The SWIS 5.1 fall release is just around the corner. We will release several brand new features and bug fixes to the SWIS Suite on December 5th at 5 PM PST. The application will be unavailable for 5 minutes during the upgrade process; the upgrade will happen automatically, you do not need to do anything.
Since the initial release of SWIS 5 in August, we have heard what works best and what needs fine tuning within the application. Based on your direct feedback, we entered this development with a focus on efficiency. On December 5, you can expect a faster application allowing you greater agility in you data entry and reporting needs. We wanted to highlight for you some of our favorite features in detail.
Student/Staff Lists Will Load Faster Than Before
For schools with long student and staff lists, opening person management took longer than we thought acceptable. With SWIS 5.1, student and staff lists will open much faster. When you open person management, the application loads the first 15 names on the list and provides you with the option to page through the remainder of the entries. An alphabetical filter bar at the top of the window gives you a quick way to jump to a group of students or staff.
Print Your Student/Staff Rosters
Within person management, you will have the ability to print your student and staff rosters. In addition to the columns displayed by default, you can choose to include additional columns you want displayed related to student demographic data. SWIS id, district id, gender, grade, ethnicity/race, and IEP are all available to you by selecting to include them in the student list. With a list like this, you can get a quick glance at information related to each student in the SWIS Suite.
Custom fields in the drill down
We appreciate how critical the additional information collected in custom fields is to your on-going decision-making process. We are excited to let you know the information you’ve collected in your custom fields will be accessible to you within the Drill Down report. All custom fields you use will appear as filters you can choose to include or exclude from your reporting requirements giving you the ability to define your problems with precision.
Report on Secondary Problem Behaviors and Actions Taken
SWIS 5 introduced the idea of collecting multiple problem behaviors and actions taken for one referral. SWIS 5.1 brings you the ability to report on the secondary behaviors and actions in addition to the primary. By selecting the reporting option to show secondary behaviors, the report you generate will display with primary behaviors displayed in green. Anytime the behavior was also selected as an additional behavior another bar displays in blue. The same is true for reporting secondary actions taken.
Full list of features:
Drill-down
- The drill down tool now supports reporting by custom fields.
- The following filters have been combined into one group titled Demographics: 504, Gender, Grade, IEP, Race/Ethnicity, and Student Disability.
- The following filters have been combined into one group titled Date/Time: Date, Day of Week, School Year, and Time.• The current school year is automatically included as the first filter by default.
- Susp/Expul Days is now available as an optional column in the tabular data field.
Person Management
- • All student and staff lists now load faster.
- Users can now view and print student/staff rosters.
- Users now have the ability to add more columns to the list view, including district ID.
- Users can now quickly jump to a letter in the list using the new alphabetical filter bar.
- In the add referral screen, the person list now allows users to include inactive and/or archived persons.
- Added two new Disability categories: Developmental Delay and To Be Obtained.
Reports
- Users have the option to see the primary as well as all secondary Problem Behaviors & Actions Taken on graphs.
- Pressing the 'enter' key on your keyboard will now generate a new report.
- The referral type (major or minor) is now displayed on referral view/print pages.
Dashboard
- Student names are no longer visible for confidentiality.
Application-wide
- Added more right click context options to many lists, including the ability to quickly jump to a student’s individual dashboard.
- Under the Tools fly-out, there is now an application refresh button to reload.
- Many, many bug fixes.