Setup Steps for gibbon

General
1

Hi,

I am new to gibbon and must say you guys have done a great work here. Welldone.

WHat necessitated my dropping this topic is because of my experience setting up gibbon. As good as the software is, it can be discouraging when taking weeks to setup because there are confusing nomenlatures (Classroom and Class, Groups etc). I have been on this for a couple of days trying to navigate through. In all honesty, I had to stop initially and compare setup process with Rosario SIS. While Rosario seems easier, it doesn’t have the much needed flexibility like gibbon.

I want to suggest that setup experience be improved upon and this can be done in simple steps

  1. Organizes the roadmap of setup, at least the core that needs to be up and running in the school: What should be done 1st, 2nd …
  2. When the 1st step is completed, there an indicator that shows complete, now next thing to do

Instance:

  1. Start with School Years - (a Minimum of 3 school years). Once this step is completed, the indicator shows completed (Further to this, each one can have a sample excel sheet that can be downloaded for Import - Makes things easier). Go to the next step
  2. Create Terms: Completed( Can also do import from here or just links to the import widget in System admin) to Next step
  3. Create Year Groups- Completed etc
  4. Set up Your timetable(and the sub-steps follows — Completed, Great work, Next category to set up

This way, the admin is guided, understand the flow quickly and can spot where he or she is making a mistake.

Anyways, I am now stucked, Teachers and Staffers ain’t showing on the list of staff directory after uploading them though the import tool, same I did for the students. Any caiuse for this? I added the teachers to subjects, yet, not visible, only Sys Administrator

Any help?

2

Hi @absmachin welcome to the community, thank you for your kind words about the software and I appreciate the frustration in getting up and running for the first time. Some of the confusing nomenclature can be that there’s no one term for something across the world, for example, Form Groups and Homerooms and Roll Groups all often refer to the same thing in different areas of the world. Gibbon tends towards the UK terminology, having been created in a Hong Kong international school.

I like your suggestion for a step-by-step set up process. Our development team is very small (two people, only one fulltime) so our capacity is limited, but it could be something interesting to explore. To start, be sure to check the docs (here too), and feel free to suggest edits to the docs (they’re open source too!). The following is a spreadsheet created for helping schools with end-of-year rollover, but could be of use as well: Gibbon: Example Checklist for School Year Startup - Google Sheets (you can make a copy to edit).

To help with your staff and student import question. It sounds like you’ve added the user data, which is a good first step. Students won’t show up in the system unless they have also been enrolled in the current school year, in Admissions > Student Enrolment (or through a student enrolment import). Similarly, staff won’t show up as active staff unless they have a Staff record in People > Staff (or through a staff import).

Hope this helps!