Smart Software

2.9.82 2007/05/14

The report designer didn't correctly handle pupil photos.

2.9.81 2007/05/08

An error was corrected in the printing of stock registers.

The SMS module was updated to match a change in the gateway of our service provider. SMS users should update their software.

2.9.80 2007/04/18

The promotion requirements for grade 9 were corrected - the last version used 35% instead of 30% as the value for Elementary achievement. The reasons were also adjusted to use 'Moderate achievement' and 'Elementary achievement' instead of 'Achieved' and 'Partially Achieved'.

2.9.79 2007/04/17

The promotion requirements for grade 9 were adjusted according to the rules specified in the Government Gazette no. 29626 (Vol 500, 12 Februarie 2007).

2.9.78 2007/02/28

A new function was added to the administration module: extra-curricular activities. With this you can:

set up activities (e.g. Rugby, Soccer, Debating, Drama, etc)
set up teams per activity (e.g. A, B, 1st, etc.)
set up positions per activity (e.g. Captain, etc.)
set up awards per activity (e.g. Scool colours, Silver medal, trophy, etc.
allocate activities to pupils in the Scholastic tab
indicate the terms in which the activity was performed
specify a pupil's teams and positions
indicate the terms for membership of the team or ownership of the position
allocate awards and the date received
enter notes on behaviour / performace

There are no print-outs available yet, please contact me with requests. A help file and groups in the SMS module's phonebook will also be added later.

2.9.77 2007/02/14

An error would sometimes occur when exporting pupils (basic information only) to comma-delimited format.

Allocating substitution to new pupils would sometimes allocate a staff member or room multiple times to the same pupil. If this has happended, just rerun the option to allocate to new pupils - the program will check for and fix any duplicates.

2.9.76 2007/02/13

In the timetable, you can now create activities for a subject for all the classes in a grade at once. Activity names are now also auto-generated, instead of being typed in.

The lines on class lists are now thicker.

A few other small problems were corrected.

2.9.75 2007/01/08

Some problems in the substitution with archived staff were fixed.

2.9.74 2007/01/08

In Timetables | View and print, staff timetables were unsorted.

2.9.73 2006/11/29

In the Reports, an error would occur if an empty picture field was set to keep the picture in the database.

2.9.72 2006/11/28

In the Gauteng schedules, symbols would be printed for all columns even if only one column had a scale.

When printing conduct records, an error could occur if "Include zero- balance pupils" was selected and "Print a page per pupil" was unselected.

2.9.71 2006/11/27

In the calculation of verdicts for grades 11 and 12, when downgrading is applied, the marks for second languages won't be increased.

2.9.70 2006/11/24

The Limpopo promotion schedules will now print all pupils.

2.9.69 2006/11/24

For the Gauteng grade 10 schedules, the DAT/450C columns has been removed.

2.9.68 2006/11/23

In the schedules, a layout for grade 8 and 9 schedules for KwaZulu-Natal has been added.

A few more adjustments were made to the Gauteng and Limpopo schedules.

In Enter marks, the Pass statistics per subject and Symbol distribution lists now show totals.

2.9.67 2006/11/21

In the GDE schedules, an error could occur if any columns in the grade didn't have a scale.

The GDE summary promotion schedule was modified to match the GDE's forms.

A few more refinements were made to the Limpopo schedules.

2.9.66 2006/11/17

A few more corrections were made to the Limpopo schedules.

2.9.65 2006/11/16

In the marks, verdict calculations expected marks to be percentages. It should now work properly with any domain.

In the grade 10 schedules for Gauteng, marks and symbols now have their own little columns.

A few corrections were made to the Limpopo schedules.

2.9.64 2006/11/15

In Pupils | Print | Subjects, the pupils' ID numbers are now printed as well. Apparently, this is sufficient information for the GDE for grade 10, in lieu of the registration forms. If you need a similar print-out but with more information, use the report designer.

2.9.63 2006/11/13

The schedules for grade 10 (Gauteng format) now prints both marks and symbols.

2.9.62 2006/11/10

The Staff screen didn't use the correct user rights to control access. In addition, 4 new rights have been added, corresponding to the four tabs on the scholastics page of a staff member. Administrators, remember to check your users' rights for these options.

2.9.61 2006/11/02

In Pupil Conduct | Print | Definition records, if the first year in the list was selected, the grade field didn't work.

In Pupils | Print | List, an error could occur.

2.9.60 2006/10/26

In Parents | Print | Contact list per occupation, an error would occur if any occupations contained an ' (apostrophe).

In Pupils | Tools | Manage classes, inactive pupils would still be displayed.

In Pupils and Staff, the Afrikaans labels for marking a person as having left the school has been changed to "Weg" instead of "Verlaat", since the button that exits the screen is also labelled "Verlaat".

2.9.59 2006/09/13

Some users experienced "floating-point inexact result" errors.

2.9.58 2006/09/12

Version 2.9.57 would throw an error when working with formulas.

2.9.57 2006/09/11

In the timetable, redirecting a group caused all groups for the same subject, teacher and room to be redirected. This was mostly noticed with sex splits.

2.9.56 2006/09/06

The pass statistics list displayed incorrect values.

2.9.55 2006/08/29

An error would occur when calculating averages for grade 8 or 9 pupils if a pupil were missing marks for all subjects in a specific learning area.

2.9.54 2006/08/08

An error would occur when printing conduct records, if the option to print a page per pupil was unselected.

2.9.53 2006/08/03

In Export | Examination entries, grade 10 subjects weren't being shown unless they were used in other grades as well.

2.9.52 2006/07/28

An error would occur when adding or editing a pupil if a large number of conduct columns were set up.

2.9.51 2006/07/27

Since version 2.9.50, an error occurred in the Pupils screen.

2.9.50 2006/07/26

In Marks | Columns, editing and saving a column under 'All subjects' will now correctly link up any subject columns with the same name.

In the Pupils screen, you can now display the Edlab requested and Edlab received fields in the list and on custom lists (Print | List).

2.9.49 2006/07/24

In the marks reports, red blocks for failing marks are now printed thicker.

An error occurred in the pupil conduct when printing a points list and using a filter which doesn't find any pupils.

2.9.48 2006/06/22

In the Parents, if you view a parent's account, switch to a previous year and then print a statement, the program will now print a statement for the selected year.

In the Pupil register, the pupils' nicknames and classes are now displayed in the list.

In Enter marks, if you print any of the various lists such as grade averages or symbol distribution, the selected year, grade/class and column will now be printed as headings.

In Staff, changing a staff member's admin number could result in an error in databases created during the past month.

2.9.47 2006/06/20

In the Conduct screen, under options, you can now choose to have zeroes displayed (and printed on the conduct records) when an item doesn't have points.

In the Allocate function of the conduct, the list of conduct will now be sorted.

In the marks, printing a possible failure schedule for grades 10 to 12 resulted in a summary promotion schedule using the grade 8 and 9 format.

2.9.46 2006/06/15

Some users experienced incorrect totals when printing conduct points lists.

The pupils screen would produce an error if no columns were set up in the conduct system.

2.9.45 2006/06/13

An error occurred when printing a stock register listing individual items.

2.9.44 2006/06/05

The option to print a pupil's conduct points on the report has been fixed. However, to get it working correctly, you have to edit the report layout, select the <Conduct points> field, and select the appropriate column in the attribute list.

The allocate function in the Pupil conduct wouldn't save when you press Enter.

The grouping field for the Pupils points list in the Pupil conduct wasn't working.

2.9.43 2006/05/29

Since version 2.9.42, an error occurred in the pupils screen when loading a pupil.

2.9.42 2006/05/29

The conduct system has been redesigned. It now supports multiple columns of conduct. For example, you can now keep separate records for detention points, academic points, disciplinary points, or whatever you want. Each conduct can contribute any number of points to the various columns. Your existing conduct entries will automatically be transferred to the new system when you install this update, and columns will be created for positive and negative points. You can adjust these as necessary.

Additional features have been added to the conduct system. You can now choose to have balances roll over from year to year, and you can quickly allocate conduct to groups of pupils or to absentees for a specific date. These features are located in the Options and Allocate buttons in the toolbar of the Pupil conduct screen.

One feature which has been removed is the ability to overwrite the points allocated to a specific pupil for a conduct entry.

2.9.41 2006/05/18

In the substitution, if you're using the option to substitute an available teacher for an absent one, the duty lists didn't print out correctly, and the substitution on a teacher's timetable wouldn't display correctly either. The problem is fixed, but you need to do one thing to get the timetables to display correctly: in the Substitution screen, go to the Allocate page and change something, then save it. It doesn't matter what you change - for example, you could move a teacher up and down again in the list, or add and remove a teacher.

In the class lists, if you printed marks lists it wouldn't round off to the number of decimal places specified in the Columns setup.

2.9.40 2006/05/16

In the export to comma-delimited format, exporting parents and pupils could produce an error if a large number of pupils don't have parent accounts. Also, the pupils' names and classes weren't exporting correctly.

A few cosmetic changes were made to the absenteeism registers. Please note: the Ok button in the bottom-right corner is no longer there. The button nearest this position is Clear - please read the labels and don't just click blindly. Administrators, warn your staff, please!

A convenient function was added to the staff register: you can now add a range of absent dates.

In the staff register, when you view the substitution lists, the pupils are now grouped according to the teacher/room for substitution.

2.9.39 2006/05/12

In the stock, printing a register with individual items would cause an error on categories without custom fields.

In the users setup, you can now set up roles. For example, you could set up a role called Teacher, and allocate the relevant user names to this role. Then, if you need to make any changes to the user rights for all teachers, you can just change the rights of the role instead of changing each individual's rights.

In the print preview screen, text measurement should now be much more accurate when a default printer is set up. This affects the reports, statements and a few other print-outs. Anything that depends on the measurement of text, such as red borders for failing marks, adjusting a section's height on its contents, etc. should now be more accurate.

2.9.38 2006/05/10

When exporting parents and pupils to comma-delimited format, the pupils' names and classes are now exported to separate columns. For those schools who wish to generate a voter's list for the upcoming SGB elections, this export should do the job.

2.9.37 2006/05/09

An error occurred in the Rooms screen when adding new rooms, and new rooms wouldn't be saved.

2.9.36 2006/05/05

In the marks reports, the black or red border that prints around failing marks will no longer be cut off.

In the SMS, generating marks notifications would cause an error in any pupil in the grade was linked to a parent account where the father's and mother's name is empty.

2.9.35 2006/05/04

In the stock module, the stock register print-out has been adjusted to print the cost and value of items, and when printing individual items, it also groups by and prints the additional fields of the items.

2.9.34 2006/05/03

In the SMS system, you can now send short reports to parents.

In the timetable, selecting a room to highlight on the Timetable page would highlight the wrong room.

2.9.33 2006/04/26

A few small bugs in the calculation of grade averages and printing of reports were fixed.

2.9.32 2006/04/25

In the substitution, allocating to new pupils only caused an error.

In the marks, you can now specify the number of decimal places when setting up a column. This affects how marks are calculated, displayed and printed. The problem that many users had with verdicts not corresponding with marks (e.g. 40% is printed for the first language, but the verdict was calculated on 39.5%, and shows fail) should now be eliminated.

In Marks | Columns, for grade 9 and below, you can now select 'Average of all learning areas' as an average calculation method. This calculates a pupils' average from the average learning area marks, not from the individual subjects in each learning area. It also ignores the 'Additional subjects for averages' setup in Marks | Verdicts.

2.9.31 2006/04/21

Grade 10 schedules weren't printing the verdicts correctly.

2.9.30 2006/04/20

Grade 10 schedules weren't printing correctly.

In the marks calculations, empty marks are now ignored in average calculations, instead of being treated as 0.

2.9.29 2006/04/19

Grade 10 schedules weren't printing correctly.

In Enter marks, the symbol distribution list would leave out the last row.

2.9.28 2006/04/18

The button for the new substitution screen wasn't showing.

In the timetable, some users experienced an error while loading the timetable, which would prevent the list of teachers for the highlight function from displaying.

2.9.27 2006/03/30

In the SMS module, you can now print your phone book.

The substitution modules have been redesigned and rewritten. Support for predefined room sets have been removed. If someone was still using that, let me know why you really, really need it.

2.9.26 2006/03/24

You can now adjust the format of the Grade average field in the reports to print subject/grade averages as symbols or raw marks.

2.9.25 2006/03/24

In Pupils | Tools | Manage subjects, levels weren't being displayed for Words per minute, which caused problems with some of the senior calculations.

Grade 10 verdicts would not accept or display an F verdict.

Creating a column for all subjects when a specific subject already had a column with the same name would produce an error message. Now the existing subject column will be assimilated into the new column.

2.9.24 2006/03/23

Some users experienced problems with grade 10 columns. Sometimes up to 3 copies of a column would be displayed, and sometimes none at all. This was due to levels (HG/SG) still being present in grade 10.

2.9.23 2006/03/16

In the export for the FETC entries program, most diacritics were being replaced with an a. They should now be correctly replaced with normal letters.

Calculations of grade 10 verdicts have been modified - previously it always required 40% for a subject to be passed. Automatic condoning has also been added.

2.9.22 2006/03/08

In the export for the FETC entries program, the university endorsement of grade 11 and 12 pupils with geography weren't being calculated correctly.

2.9.21 2006/03/07

Calculations of grade 10 verdicts have been added. This is the first release of the calculations, so don't rely on it yet - test it and let me know if you experience any problems.

An export for Microfin has been added. Microfin is adding an import feature to their software. Hopefully, this will solve all the problems we had with the synchronisation function.

2.9.20 2006/03/03

The tab order in the new parent's screen has been fixed.

The export of examination entries for grade 8 and 9 didn't correspond with the structure of the GETC entries program.

2.9.18 2006/02/27

In the last few versions, the View timetables screen gave an error when it loaded.

2.9.17 2006/02/24

The new Parents screen gave an error when a new parent was saved.

2.9.16 2006/02/20

The Parents screen has been redesigned to include an archive, and other features from the Pupils and Staff screens (customizable, searchable and sortable columns).

The SMS module has been adjusted to read active/archived parents in the same way as the new Parents screen. It should now properly ignore all inactive parent accounts.

The calculation of aggregates for grades 11 and 12 have been adjusted to use 2 languages + the best four other subjects, ignoring the grouping of subjects.

In Marks | Comments, you can now sort the list by clicking on the column headings.

2.9.15 2006/02/15

In the version 2.9.14, an error occurred when loading the marks disks function.

2.9.14 2006/02/10

A statement designer has been added to the School fees.

2.9.13 2006/02/03

In Administration | Pupils, a House manager was added to the Tools menu. Use this to quickly move pupils between houses.

In Administration | Sport houses, some users had an blank entry which couldn't be deleted. It should be gone now.

In Administration | Class lists, you can now set up class lists for redirected subjects. For now, they can only be set up manually - I'm still investigation extracting them from the timetable.

In School fees | Summaries, the debit and credit values of entries weren't being printed.

2.9.12 2006/02/02

When converting some old databases, the program would not create year entries for the staff, which resulted in these staff being moved to the archive.

In Administration | Staff, adding a new staff member without changing anything on the allocation tab (Grade, Class or Room) would result in the new staff member being added to the archive, instead of the active list. The same problem would occur in Pupils, but it wasn't encountered as often.

In Administration | Pupils | Print | List, dates (such as Date registered) would sometimes print out with a time.

In School fees, the receipt number is now printed on receipts. You can also customize the sub-heading, for example to print the school's address and telephone number, by going to Setup | School info, and filling in the Address field in the Receipts frame of the School fees tab.

In Administration | Pupils, a Class manager was added to the Tools menu. Use this to quickly move pupils between register classes. A House manager that works in the same way will soon follow.

An error would occur in the Staff screen when editing a staff member if a timetable with 0 periods was set up for the current year.

2.9.11 2006/01/31

In School fees | Debtor reports, selecting a specific class would cause the program to print for all pupils with that class letter, regardless of grade.

Also in the Debtor reports, the ageing analysis now prints totals at the bottom.

In Staff | Print | Birthday list, printing the date of birth and age is now optional and off by default.

When viewing or printing timetables, only the initials of the staff are now shown.

In Administration | Sport houses | Distribution, you can now print the distribution.

In Setup | Users, you can now control a user's permissions for accessing and modifying class lists.

In Marks | Reports, two new fields have been added: Date and Register teacher.

In Build timetables | Activities, I've added a Set distribution button which allows you to quickly set the distributions for all activities with the same number of periods.

The Staff screen will now remember your last sorting order.

2.9.10 2006/01/27

In Marks | Reports, the parent's relationship field wasn't working.

In Pupils | Print | ID cards, you can now print a pupil's account #, birthday and age on the card.

In Build timetables | Timetable, I've added five buttons above the list of activities: pin and unpin combinations, pin and unpin selected grades, and delete all periods for selected grades.

In Build timetables | Timetable | Options, there are now options to ignore distributions and specify the maximum periods per day for empty/incomplete/ignored distributions.

2.9.09 2006/01/25

In the Sunward substitution, an error could occur after switching from 5 to 3 rooms.

2.9.08 2006/01/24

In View timetables, empty periods for pupils who did less subjects (usually immigrants) would sometimes print the same information as the last booked period.

In Build timetables, a Work distribution print-out has been added.

2.9.07 2006/01/20

Since version 2.9.05, an error would occur on the combinations page of the timetable when switching to a grade that has less combinations than another grade.

2.9.06 2006/01/19

In the ID cards print-out, photos would not print if they had been copied directly into the Photos directory of the program.

2.9.05 2006/01/19

In the marks, calculating averages using the "Languages + best four" method didn't work correctly.

In Build timeables, the Combinations tab will now display staff conflicts in red. If you create sets, they will be used to determine the conflicts, and if not, the program matches combinations by number.

A few adjustments have been made to the loading procedure to prevent non-fatal errors while loading the program.

2.9.04 2006/01/18

In Admin | Pupils, an error would sometimes occur if a subject's level was changed when the pupil had no marks.

In View timetables, empty periods for pupils who did less subjects (usually immigrants) would sometimes display the same information as the last booked period.

An improvement has been made to the loading speed of the marks system.

2.9.03 2006/01/16

In Build Timetables, the error that sometimes occurred that prevented the timetable from being saved has been fixed.

In the marks schedules, a Limpopo promotion schedule has been added.

On the parents' information pages, the problem with the medical fund note that printed next to the account type has been fixed.

2.9.02 2006/01/11

Printing timetables from the Pupils screen didn't work correctly.

In the Vaal substitution, archived staff were still being allocated.

You can now print out the marks comments.

In Admin | Pupils, the Print | List function gave an error if there were no addresses on the program.

2.9.01 2006/01/11

Using the View timetables function would cause problems accessing the 2006 information of pupils and staff.

2.9.00 2006/01/10

The old marks systems have been removed.

In the Vaal substitution, sometimes teachers wouldn't appear.

Revision history - Smart Software for schools