Getting started
Andrómeda doesn't force an order on you, but there's one that saves you from having to backtrack. The idea is to go from general to specific: structure first, then people, and communication last.
Budget a morning's work for a mid-sized school.
The path
Create the levels
Early Years, Primary, Secondary, or whatever your school calls them. If you only have one level, create it anyway: everything else hangs from it.
As soon as you save, the level appears in the selector at the top left and you can start working in it.
→ Levels
Give panel access to whoever needs it
Office staff, management, coordinators. Each person gets a role and, if they're a level administrator, which levels they manage.
You can leave this for later if you're going to load everything yourself at first.
Go into a level and create the groups
The classes, courses or sections. This is the step that orders everything else, so it's worth thinking about the names: families will see them.
→ Groups
Add the teachers
A teacher reaches a level through groups: when you add them you choose which groups they work in and which subjects they teach in each.
Add the students and their guardians
This is the longest part. Each student belongs to one or more groups, and each guardian is linked to one or more students.
Check coverage
Before you start communicating, look at the coverage report: it tells you which families haven't got into the app yet. Those are the ones who won't hear anything you send.
→ Reports
Send the first message
Everything's ready. A welcome message is a good way to confirm the whole chain works end to end.
Why this order
When you create a student you choose the groups they belong to. If the groups don't exist yet, you'll have to reopen every student's record to assign them. With two hundred students, that's an afternoon lost.
The same goes for teachers: they're assigned to groups, so groups come first.
Loading a lot of people at once
If you have your students in a spreadsheet, you don't need to add them one by one. Get in touch and we'll help with the import: it's something we handle, and it saves you the manual work.
Before inviting families
One recommendation that saves a lot of headaches: test the whole circuit with one group before opening it up to the entire school.
Load a test group with two or three real families —people who'll give you honest feedback—, send them a message and check it reached their app. Only then carry on with the rest.
What about the academic side
Report cards, activities and the calendar are part of the premium plan. If your school is on the free plan, those sections don't appear in the menu.
You can try them free for 15 days without entering any card details.
→ Plans
