You've Started your Trial; Now What?
First of all, welcome! This article will guide Administrative users through the next steps of getting started using Transparent Classroom. (Teachers click here.)
- Schedule a Training with Transparent Classroom
- School Settings
- Align Sessions with you School Calendar
- Add Children to the Account
- Manage Staff Roles
- Adding Parents
Schedule a Training with Transparent Classroom
Seeing the platform in action and being able to speak with one of our Customer Team members can be a great way for staff at your school to become familiar with Transparent Classroom, and get some ideas on how they may use the platform in their classroom. While we are happy to provide one training for your entire staff, it can sometimes be more beneficial to schedule one training for each level at the school. Staff are also welcome to schedule one-on-one trainings to address specific questions, new features, and so forth. These trainings are always free, and you and your staff can scheduled them as needed.
Log into Transparent Classroom, hover over [? Help] and click [Train Me] to see our calendar and sign-up! If you do not see any times which work, or would like to schedule a training more than a month or so away, feel free to email us at info@transparentclassroom.com to set something else up.
The Admin Role
Staff members with the "Admin" role on Transparent Classroom have access to a menu of features allowing them to control various settings for the account, such a default privacy and classroom placement, as well as features such as designing online forms and applications. This section will cover how to use the Admin features to ensure your account settings match your school's preferences.
School Settings
Hovering over [Admin] will reveal the menu of features reserved for Admin users. You can either click on [School Settings], or just click [Admin] on the main navigation bar on the left to open this page.
From here, you can manage your school's basic information, upload a logo or banner, manage settings by age range, and more. If you haven't yet, go ahead and designate one of the Admin users as the Account Manager, who will be the main point of contact between your school and Transparent Classroom.
If you have included your school's website in your trial form, you may already have a banner and logo uploaded. You can always change these, or upload new ones from this page as well.
Transparent Classroom offers optional features for the account, as well as optional fields for children's information. All of these are included in the per child per month price of Transparent Classroom. You can learn more about many of these features in our HelpCenter, such as Using Child Forms and Online Applications.
You can also manage your Classrooms, which states of Attendance to track, and which Daily Tracking events to use.
If you decide to add a new age-range to your account in the future, just click [Classrooms] >[Classroom types].
Align Sessions with your School Calendar
Sessions not only allow you to manage which children are currently enrolled at your school, plan for incoming children, and view past records, they also play a key role in how your account is invoiced after the trial period has ended. Click here to learn more: Creating Classrooms and Sessions.
Getting started, your account will show default sessions and dates based on the United States school year. Go to [Admin] > [Sessions] > [Edit] to make any changes needed. You can also hide sessions, such as a Summer session, so they will not appear on the dropdown menus when you are adding children to the account, and so forth.
Add Children to the Account
Now you are ready to add the children at your school! *Note* If you did not enter all of the classrooms into the trial form, please view this tutorial to learn how to add classrooms: Creating Classrooms and Sessions.
You can add children through the [Children] page in two ways. If you have a spreadsheet of the children's information you can upload it as a CSV file by going to [Children] > [Import]. Just email us at info@transparentclassroom.com if you have any questions. You can also click [Add Child] to enter children one-by-one.
For new families you can use an Online Application to gather information and create the child's Profile on your account. Click here to learn more: Adding New Children
Manage Staff Roles
You may have already entered all of the staff members into your trial form. You can add more staff users anytime by going to [Directory] > [Staff] > [New Staff Member]. Click here to learn more: Inviting New Staff Members.
Teacher users can be given access to multiple classrooms from their Profile. Admin users will be able to view the Admin menu and features. For staff that are also parents, they can either have both roles on one Profile, or use two separate email addresses to create a staff profile and a parent profile. As a note, if a parent has their own child in a classroom they have access to, they will be able to view all records for that child even after they have left that classroom, or if the records are marked private.
The Billing Manager role is often given to an Admin user, but this does not need to be the case. The Billing Manager who is not also an Admin will only see the Billing page of the Admin menu.
Adding Parents
Communicating with parents and providing them with some insight into their child's day at school is a key component of what Transparent Classroom seeks to offer, and we recommend schools hold a parent information session about what to expect from Transparent Classroom at your school. We also have a few parent tutorials, as well as information about helping parents with Transparent Classroom, in our HelpCenter.
When you are ready to invite parents to Transparent Classroom, just go to [Directory] > [Parents] to add them one-by-one, or click [Import] to upload a CSV file. Click here to learn more: Adding Parents.