A web based school calendar that allows collaboration of school administrators can make it much easier to schedule events for a school or district. Often the school administrator gets bombarded with requests by email or other methods and has a huge challenge of organizing everybody’s calendars into the master calendar. Often this can lead to double bookings for an athletic facility or school facility, which can lead to a major inconvenience for everyone involved.

How Tandem for Schools solves this problem is by streamlining and simplifying the process.

1. School staff log on to the calendar and make requests for facilities.
2. Tandem automatically checks for any scheduling conflicts and sends a notification by email to the “master queue manager”
3. The “master queue manager” approves or rejects the request.
4. If the request is approved the event is posted to the calendar for all students, parents, and staff to see.

By allowing staff to collaborate to schedule the schools events in a simple and efficient way, Tandem can save a significant amount of time for everyone involved. School administrators and coaches don’t have to play phone tag to change an event on the calendar. The calendar also communicates with students and parents, who can receive real time notifications of any changes such as baseball rain outs or reschedulings. Students and parents can sync the school calendar with their other calendars such as Outlook, iCal, Google Calendars, or Cozi so that when a change is made, a notification is automatically sent to their calendar.

The Microsoft keynote at this year’s RSA security conference in San Francisco featured Tandem for Schools to demo its new identification system called Geneva which provides authenticated information on a user (claims) to a third party application from the school’s existing information database (Active Directory). The third party app can then determine the permission level of the individual as it relates to the application based on this information. For instance Tandem for Schools can authenticate that an individual is a teacher from information received through Geneva from the school’s Active Directory and then grant them permission to add events to the school calendar.

Microsoft’s keynote at the 2009 RSA Conference by Scott Charney, VP of Trustworthy Computing, described Microsoft’s integration of the Geneva identification system with Tandem for Schools (you can view the keynote here which discusses Tandem at the 27:00 mark).

Security is important to everyone, and we here at Intand are dedicated to making sure that we are providing an easy, but safe, way for a school district to connect with their community. With the help of Microsoft’s Geneva Server, it becomes much easier for the IT staff at a district to manage the different identities and levels of permissions across their entire staff and community. This is a HUGE win for those at a school district in the IT department.

Intand is the first third party application to be tested with Microsoft’s new identity technology. Microsoft is currently piloting the system at the Lake Washington School District, which includes 50 schools and nearly 24,000 students.

According to Ariel Gordon from Microsoft’s Identity and Security Division, “What Intand has done is modify their application so that it can consume the claims that are coming from the district’s Active Directory through the Geneva server which conveys the users identities and rights and privileges. They have also made it possible for users to use an information card to sign in so they don’t need to type anything to access the app.”

When Geneva server is released by Microsoft, it will allow schools to manage security permissions for multiple third party applications from a single personnel database which can save the IT team significant time and energy.

Read more about Microsoft’s Identity Technology test with Tandem for Schools:

Microsoft tests identity technology in schools CNET

Microsoft tests online ID system in its hometown school district TechFlash

Microsoft: Internet, PCs Need New Security Model InternetNews

photo via ZDNet

Tandem for Schools is school administration calendar software designed to make the job of administration easier while improving communication with students and parents. What sets Tandem for Schools apart from other calendar options is the elegant design, ease of use, and time saving features. Not only will it make school calendar management way easier for staff, it will make parents happy because they can easily access the calendar of extracurricular events with real time updates, from any internet connection.

This is the greatest communication tool we have on campus. It saves me hours a week. The program itself is easy to use and the information is instantly available to our community. What more could you ask for?” – Vicki Storey – Library Teacher Santa Ynez Valley Union High School, California

Two full time people were managing our calendars. Now there is only one person. Tandem for Schools has made the process fast, easy and powerful.” – Teri Turner – Database Administrator Fremont County School District, Wyoming

These school administrators have found Tandem for School to be a tool that has made their job easier by cutting hours of time from their workload. Posting events on the Tandem calendar is very quick and it automatically checks for any schedule conflicts. It is also super easy to implement because the calendar is hosted on Tandem’s secure servers. It can take minutes to get up and running and integrating Tandem with your website is as simple as adding a link to yourschool.intand.com.

To learn more sign up for a free one on one demo on your computer via go2meeting, or try Tandem for Schools free for 30 days.

You can get a free printable 2009 school calendar by signing up for the free version of Tandem for Schools, called Tandem Basic. This allows the school admin to create an attractive free annual calendar that can be posted online for public viewing, or printed out as a PDF.

This is ideal for schools who want a free printable 2009 school calendar with a list of key dates for the upcoming school year, such as holidays or school breaks.

Additional features of the free version of Tandem for Schools, is a way to sync the school calendar with Outlook, iCal, Cozi, and Google Calendar. You can also upload the school logo to the calendar, for additional visual appeal. Parents and students can also subscribe to an RSS feed of the calendar.

To get access to the free annual calendar for schools, you just need to fill out a registration form, but we think it’s well worth it. You can sign up for the free calendar at http://www.intand.com/basic.htm.

The Standard and Plus full versions of Tandem provide many more benefits for schools such as being able to manage all the school events on a single online calendar. School administration can save significant amounts of time by easily entering schedule information into Tandem, which automatically checks for any scheduling conflicts. Schools can communicate to parents and students more effectively with the online calendar that is publicly viewable online and instantly updates any changes or cancellations made. The Plus version also allows coaches and staff to request facilities or changes to the schedule, which can be easily approved by the calender administrator.

Often times it can be very helpful for parents to be able to sync the school calendar with their personal calender, such as Google Calendar, iCal, Cozi, or Outlook. Tandem for Schools is an online school calendar that can export information into these personal calendars.

Caitlin DiMare-Oliver writes over at Type-A Mom:

“Cozi has a great, friendly interface that’s incredibly easy to use. Appointments can be color-coded to represent each family member – or all family members. You can even add your kid’s school calendars so that events are updated and added automatically if your school publishes their calendar to Tandem for Schools.Talk about convenient!”

“Talk about convenient” is right! We know that, many times, the most important events on a families’ calendar revolve around the school. We are excited to provide an easy way for families to get the key school events they need on their online calendar, be that Cozi, Google or whatever digital calendar they choose to use.

Tandem for Schools is a dynamic and comprehensive tool for managing events for a school or even a district.

According to Bob Wright Supervisor of Technology of Boardman School District in Ohio:
“I spent much time looking at calendar programs from various vendors. I even worked a considerable amount of time developing my own with FileMaker Pro database. There were shortcomings in all that I looked at…tried. Tandem for Schools was the best fit overall.”

What Tandem for Schools allows an administrator to do is put all the events onto one calendar, which helps simplify the calendar management process.

According to Liz Wiggins, Assistant to the Superintendent at Cascade Christian School District in Washington State:
“The most useful benefit is the ability to schedule all the yearly events in one or two sittings. This used to be a task that would take days to put together. For me it was a solid week of calendar entry and review and refining, and I would have to mess with the formatting to make things fit, and it was just a nightmare. Now we’re looking at where someone at a campus says she can do it in maybe a couple afternoons and we’re looking at hours instead of days and for me it is more of quality control than a daunting task that takes weeks to get done.”

Tandem for Schools has a visually appealing user interface, can be customized with your school logo, and is easy to use.

Staff at the school can submit events and requests to use facilities and they can be approved or denied with a click of the mouse by the person in charge of the calendar. This makes it easy to manage school facilities and prevent double bookings or schedule conflicts.

Parents love having all the school’s event information in one easy to access place online, reducing the need to call the school for information. Parents can also sync the school calendar with their Outlook and get automatically notified of any schedule changes.

Find out how Tandem for Schools can be a great calendar solution for your school. You can schedule a 30 minute personal demo on your own computer, try Tandem for Schools for 30 days, or find more information at the Tandem website.

Want to reduce incoming calls for event directions and times? Tandem for Schools provides two great communications benefits for your school/district and your parents.

First, every event listed on your Tandem calendar includes complete event details along with a link to Google maps and driving directions that are just a mouse click away.

Second, you can automate parent communications through email notification. Parents can subscribe and automatically receive any updates, location changes or cancellations. Parents can also use Tandem to synchronize with their Outlook calendar or online calendar.  More technical users can subscribe to an RSS feed.

“From my experience this year, this site is absolutely fantastic.  It should be even easier for me next year as the information rolls over from year to year.” – Jared D

We know from our customers that the better the communications with parents and the community, the higher  the participation with the school. Using Tandem for Schools will provide your staff with more time and your parents with better real-time event information.

Want to learn more?

• Sign up for a free trial
• Schedule a personal demonstration
• Read more about Tandem

If you have fiddled with exporting data from Tandem for Schools into Outlook 2003 or 2007 you may have run into some difficulties. If you are running Outlook 2003 one immediate drawback, whether you know it or not, is its inability to subscribe to an ical feed. This means that you provide the URL to an ical feed and your Outlook Calendar goes out at certain intervals to look for changes to events, then updates them for you.

This neat feature happens to be in the much improved Outlook 2007, however, if you are fortunate enough to have Outlook 2007 you may be just as unfortunate to have discovered this next issue. You can’t get events from an Outlook 2007 calendar subscription to sync with your phone. We can hope in the future that cellphone software can subscribe to calendar feeds but that just isn’t going to help us today.

Enter Remote Calendars, an open source Outlook add on for both Outlook 2003 and 2007. This clever little plugin will sync events from any ical feed directly into your personal calendar where it can then be synced with your phone. Download the free Remote Calendars plugin will save you time.

To learn more about the technical side of Tandem for Schools, check out our Support Forum.

USA Today recently wrote about what schools are doing to manage vastly higher fuel costs. Of course,cutting back bus service comes high on the list of somehow mitigating the high costs of fuel recently.  Cutting transportation seems to be the most obvious way to react, but school transportation experts claim that this might jeopardize the safety of students.  Could there be another way?

We’d like to think so.  Cutting costs is always good, especially when working with public dollars that affect parents.  Maybe creating more efficiency administratively is the answer.  That’s how Tandem for Schools comes in.

Tandem for Schools Plus includes sophisticated transportation management tools that will help you manage your school bussing, etc. much more efficiently.

• Request and allocate events.
• Prevent bus and driver schedule conflicts in real time.
• Manage fuel costs with solid accounting features.

Even though gas costs have been coming down in the past few weeks, wouldn’t you like to ease the process of transportation management?  If so, you can try Tandem for Schools FREE for 30 days.  Delve into each and every feature to get a feel for how Tandem can help you.  We’ll show you how it all works!

Just click the link below to schedule a 15-20 minute web consultation to see Tandem for Schools features in action.

We have all been hearing the latest news of financial disasters, tightening budgets, and families that are keep a much closer eye on their spending.  The latest money news hits all of us.  And it hits your school. What the future holds is uncertain.

Will lower home pricess drive lower assessments and thus les money from bond levies, if they pass as people think more about where their money is going?  It’s hard to say, but we have solutions that inform, update, and build your school community, even during the potentially tough times ahead.

Tandem for Schools is a comprehensive calendar tool for schools and districts that offers the following benefits:

• Very simple event and calendar management with less paper.
• Easy, and FREE, school master calendar creation with flexible electronic distribution options.
• Registered users (parents, students, etc.) get updates when events get changed or cancelled, potentially saving wasted trips and gas.
• Very low cost system that will cost no more than $499 per school.  No per user license costs.
• Low cost of ownership.  We host Tandem on our servers and maintain all the technicalities.  All you do is get started entering and managing your events.
• No additional costly and complicated training necessary.

Tandem for Schools will save you:

• Time
• Paper
• Money
• Gas
• and Grief!

Check out Tandem for Schools today to see our easy, inexpensive and green solution that will help you make the most our of your school or district budget while strengthening your school community.  Get started with our FREE version, Tandem Basic, with absolutely no cost or obligation by clicking the button:

Or try a FREE, 30-day trial of our complete calendar system by clicking here…

Or fill out this demo request form to have one of our experts walk you through Tandem for Schools with a live web demo.