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Introducing Version 5

A New Generation of Administrator's Plus

Rediker Software is pleased to announce the release of Administrator’s Plus version 5.0! We have made numerous program additions and feature enhancements to this new version of Administrator's Plus. Many of these new features have been implemented as a result of feedback from you, our valued customers. We thank you for continuing to help us make Administrator's Plus the best school administrative software on the market!

   Administrator's Plus Version 5

New overall look to enhance your user experience Customize background images by school year Exciting new Schedule Builder features and tools



New Features Highlights

New Feature Highlights Overview

• All New Look and Feel: Would you believe Administrator’s Plus has had a facelift? It seems fresher, younger, more hip. The screens you use the most have been enhanced to improve efficiency and your user experience. You’ll see new screen colors, streamlined menus, rounder buttons, more intuitive-looking icons, and more. You have even more intuitive ways to navigate around Administrator’s Plus, such as convenient left-side shortcut bars.

• Modernized Main Menu Navigation: The Main Menu left-side shortcut bar has been redesigned for greater utility. It features expandable and collapsible module menus, and icons which have been redesigned to be more visible, and to present imagery intuitively associated with their purpose.

• More Grade Levels: Up to 30 grade levels may now be defined. Where before the level identifiers were limited to “PK”, “K”, and grade numbers, they can now be called anything comprised of up to two alphanumeric characters (for example, “P1”, “P2”, “99”).

• Excel Multi-Module Query: The Excel Wizard has been made even more powerful. It can now build Excel spreadsheets with information across many different modules. When building your query, you may freely select from any fields or conditions that display when you click on any of the various module-specific tabs. (These are: GENERAL, DATA BASE, DAILY ATT, PERIOD ATT, REPORT CARDS, DISCIPLINE, and BILLING) You can even opt to include data from Data Base History.

• Staff Data Base Page Rights: User rights have always been applicable to both student and staff pages, even though the nature of the fields (and the sensitivity of the data) could be quite dissimilar between the 2 sets of 13 pages. At last there is the capability to set up separate security for staff information.

• Data Base Transfer Select Fields Option: The Data Base Transfer is now no longer just a tool to transfer all the data from one school year to another. There are times when a school would want only certain fields to transfer (for example, they might not want the homeroom to be replicated in the new scheduling year. Or they may want just a few fields of information they have changed in one year to be updated to another). Now, all fields or any number of fields may be specified to transfer.

• New Audit Logs: Two new audit logs have been added to track all changes made to billing invoices and discipline incidents. They provides a full audit trail, including the user, date and time, type of entry, previous and new values, and the program name.

• Super Deluxe Schedule Builder Enhancements: Many long-awaited features have been added to SDSB, including: a redesigned interactive screen, the ability to print scoreboard screens, send the schedule board to Excel, and schedule a grade level at a time or a range of courses. The Builder can now select the semester/quarter or trimester, and the best teacher from a teacher pool.

Links to New Features Details

• Administrator's Plus New Look and Feel • Modernized Main Menu Navigation

• Enhanced Beginning Program • Idle Screen Automatic Locking

• More Grade Levels • New Hot-Key Screens

• Background Image Customization • Show More Characters of Long Names

• Automatic Alphabetizing of Groups • Redesigned Code Screens

• Report Writer View/Edit Report Options

Version 5 New Features

Administrator's Plus New Look and Feel:

You’ll notice right away that “something” is different about Administrator’s Plus. It seems fresher, younger, more hip. Most of the screens have been changed in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways to foster efficiency and enhance your user experience. There are new screen colors which are easier on your eyes. You’ll see streamlined menus, rounder buttons, more intuitive-looking icons, and other sleek screen characteristics. There are no more big function keys taking up space at the bottom of screens. Of course all the existing functionality has been maintained, but now you have even more intuitive ways to navigate around Administrator’s Plus. The screens you use the most each have their own shortcut bar along the left side. These are specially-designed for consistently quick intuitive access, no matter where you are or where you need to go.

Modernized Main Menu Navigation:

The Main Menu left-side shortcut bar has been significantly redesigned for greater utility. It too, like the shortcut bars throughout Administrator’s Plus, features expandable and collapsible module menus. Just click on the “+” or “–“ to expand or close up the set of hierarchical menu items which display. You’ll notice that as you do this, larger or smaller icons will display. These icons, like those on the toolbars of all the hot-key screens, have been redesigned to be more prominent, and to present imagery more intuitively associated with their purpose.

More Grade Levels:

Up to 30 grade levels may now be defined. Though 14 had been enough for the average PK-12 school, it didn’t allow for schools with multiple pre-kindergarten levels, or those which wanted separate DOE levels (for special education sending students for example). Where before the level identifiers were limited to “PK”, “K”, and grade numbers, they can now be called anything comprised of up to two alphanumeric characters (for example, “P1”, “P2”, “99”).

Enhanced Beginning Program:

The Setup Grade Levels configuration screen allows for many new promote options for the Beginning program to use. You can set any grade level to promote to any other grade level. (The default is to increment by one and delete the highest, as before.) This works well in tandem with the capability for more grade levels. Additionally, you can set any grade level not to promote. This new feature eliminates the need to “hide” or reorder grade levels to control the promotion flow.

New Hot-Key Screens:

Three student screens that formerly did not work with Synchronize, Hot-Key or Start-up program options have been made to do so. These are: Fast Payments, Enter Course Requests, and View Period Attendance. You’ll now see the hot-key buttons in the tool bar of these screens (at the top left).

Background Image Customization:

Much as we love seeing the Administrator’s Plus globe with mortarboard background image, it’s about time it graduated! Now you can customize what image appears, and even have different images to unmistakably remind you which school year you have open. (Needless to say, this could prevent serious errors, like running the Beginning Program on the wrong year.)
To customize the background image, go to Setup/General/Background Properties. You’ll see three sets of images and background colors, pertaining to your Active Interface Year, Scheduling Year, and Past Years. Click on any Background Image, and browse for a distinctive picture (We suggest a .JPG image). If you want to set your picture on a field of color, and black’s not your thing, click on Background Color, and select a color. Be creative – select images that relate to your school’s past, present and future, or use your school colors. You’re welcome to use the special images we have prepared, with text clearly identifying the open year. If you get lonely for the old flat earth, there are single-button resets to the terrestrial default image.

Idle Screen Automatic Locking:

You can now actively protect against potential data corruption or student privacy violation resulting from logged-in workstations left unattended. After a certain period of idle time, the system will lock any records a user has open, obscure the screen contents, prompt the user to log in again, and allow continued operation only when they have successfully done so. (Idle time is defined as a continuous period with no mouse or keyboard activity.) To set the automatic lock idle period, go to Setup/General/Auto Lock Settings. You can set the Administrator’s Plus Time Out to “Never” or any value from 1 minute to 5 hours. (The default is “Never”, so no automatic locking will occur if you do not specifically set this option.)

Redesigned Code Screens:

Most of the Codes screens (for editing Attendance Codes, Discipline Codes, Skills Codes, etc.) have been redesigned to speed code entry and maintenance. You’ll notice a split-screen look, with a scrollable code list grid above and space for the individual code record below. Between these is a convenient search bar. You can highlight any column in the grid (RECORD#, CODE, DESCRIPTION), to sort by that column. You can search within the highlighted column simply by beginning to enter characters. The first match to what you have typed so far will highlight in the grid. There is no more need to invoke F6:Lookup to pull up codes. You can click on any code line in the grid to bring that particular code down for editing. Everything can be managed from one place! (For you technical types, we have replaced Sheridan grids with Flex grids.)

Show More Characters of Long Names:

Long names, such as hyphenated or Spanish ones, often displayed on hot-key screens (or printed on attendance forms, etc.) truncated so as to make it impossible to distinguish students’ first names. Only 24 characters of the combined last and first names displayed. This name width limit can now be increased, up to a maximum of 40 characters. Use the new option, STUDENT NAME LENGTH (FOR DISPLAY)?, which has been added to New Files: Specifications.

New Report Writer View/Edit Report Screen Options:

All of the Report Writer View/Edit Report screens have been enhanced. On the new left shortcut bar, under View, click on One column (as opposed to Three Column, which is still the default). The one-column view contains a Remarks column to the right of the Name column. If you highlight a report name, and click View/Edit (under Options), you’ll be able to edit the Report Name, Report Type (new), and Remarks (new). Report Type is a validated field. That is, when you enter a new value, it asks if you want to add it to the list of valid entries. Henceforth you can select that Type from a dropdown list. The Report Remarks can be used to better describe the function of the report. When in Three-column mode, hovering your mouse over a report name shows the Name, Type, and Remarks associated with that report. You can right click and drag a report to another numbered slot. Upon releasing the mouse button, you’ll be asked whether to Move or Copy the report to that slot. (Don’t worry, you’ll be prevented from overwriting any existing reports.)

Automatic Alphabetizing of Groups of Students:

Any list of selected students (or teachers) can be saved as a group throughout Administrator’s Plus, in Report Writers and other programs. Though these group lists have always remained in the order the members were selected, they typically start out in alphabetical order, merely as a function of the process of selecting multiple members from alphabetized lookup boxes. Users of Administrator’s Plus have found this to be a convenient, albeit accidental, feature. (It aids in comparing lists against each other, for example.) It has been noted that when students are added to existing groups, they remain at the bottom of the list, not placed within the alphabetical sequence. Now, whenever a group is saved (as must be done after adding members) it will first be automatically alphabetized.