YQAY8GBG4bVRpg==
URL Parameter Encryption
It is always good to send query string values in encrypted format. Encrypted URLs prevent sending illegal requests or invalid data to the application server. Users or attackers cannot see the request details of the URL as they are encrypted. With SchoolTools Plus, parameters passed from page to page via URLs are always encrypted.
Sample encrypted URL parameter: https://www.rvs101.com/stplus/Families/EditFamiliesTabPage.aspx?Families=wf6NrM DDk0fxR5qsAMlTeDaeYr8scN%2bG51AO8a67tRd3yi BhDboAWwS865s8bi4iKLWeSBJEO/xXJFaSFN8lucbI/gWetJds Yjn/7QfV4Xq4npYRxuSt/w%3d%3d
Strong Password Requirements
Complex passwords offer an important measure of protection against surreptitious sing-in, and are required for all SchoolTools Plus and GradeBook users. Microsoft offers some helpful advice for creating strong passwords that can be remembered easily by the user. Their suggestions are available at http://www.microsoft.com/protect/fraud/passwords/create.aspx.
Browser Settings
- Must allow JavaScript execution
- Must allow cookies / session cookies
- Recommend allowing popups from https://www.rvs101.com
- Recommend adding https://www.rvs101.com to list of trusted sites
- Recommend installing Acrobat Reader or equivalent software. All reports are produced in PDF format.
Browser Considerations
The results of our performance analysis comparing each of the top five browsers running SchoolTools Plus are summarized in the following table. With the exception of the usage percentages, a lower number indicates better performance. Tests were performed on a Windows PC of modest configuration - one that we believe is typical within our user community.
- Operating System: Windows XP SP3
- Processor: Intel Core Duo 2.33 GHz
- Memory: 2GB of RAM
| Browser |
Usage Trend As of 3/2010* |
Page Load Time |
JavaScript Execution |
Memory Usage |
Per-site Popup Policy |
Encrypted Password Storage |
Comments |
Google Chrome
(version 4.1) |
12.3% |
2 |
1 |
2 |
Yes |
No |
Excellent performance. Understanding of Google's privacy policy is advisable. |
Internet Explorer
(versions 6-8) |
34.9% |
5 |
5 |
5 |
Yes |
No |
Renders relatively slowly. Prone to viruses and malware. |
Mozilla Firefox
(version 3.63) |
46.2% |
4 |
4 |
1 |
Yes |
No |
Inherent problem with editable grids translates to slow reaction to mouse clicks. |
Opera
(version 10.51) |
2.2% |
1 |
3 |
3 |
Yes |
Yes |
Inherent problem displaying PDF documents using MIME type. Previewing reports may cause browser to "freeze". Work-around exists, though not ideal. Excellent performance otherwise. |
Safari
(version 4.05) |
3.7% |
3 |
2 |
4 |
No |
No |
Browser settings block or allow popups for all sites, significantly impacting how PDF reports are handled. Users would likely wonder what happened to their print request. May overcome this limitation by using a third party popup blocker (e.g. Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar). Excellent performance otherwise. |
*Usage statistics provided by w3schools.
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