Studentnet News

26 June 2013

New Branding: Cloudwork^TM

Studentnet introduced our Nextmail product back in 2007. At that time cloud based email services for schools was still a novel concept. The name that we chose for our product reflected both the novelty of what we were doing and the email basis of the service.

But times have changed. Our service has transformed from being primarily an email service to now being an Identity Management service. Having removed the need for accounts to exist in GMail and having implemented features such as our Any Directory Integration and Automated Class Groups, our service has now enabled rich new collaboration functionality for teachers and students - our product name does not reflect that richness.

So now we are announcing a new name for our services: Cloudwork^TM, accompanied by a new product logo. Along with the release of our new name we'd like to also announce even more functionality that we are adding to our service. We have commenced the development of features to extend Automated Class Groups so as to now provide integrated support for Google Apps spreadsheet scripts such as the very popular Doctopus and gClassFolders- see below.

Cloudwork introduces integrated support for Doctopus, gClassFolders and other Google Apps spreadsheet scripts. We are looking at enhancing our Cloudwork product so that it will automatically create and maintain the roster spreadsheets used by many popular Google Apps scripts. We're looking for feedback/criticisms/suggestions for improvements etc on what we are implementing. So far we have:

* Roster spreadsheet integration will be a regularly run process that does the following:

• Create a master roster spreadsheet for each class list from data held in the schools management system
• Share this spreadsheet with the teachers of that class. Teachers will get read-only access to each master roster spreadsheet. They will be able to copy the master to fully accessible working copies as needed and use the copies normally as they would if they had created the script manually.
• To provide functionality to teachers when we do not have teacher information for class groups, user accounts in *Cloudwork* will need to be configured as either student or teacher. This can be done through the *Cloudwork* administration interface, or via the existing directory integration feature.
• For each student in a class, add a row consisting of "First Name, Last Name, Email Address" to that class's master roster spreadsheet. This format will be configurable to suit the needs of a range of popular apps scripts.
• All spreadsheets will go into a folder called "Master Roster Spreadsheets" in *Cloudwork*'s Google Apps administrator account. This folder can optionally be shared with all teachers in the domain.
• Once the process has completed, teachers will be able to make a copy of the master sheet to install the appropriate Apps script and configure assignments. Teachers will then be able to make and configure assignments. Teachers will then be able to make any changes they require, such as adding in group flags for group assignments.
• As changes to the members of the class are made in the school's management system, the process will automatically (probably nightly) update the master roster spreadsheet accordingly.

* This processing is designed to support Apps Scripts such as Doctopus and gClassFolders.
* Initially, the spreadsheet will be a new spreadsheet, however we are looking into cloning a spreadsheet with the the appropriate apps script pre-installed as a future enhancement.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions. All comments appreciated.

Best Regards
The Studentnet Team

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