Dear Customer,

Welcome to the February edition of InTouch Online. Most everyone can agree that is has been a brisk winter season and the upcoming springtime looks more appealing than ever! But, before we look too far ahead, let’s take in what the month of February has to offer. There are plenty of reasons to celebrate this month: the Super Bowl, Groundhog’s Day, Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, and of course, it is Black History Month. Another reason for celebration is to welcome our 44^th President of the United States, President Barack Obama.

We have some useful information for you this month regarding virus protection, as well as a discussion with Manteca USD about the SubCast feature in your SubFinder system and how it can effectively streamline site reports. Enjoy and have a wonderful February!

District Highlight: Manteca USD, California

Making Our Sites Aware

Interview by: Corinne Everett, Marketing Coordinator
Interview with: Brenda Rohrer and Sherry Sharmann, Substitute Technicians

Manteca USD is located in the city of Manteca, California which is nestled in the scenic San Joaquin Valley, roughly 70 miles east of San Francisco; the area surrounding Manteca is quickly becoming one of Northern California’s fastest growing communities.

Manteca USD currently serves more than 23,000 students from three cities: Stockton, Lathrop, Manteca, as well as the town of French Camp; all which covers approximately 113 square miles. Imagine trying to relay site information to 34 school sites on a daily basis. SubFinder’s email broadcast feature, SubCast, is a crucial element that both Brenda Rohrer and Sherry Sharmann are very familiar with. As SubFinder operators, they rely on SubCast several times throughout the day. Absence information is automatically sent to all sites on a daily basis, while they focus on other important tasks for Manteca’s certified and non-certified staff. I recently spoke with Brenda and Sherry about SubCast, and how this time-efficient feature has helped their many sites.

How long have you both been working with SubFinder?
 

I (Brenda) have been with Manteca Unified for 8 years, and have been the substitute technician with the SubFinder system for 4 years. Sherry has been with Manteca Unified since July, 2004, and has been the other substitute technician for about 3 ½ years.

How many schools are in the Manteca Unified School District? How many of these sites use SubFinder?

We have a total of 34 school sites; all of these sites use the SubFinder system to report absences.
 

How many employees utilize the SubFinder system?
 

We currently have 2,368 contracted employees and over 800 substitute employees.
 

How has SubCast helped Manteca USD?
 

We use SubCast to send out an early morning absence report to the school sites, along with a follow up report every 30-45 minutes. The report notifies each site of all reported absences for their specific site, as well as the status of the substitute. This allows the school sites to be aware of the absences as they occur. This practice has greatly reduced the many early morning phone calls from the sites asking who is out, and if they have a sub. SubCast allows for the site administrator to be aware of the expected substitute so they can be ready when he or she arrives.
 

We also send a SubCast absence report late in the day to project absences for the next day, which allows the sites to plan ahead. These two SubCast reports help the sites plan and prepare for unforeseen absences at the earliest opportunities.
 

Which site reports does SubCast send out regularly? How often does SubCast send updated reports?
 

We send the Daily Absence Report every 90 minutes throughout the day. In the afternoon, we send out a one-day projection report for the following day’s absences. Every Friday afternoon, we send out a weekly projection report for the upcoming week.
 

Who normally receives the regular SubCast reports?
 

Our site administrators, office managers, and attendance clerks.
 

Do you find that SubCast has saved recipients time by automatically receiving daily absence and substitute information?
 

Yes, definitely! The sites are more aware of what is going on. Sites now can see when a teacher has entered an absence, and can follow the status of the substitute. It provides them with the contact information for the substitute, so if need be, they can contact the substitute directly. The site administrator can also see the job assignment time and know when the substitute is expected to arrive. All of these details save the site time, and the guess work on who will be subbing, and what time they will arrive.
 

I see that Manteca USD has recently upgraded to SubFinder version 5.8. Manteca USD seems to be consistent with upgrading to the most current version of SubFinder. Why do you think it is important to upgrade with each release of the most current version of SubFinder?
 

Each upgrade has new changes; although some of them are minor, we want to use every resource available to us to be efficient in our jobs.
 

What is your favorite feature or function of SubFinder?
 

One of my favorites is the notification regarding expiring items. We spend less time tracking down credentials (for example: TB tests, CPR, licenses, etc.) by just running a report that shows us which employees need to be updated.

If you have any questions about the SubCast feature within SubFinder, or about SubFinder version 5.8, please contact your account specialist at 800.782.3463. We want to thank Brenda, Sherry, and Manteca USD for the enlightening information about how they utilize SubCast, and most importantly, for being wonderful customers! We look forward to working together for many years to come!

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Automatically Inform Your Individual Sites
Broadcast Site Information via Email with SubCast

Are you interested in hearing more about what SubCast can do for your organization? Keep your sites informed throughout the day by automatically sending site absence information to individuals of your choice. Your sites will thank you for saving them time by keeping them informed of site absences and expected coverage.

Every SubFinder system comes with the SubCast feature. SubCast automatically emails absence and placement information at times established by your organization. SubCast keeps individuals of your choice informed with up-to-date site absence and job status information. The automatic emailing of the daily absence information ensures that all sites are aware of absences, substitute placements, and the status of all pending jobs. Each site receives an email report customized to show only the information appropriate to their site. It is a well-designed tool that communicates vital information to assigned individuals without involving hours of labor for the site office staff. Recipients will automatically be updated via email throughout the day, as many times as necessary. Once your organization has set up the desired SubCast report schedule and recipient list, SubCast will do the rest.
 

Set it and forget it with SubCast! Contact your account specialist at 800.782.3463 if you are interested in learning more about SubCast, or have any further questions.

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Using Anti-virus Protection with SubFinder
Keep Your System Protected

By: Dan Foulkrod, Technical Support Representative

What is an anti-virus program?

An anti-virus program is software that detects repairs, cleans, or removes virus-infected files from a computer. There are many different brands of anti-virus. Usually your network administrator will choose what best suits your organization’s systems. This decision is typically based on which brand has more to offer [as far as protection] and, of course, price. Every anti-virus program should be running live (in the background where nobody sees) whenever a machine is turned on. A virus scan should take place at least every couple of days; ideally a virus scan should be performed every day. The best time to run a virus scan is when your machines are not heavily used; typically overnight. The one issue with an overnight virus scan is that sometimes there are other programs running backups; so make sure to schedule other software backups to run around the nightly virus scan. (Example: Most SubFinder database copying is usually scheduled to run around 2:00 AM.)

Can we use an anti-virus program on a machine that houses our SubFinder system?

If you are a SubFinder Box-on-Site user, running an anti-virus program on your hardware is not only okay, but highly recommended. To avoid any problems, the anti-virus programs provide an option to place specific directories on a do not scan list. This way, live data within the SubFinder data will not be interrupted and cause any corruption, such as errors in creating jobs or calling substitutes who were not requested. The directories that I suggest be added to the do not scan list would be subfind, sfwback, and the pervasive directories on your SubFinder machine(s).

Note: Usually the machine running the job processor application will have the sfwback directory.
 

What if we are ASP customers? Is the SubFinder hardware protected?
 

Absolutely! As an ASP customer, CRS maintains and conducts general maintenance of the hardware, including virus software and installs, hard drive maintenance and disk cleanup, applying necessary patches, and keeping hardware upgraded. All hardware will be updated according to any SubFinder version updates, as long as you are serviced through CRS.
 

If you have any other questions about anti-virus programs, viruses, or SubFinder as an ASP, please contact your account specialist at 800.782.3463.

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