Help Guides

Frequently Asked Questions

This page is updated with questions we receive on regular basis. The page has started from 29th June 2020 and we will update older queries here as time permits.

What is the difference between daily and monthly register?

Initially, when IBEAMS started we only had monthly registers. The usage of systems in Madaaris was almost non-existent. So at the end of the month, the admins would get the tally of absent and late and fill that in as 1 single record per student per month which is the 'monthly register'

With the final monthly figures available, thousands of end of year reports could be created efficiently with a single click.

Eventually, the need for daily registers arose. For the end of year reports, it was fine for small classes and a few months to use data from daily records to grab totals. However, for schools with 400+ students and 20 classes, the end of year calculates thus:

Using 400 students and 12 months to check as an example (which is actual cases):

400 (students) x 30 (average days/month) x 12 (months) requires 144,000 log checks compared to:
400 (students) x 1 (single record) x 12 (months) which requires only 4,800 checks to gather the attendance record.

So having a monthly record is 97.6% faster and efficient.

Problem:

Some schools still use monthly only and don't use daily. Some use daily and don't want to enter data twice when it's already available.

Solution:

Daily is optional and monthly is used on reports. To avoid having to enter monthly when daily is available, an auto-fill function is added to get the data from the daily register and enter the tally into monthly database stats. You can enable and disable the option to do a check on the dashboard from the settings page.

Can we manage work progress (syllabus)?

As an administrative management system, no priority has been allocated to managing the syllabus. This does not mean there are no plans to have this. With high demand in feature requests for existing features, we cannot add something new knowing that there is still room to improve on current features.

I moved a student but he/she shows up in the old class register.

A student will show on the register if they were active in that class in the given month.

For example, if a student was moved to a new class on the 14th of March:

The student was active in March in the previous class and new class.
The student attendance will show up to the 13th of March in the previous class.
The student attendance will be editable in the new class only from the 14th.
February and before the student will not show in the new class
April onwards the student will now show in the previous class

For registers to show for admins or teachers on their portals, ensure all the following conditions are met:

The timetable/class schedule is set by editing the class.
When timings are set, ensure the "Register is taken" checkbox is ticked.
When setting the class, ensure the correct teacher is selected.

Why is authorised absence accounted in present percentage?

Authorised absences are in the category of present as the parents/student cannot be penalised on the attendance record since it is a valid absence that you authorised which was not in control of the student.

An example of this would be falling ill, doctor's appointment, injury or other emegencies.

If the absence is not valid and should not be accounted for in the percetage of presence, it should be marked as unauthorised. These can be absences like holiday, bad weather, after school activity, not feeling well (without evidence), etc.

Whatever the reason, it's up to the school to determine in their attendance policy what is considered authorised and unauthorised.

The main reason for this is that without this, it is impossible to be fair on genuine students who miss a day and do not get 100% attendance. Without this, the only way to ensure the student does get the deserved 100% is to mark them as present which would be incorrect. You are in control to unauthorise if the student should not get 100% for their absence.

What is SMTP?

SMTP is what actually sends emails. The server running IBEAMS has its own SMTP. Your email provider also has its own SMTP and you can also purchase SMTP with email credits.

Deliverability is an issue when using SMTP on servers to send email. For example, the registered address of a server might be something like alpha23865.server-world.net. Now when an email is sent from your account, the sender address would be set to youremail@gmail.com. But the email did not originate from gmail.com so the recipient mailbox might reject the email as spam. In some cases it won't even go to junk mail and it will be completely rejected. To avoid this, we have purchased an SMTP server to ensure better delivery of emails.

We cannot provide help with your SMTP settings. Only your email service provider can provide the settings. Once you have the settings we can provide support in what you might be doing wrong. For a hassle free SMTP, you can always subscribe to the paid SMTP where we have done all the configurations for you.

You can subscribe to paid SMTP from System > Subscriptions > Manage Subscription or use your own SMTP from Settings > Mail Settings