Newsletter Spring 2018/2019




Welcome 

Please find details of the new features we have added to SOLAR and some additional information that you may find useful.

New SOLAR Team Member

We are delighted to announce that we now have a new Administrator working with us. Nicola joined us on the 2nd of January as the newest member of our SOLAR family.

Reporting – Matrix Report

We have added a new feature to the Matrix Report so it now displays the number of pupils included in the report at the top of the page.

Highlighted Baseline in Levels Report

We have now added a new feature to the Levels Report where the Baselined Level is now underlined.

When you run the levels report you can check that pupils have been baselined rather than having used the complete level button.

If the complete level has been used the data in reports will not calculate and display correctly. If you find that a student has had the level completed rather than being Baselined you will need to clear the level and then Baseline.

Please note: We highly recommend that the Complete Level and Clear Level function should only be used by School Administrators and turned off in Permissions for other users.

Term Dates

We highlighted in a previous newsletter that schools should set their terms dates for the next academic year and beyond. This ensures that users can log into SOLAR when they return from the summer break. It also allows any KS targets to be saved for following years

Go to Admin>Lists>term dates and ADD up to 4 years in advance

You can always change these dates at anytime

Change Password

We have added a new function where Administrators can now set a password for users within their school. This means that schools will no longer have to send a “request” into our Helpdesk and can now resolve this issue locally. 


  1.          Please note that you cannot see the password and once entered this becomes encrypted so will display more characters than originally entered. The user can then log in by entering the password that you have set for them.
  2.          If a user still cannot log in, please check that they are logging into the correct school’s SOLAR. The name of the school is displayed above the e-mail address on the login page.  Please also ensure that they are entering their email correctly
  3.          We highly recommend that Users, wherever possible, make use of the “Forgot Your Password”.  This includes new users set up on the system and users unable to log in

Internet Explorer

As we have mentioned in previous newsletters Internet Explorer is not compatible with SOLAR due to it now being very outdated technology, but SOLAR is compatible with all other web browsers. We have now added a feature to SOLAR where as a user tries to use SOLAR through Internet Explorer the following error message will now be displayed.

Additional Training

Are you aware you can book additional training if you need it. We would be happy to come along and get you up to speed on the new features and functionality.

Please call us on 0800 019 0661 option 1 for more information or to book a session.

Webinars – Admin Tips and Open Forum

We are pleased to announce that we have scheduled 4 Webinars for next month. These will demonstrate some of SOLAR’s features as well as being a live Q & A session where we can talk you through any questions that you may have. To join any of these sessions please use the link below.

In addition to these we also have pre-recorded Webinars available on Assessment, CLM, Behaviour and IEP. These can be accessed here: http://www.solarforschools.org.uk/solarwebinars/

Help Desk

Our Help Desk is open Monday to Friday from 8:30 am to 16:30 pm.

You can contact the Help Desk by email or phone.  We prefer email, as this creates a written record of your request and ensures that information can be passed efficiently between team members.  It also helps us manage our work flow and prioritise our response more effectively.

support@solarforschools.org.uk

Sometimes we need specific information to diagnose a problem.  If you see an error message, please tell us what it says.  If it’s relevant, we may also need to know the assessment framework, subject, pupil, level and even the statement and star.

You can take a snapshot of your screen by using the Windows snipping tool or Apple’s screenshot facility and attach the image to your email.  You can also show us a SOLAR screen by copying and pasting the URL into your email.

It would also be helpful for you to include your school name in the request as some e-mail addresses do not indicate which school you are in 😊

SOLAR Support Knowledge Base

We have started building a Help Desk Library where you can search our knowledge base and browse through useful articles. There will be many more helpful documents added to this over the coming weeks.

The link for our document library is:

https://solar.helpscoutdocs.com/ or you can access by simply typing solar.helpscoutdocs.com into your address bar.