The Meals Dashboard in Reach makes to easy to identify students in isolation for meals and help your catering department to know which students need meals away from the dining room.
The Meals Dashboard highlights special meals based on medical conditions and handling COVID isolation as a medical condition in Reach allows you to calculate how many students will be in isolation for each meal.
How to account for COVID isolation meals
You can update your Meals dashboard with COVID isolation meal counts in two simple steps
Create a Medical Condition that impacts meals - eg: Covid isolation
Apply that medical condition to students who are placed in isolation
Reach will then automatically calculate and display the number of meals required for students in isolation on a per meal basis in the Meals Dashboard.
Four (4) great new features in the Medications module that improve record keeping and knowledge sharing in the most popular and important extension module in Reach. the new featured pushed live on 29th Jan, 2022 are;
Location awareness in the scheduled medications table
Notes required for Paused medications
As Required medication frequency
Nil administered and Student refused states for medication records
Location awareness in scheduled medications
The scheduled medications table now shows a location icon which can fetch details fo the current location of a student.
If students who have gone on leave without their medications being paused or if students have late medications in the scheduled medications table it is useful to be able to quickly reference if that student is on leave.
Notes required for Paused medication
An upgrade to the Pause function in scheduled prescription medications means that whenever a staff member is pausing a medication the reason for the pause will recorded. The pause submission will also create a pastoral record in the medical history of the student’s profile.
“As Required” Medication frequency
A new frequency is available for prescription medications that allow you to set a frequency to “As Required”. When set to As Required the handling of the prescription medications will change and behave more lika an over the counter medication.
When selecting As Required you are not required to set a time for the frequency
As Required prescription medications will not display in the scheduled medications table of the daily dispendary screen
Administering As Required medications is similar to administering over the counter medications
Select the blue “Add as Required” medication button
Select the student name
In the student’s profile of you will see the list of any As Required prescription medications that the student has been allocated and any over the counter medications that the student is permitted to take.
Note that the Blue Add OTC button has been modified and now has the label “Add as required”
Nil administered and Student refused states for records
We have improved how you record Nil quantities administered and situations when medications are refused by students by including a “successfully administered” state of medications being administered.
New field - Was the medication dispensed successfully?
A new field is added to the table when administering scheduled prescription medications that identifies is a medication was administered successfully.
The default state of this field is “Medication was dispensed successfully” and there is no change to the procedure for medications that are successfully administered.
For medications that are not administered by staff (ie: zero administered) or where students refuse to take the schedule medication a record can be submitted to reflect the accurate status of the scheduled medication.
Set the quantity to Zero and select the appropriate status from the drop down selector and write an appropriate note in the notes field to record the situation.
Monitoring the physical symptoms of students and staff on a daily basis has become a common procedure for many schools, one of the many operational adjustments needed to ensure a Covid-safe environment for the school community.
Daily COVID-19 symptoms surveys are a critical safety procedure but demanding on management teams and staff to ensure surveys are completed and that any symptomatic participants are easily identified for separation and/or treatment.
To assist with this REACH Student Life Management has developed a purpose build Surveys module which allows schools to build a custom Covid-19 Daily Symptoms Survey questionnaire for students and staff which can easily screen your school population for symptoms of Coronavirus through self-assessment.
Mandatory self-analysis survey
The daily symptoms survey allows schools to present students (or parents) and staff with a mandatory self-analysis survey. Results obtained in the survey automatically update in real time to a People View dashboard. This dashboard displays your entire school population with their survey status identified. Colour coding of participant profiles in the People View dashboard highlights any at risk participants that respond in the survey as symptomatic.
Automated instructions and alerts
Participants that do identify as symptomatic in their self-analysis can be presented with instructions for any procedures that the school may require them to follow. In addition, any positive results to symptoms by survey participants can trigger automatic alerts to medical staff or supervisors to highlight people of concern that may require isolating, further testing or other attention.
Edit and update profiles
When operating in the People View dashboard in REACH staff are able to open any individual’s profile to display their daily survey results. Staff are also able to record notes to any individual’s profile or to communicate directly with individual via email or text message from the People View screen. Historic survey records are stored for all users and historic reports can be generated for compliance or monitoring.
Daily Status Pass
Finally, when completing the daily survey participants are provided with a results card on their mobile device which can be used as a confirmation card or visual pass to confirm their daily status at entry or permission checkpoints.
The surveys module can be used as a stand alone module in REACH and is available for all schools to use. ABSA members can access REACH Surveys at no cost even if they do not use REACH.
Physical distancing measures for monitoring and managing Covid-safe facilities means the rooms and locations have to be managed with capacity limits.
To assist with this REACH has introduced a new feature for location management called Location Capacity Monitor. This allows you to monitor the number of people at any location in real time and provide you with alerts which are triggered when your locations are reaching or have exceeded capacity.
Updates posted
Real time monitoring
When location capacities are set in REACH real time monitoring of populations at each location is automatic and displayed in your REACH portal as
- A traffic light display in your header bar, and
- A population count in the Kiosk location legend
How to set a location capacity
Setting a capacity for a location is done in the Location configuration Details screen. Simply add the capacity limit for the location in the Maximum Capacity field.
Any location that has a maximum capacity set will then be monitored in real time in REACH automatically.
Kiosk count display
In the locations legend of your Kiosk screen a live count for the number of people at the location will be displayed. When a population warning trigger is activated this will display as a coloured icon beside the location name.
This is only visible when you are in the Kiosk view of your REACH portal and only locations that have a maximum capacity set will display a count.
Capacity traffic light indicator
The Capacity traffic light indicator is visible in the header bar of your REACH portal at all times regardless of the screen that you are using in REACH.
The traffic lights will display the number of locations that are
| Within 25% of capacity (at 75% or greater) |
| Within 10% of capacity (at 90% or greater) |
| At or over capacity (at 100% or more) |
Hovering on any colour will provide a list of locations that are relevant to that status.
Gating & Grounding procedures have been upgraded to provide more flexibility on how students can be Gated or Grounded in REACH. The Restrictions Modal is used to implement your Gating or Grounding rules. This modal allows you to select between a number of restriction options which can be applied in combination or individually.
Updates posted
Using the Restrictions Modal to apply Gating & Grounding rules allows you to prevent students from completing the following transactions in REACH:
Submitting Leave
Prevent students from submitting leave request forms. Note that parents and staff can still submit leave requests on behalf of the student when this prevention is in place.
SISO to Off campus
Prevent students from signing out to any off campus locations from the kiosk screen or their mobile device.
SISO to On Campus
Prevent students from signing out to any on campus locations from the Kiosk screen or their mobile device....
SISO to Leave events
Prevent sign out to any Approved Events....
Sign up to Events
Prevent student from registering to participate in recreation events generated through the REACH Events manager.
Staff and Parents can override restrictions
Restrictions apply to student accounts and student kiosk screens. Staff can override these restrictions through their staff account and, in the case of submitting leave requests, parents are still able to submit leave.
Gated Symbol displayed
When a student is Gated or Grounded symbols will appear to identify this for staff.
- The Restrictions icon on the student’s sidebar profile will turn red
- A restrictions icon will appear on the student’s image in the Kiosk screen
How to access the Restrictons Modal
Applying Gating or Grounding restrictions is done using the Restrictions modal which can be activated from two places;
- By clicking the restrictions symbol on the student sidebar, or
- By clicking on the Gating field in the student’s profile (Security tab)
Determine which staff can access the Restrictions Modal
You can control which staff members are permitted to apply restrictions to students in the Accessibility settings of your user profiles.
The permission can be applied to an entire role type (eg: House Supervisors) by setting the Base Security Permission for the Role it can be managed on an individual user’s profile through their personal Accessibility settings.
The specific setting is in the People Management Permission Settings
- Can the user activate Boarder Restrictions (EDIT_RESTRICTIONS)
How to use the Restrictions Modal to Gate or Ground students
Gating or Grounding students is done on the Restrictions Modal which allows you to apply multiple restrictions in combination or individually depending on the protocols that you implement in your operations.
There are 4 sections to the Restrictions Modal
- Restrictions - Applying your dates and restriction types
- General Notes – The note that is saved as part of the pastoral record on the student’s profile. This note is also the note that will be shared with students, parents and staff.
- Notifications – Who you send the General Notes message to
- Gating History – A view of the restrictions history for the student
1. Restrictions Tab - Applying your restrictions
The Restrictions Tab provides the range of restrictions that you have available to implement. It will also display and current restrictions that may already be in place.
1. Set the Date Range for the restriction that you want to apply.
- Note that leaving the end time blank will implement an indefinite restriction with no expiry time.
2. Select which restrictions you want to apply the Date/Time Range to using the selection boxes.
- Selected item fields will turn white when selected.
- Note that any existing restrictions will already appear in the display screen however you can select an existing restriction and apply your current Date/Time range the existing restriction in order to extend it or replace it.
3. Apply the Date/Time range set to your restrictions
- Clicking on the Row Arrow for the restrictions that you want to apply will install the preset date/time range into the relevant fields.
4. Provide a quick Reference note if you want to have a quick reference for the action.
- The quick reference note is not the note message that will be shared with the student, parents and staff. This note is for quick reference in case you or other staff open the Restrictions Modal before it expires, allowing your to quickly understand why the restriction was applied without having to reference the restriction pastoral record.
You will APPLY the restriction from this screen also once your Note and Notifications settings have been set.
2. General Note Tab – Prepare the note for the record
The General Note tab is the note that will be recorded with the Pastoral record for the restriction being applied.
It is also the note that will be shared with the student by default and with parents or staff by selection.
Details of the restriction date and timeframe will also form part of this note that is recorded and published to the designated recipients.
3. Notifications Tab – Set who will be notified
Students will be notified of any restrictions being applied by default however you also have the option to include notification to the Parents of the student and any staff members that you would like to directly inform about the restriction being placed.
The note that will be shared with these recipients in the contents of the General Note tab.
4. History Tab – View the restrictions history of a student
The History tab will display the restrictions history of a student for quick review. This can often be useful when applying new restrictions to view and understand why previous restrictions have been applied, or why previous restrictions may have been applied.
You can also view a student’s restriction history by searching for restriction category pastoral notes in their profile or by producing a Pastoral Records Report in your Reporting > Instant reports menu.
When you have completed entering all of the relevant data for your restriction you can apply the restriction by selecting the Apply Restriction button on the Restrictions Tab.
A new Kiosk template feature in REACH allows you to set your Kiosk screen to display any late students at the top of your Kiosk screen for rapid and simple identification of students that are late to return from off campus leave events.
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Updates posted |
Monitoring late students is one of the most important features of the REACH Kiosk screen and now we have made that even easier with the Kiosk Late template.
The Kiosk Late template is a preconfigured Kiosk template that places late students at the top of your Kiosk screen display so that they are highlighted and easily identified for you.
To activate your Kiosk Late template simply go to the icons at the top right of your Kiosk Screen and select the Templates icon. When you set the Kiosk Late template for your Kiosk view, REACH will remeber this setting are part of your user preferences and the Kiosk Late template will become your default view whenever you open your Kiosk view.
Watch the video
Send quick communications to any students, parents or staff from your Kiosk screens using the Kiosk Quick Connect icon. Quick-Connect allows you to rapidly send communications to any individual student or groups of students by year, by house, by location or by student group.
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Updates posted |
Quick-Connect is a powerful communication tool available in your Kiosk screens for the student kiosk or the staff kiosk.
Watch the video
How to use Quick-Connect
Quick-Connect communications is used in conjunction with the Group Selector icon on your Kiosk screens
1. Select your student(s)
When using the kiosk screen simply activate the Group Selector and then select any individual or group of students that you want to connect with.
The student's profile will display with a green background on their identity tile when selected.
USER TIP: When you want to select a large number of students or an entire group of students from any of your filter categories (Year, House, Location or Group) simply filter your view to the selection that you want and use the Select All icon (tick icon) in your Kiosk screen. You will find the Select All icon beside the Group Selector icon at the top right of your Kiosk screen.
2. Select the Quick-Connect icon
The Quick-Connect icon is the Speech Bubble icon that you will find at the top right corner of your Kiosk screen beside the Group Selector icon.
When selected it will activate the Quick-Connect communications modal.
3. Set your communication details and send
The Quick-Connect Communications icon provides you with your communication options;
- Write your message into the Message Box provided
- Determine HOW the communications will be sent to the target audience. You can select from any combination of communications methods from Email, Push Message, SMS, or Internal Message
- Determine WHO you want to receive your message. When selecting recipients from the Student Kiosk screen you can select to send the message to Students, Parents or both.
We understand that you are busy and the ability to transact rapidly in REACH is important. 
You can now by-pass your menu bar and rapidly access quick creation items with the Create New button in your header bar.
Quick access items
The Quick add button is designed to gove you quick access to the most popular activities in REACH.
Common Requests
- Create New Leave Request
- Create New Duty Report
Create Notes
- Create new Pastoral Note
- Create new Medical Note
- Create new Wellbeing Note
Rollcalls
- Take a rollcall
- Join a Live Rollcall
- Create and unatttended rollcall
Instant Reports
- Leave report
- Pastoral notes report
- Boarder attendance over time report
- Live rollcall report
- SISO location report
- Medications report
- Leave data integrity report
- Contacts data integrity report
- House Cards report
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The Pastoral Overview screen gives you a bird's eye view of pastoral notes that have been submitted to your student records about your students over any time period. This screen is the perfect go-to screen for a quick review of all activitty has taken place on the pastoral notes front for any group of students.
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A star award to Ujith Perera of Immannuel College in Adelaide for the overview screen concept that is going to benefit all schools throughout the world using REACH.
Viewing a map of all pastoral records submitted for any period of time for any student or group of students is made simple with the Pastoral Overview screen. This is an ideal screen for staff who might want to look at a week's view for their student group or for staff returning from a few days off work to quickly see what activity has taken place on the pastoral front.
To access the Pastoral Overview screen go to Pastoral Management menu > Pastoral Overview
Use the viewing filters to set the overview screen to display whatever group of students you need. Like all of your REACH dashboard screens, your preset default filters will be applied to the Pastoral Overview screen.
View all, view some or view a single pastoral category. Filter your view to suit you need.
The default view date range is automatically set for the current week but you can set the date range for your view for whatever you need to see.
Search for any individual student easily using the Search bar.
Pastoral records are identified with a colour coded icon with shortcode to help you quicky identify the cardinality (positive, neutral, negative) of the record and also the pastoral category of the note submitted. Click the icon to see basic details or to access the pastoral note directly.
Download the Pastoral Overview screen to spreadsheet easily with the quick access download button.
Medical, Medications and Wellbeing note categories can also be selected for viewing in the Pastoral Overview screen for users who have visibility access for these note categories in their accessibility settings.
We've been taking feedback and made some enhancements to the Medications extension module with the following updates or new feartures
- Edit administered time for OTC medications, with control on which staff have the permission to do this
- Pause scheduled medications
- Contraindications management
- Display AM and PM dosages for multiple dose medications in a day
- Bulk dispense for single students
- Dual sign off on administered medication (2 staff or staff + student)
If you do not know how the Medications module works then you can click here to see Medications Module User Guide.
! REACH Medications is an Extension Module that requires an additional subscription fee of $1.50 per student per annum (min $250 per portal).
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OTC time adjust
Editing or adjusting the time that an OTC medication is being administered is a new feature added to the OTC administering screen.
The "time" field is added to the administering details panel and system administrators can decide which staff have the ability to adjust time when administering OTC medications.
Control WHO can edit time
System administrators can determine "who" has permission to adjust times in the administering panel in the Accessibilioty settings (Medical) of each user or group of users.
Pause or Expire scheduled medications
An Actions button has been added to the Scheduled Medications dashboard that allows you to either:
Pause a medication for a period of time.
Pause will prevent the scheduled medication from displaying on the Scheduled Medications dashboard until the expiry of the pause setting.
Expire a scheduled medication
Ceasing a medication will update the expiry date of the medication to the current date so that the scheduled medication will no longer appear on the Scheduled Medications dashboard.
Medication Contraindications
A contraindication is a condition or factor that serves as a reason to withhold a certain medical treatment due to the harm that it would cause the patient.
Adding Contraindications when creating medicines
When creating a medication in REACH you can now create user defined contraindications that will generate caution alerts or prevention when administering a medication to a student.
Example 1 Panadol will contraindicate with itself if attempting to be administered < 4hrs apart.
Example 2 Paracetamol may contraindicate with some cold & cough mixtures which have Paracetamol as an ingredient.
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Contraindication settings
Contraindications are a relationship that is set between two medications or for a medication against itself for administering, dosage or time controls.
A Contraindications message will be displayed when the contraindication rule is triggered. Relative contraindications can be set to deliver a caution message (soft restriction) whilst Absolute contraindications can be set to prevent a medication from being administered (hard restriction)....
How to Add Contraindications
When adding or editing a medication click the Add button in the Contraindications section at the bottom of the medicing profile.
- Select the medication you want to set as the contraindication
- Set the Rule Time for the contraindication. This rule works with the logic "if < x hours then" implement the restriction set in (3)
- Set the Restriction method (Hard or Soft).
- a Hard restriction will prevent the intended dosage from occurring
- a Soft restriction will provide a caution or warning alert only and will not prevent the intended dosage from occurring
- Set the Description. Describe why the contraindication exists or a description of your Rule.
- Set the Message. This is the message that will be provided to the user that is attempting to administer the medication to the student.
The popular and powerful sticky notes feature gets some additional skills.
- Create sticky notes for bulk students
- Create default sticky notes for Leave Types
- Determine who an create-edit-delete Sticky Notes
If you do not know how Sticky Notes works then click here to see the Quickguide to using Sticky Notes or see below for the details of the updated features.
1. Create Bulk Sticky Notes
You can now create a bulk General Sticky Note from the header bar of your REACH screen using the Sticky Note Icon. Simply select multiple students in the Sticky Note selection field and the note will be applied to all selected students.
.2. Create default Sticky Notes for a Leave Type
You can already create a sticky note for a specific leave item in the edit screen of the student's leave event. Now you can also create a default Sticky Note that will automatically generate whenever a student requests a particular leave type.
A default Sticky Note will automatically be applied to any student that requests the Leave Type...
- In the Leave Type Configuration screen ass a Sticky note in the General Settings to generate a default sticky note every time the leave type is used
Go to System Configuration > Leave Types > General Setting for a Leave Type
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3. Control who can create or delete sticky notes
You can now control which users have permission to create or delete sticky notes in the Accessibility profile of your user accounts. Using your User Access Control features in REACH you can set this permission for all users in a Role Type or you can set it individually in the users individual Accessibility settings.
If you do not know how Sticky Notes works then click here to see the Quickguide to using Sticky Notes or see below for the details of the updated features.
Updates to the Kiosk screen sees important leave information for student departures and returns move to the front of the kiosk display. this makes it easy and convenient to see the current state for all of your live leave items.
As part of our goal to bring important information to the front of user screens and reduce the need for users to click to find important details the Kiosk screen benefits from some significant improvements that make tracking leave student movements easier.
Time display icons
Display icons used in the Kiosk screen below the student's name use the following protocols:
- Colour code for status
Blue is used for current and a pending or current pending status | Red is used for late status - Time is displayed for departure or return that is happening in the current day
- Date is displayed when the departure or return is not in the current day
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Get visual alerts in the leave approval process where REACH believes there may be a suspicious parent approval.
IP address alerts will help you to monitor and identify instances where students may be approving their own leave by impersonating their parents or guardians.
IP Address alerts for suspicious approvals
During the approval procedure for leave requests one of the many things that REACH monitors and records in your audit log is the IP address of all participants. The IP address is the digital location of the user when they transact on REACH.
We can use this IP address to help us identify any suspicious approvals that are being processed for students which fall into the following categories;
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1. When the Approving Parent or Host IP address is the same as the Student IP Address
When a leave request is created by a student and the Parent or Guardian's approving IP address matches the leave creation IP address of the student. This will indicate instances where it is possible that a student is attempting to approve leave as the parent.
2. When the Approving Parent IP address is on the School Network
When a Parent or Guardian's approving IP address matches the school's IP address. This will indicate instances where it is possible that a student is attempting to approval leave as the parent from the school's identified network.
When we identify leave request that fit these profiles we mark them as potentially suspicious on your Manage Leave screen with an IP Alert icon.
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Assessing the details of an IP Alert
Clicking on any leave item that contains an IP Alert icon in the Manage Leave screen will open up the details view of the leave request.
Here you can identify what the trigger for the IP Alert was and in the Leave Audit Trail you will be able to identify the approval transaction that triggered the IP Alert.
.How to set your School IP credentials for IP Alert tracking
In order for REACH to monitor your school's IP network for suspicious approvals we need to know what your network addresses are.
Setting these credentials requires access to the System Configuration menu in REACH.
Go to System Configuration > Network > School External IP Ranges
