SmartPass Shipped

📌 Admin Nav Update

Admins will soon have one integrated navigation menu—no more toggling between Teacher View and Admin View. 🤩 We'll gradually roll this out to accounts over the coming weeks. (Our Customer Advisory Board met for the first time last week. This change was the most-voted feature improvement from a list of more than 15 options.)

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✏️ Edit Names, Grade Levels, and ID Numbers

Admins can now directly edit user's name, grade level, and ID number from the Student Snapshot page—no need to contact our support team.

✋ Encounter Prevention Override

Encounter Prevention allows admins to prevent two or more students from being in the hallway at the same time—blocking meetups for besties, vaping, or the next TikTok challenge.

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However, we never want to put educators in a position when they really need to create a pass and SmartPass isn’t allowing them to. (Front office staff, we heard you!)

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Now, the Encounter Prevention pop-up will notify why two students are in an encounter prevention group, and give admins the option to override and create the needed pass anyway. Admins can also grant override permission to select teacher accounts, and always see case details to ensure it’s being used properly.

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⏯️ Pause Your Schedule for the Day

If you don’t have a Schedule that fits, you can now pause your schedule for the day by selecting “Other” from the Bell Schedule menu. This means SmartPass won’t show class rosters or student origin rooms for pass creation.

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⚙️ Small but Mighty Improvements

• Room and folder creation is faster with auto-selected color, icon, travel-type, and time limit
• Room numbers are now optional
• Overtime passes default to ending after 25 minutes
• Schedule terms and school year dates are editable
• Flex activity attendance has been relocated to the bottom of the Flex tab

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⏱️ Missed Class Time

SmartPass already knows the student’s hall pass history—what time of day a student left and how long they were out. And now with Schedules, we can overlay the student’s schedule onto that pass history for this incredibly impactful view!

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This new data table will be visible on the Student Snapshot for all Hall Pass Pro accounts. It will show all classes over the date range, even if they have 0 minutes of missed class time for that class.

You’ll be able to know that Ian is not just missing 60 minutes of class per day. You’ll know that Ian is consistently missing Algebra. Does he have a problem with the class content? With the teacher? With a peer in that class? This data is very likely an early indicator of trouble for Ian, visible long before grades come out. And it will help you make more informed decisions about the best interventions for Ian along with his teacher(s) and parent(s).

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📊 Room Usage & Staff Usage Analytics

This month, we’ve added two new reports to your in-app Analytics:

• A room usage table, showing the most frequently and least frequently used rooms in SmartPass, either to the origin or destination.
• And a staff usage table has also been added, showing you which staff are—or are not— consistently using SmartPass to manage student movement!

Remember, you can filter this by time frames, so whether you like to do a weekly, monthly or quarterly audit of your pass data, we have you covered. Don’t forget, you can export this to share with others in your school as well!

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📍 Closest Rooms Improvements

You’ve been able to identify closest rooms since the start of school last year. But we heard the functionality didn’t do quite enough to truly limit students from selecting other bathrooms and water fountains that were further away, causing more time out of class. So we researched, listened, and got to work improving this feature!

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Now, students will only see the closest rooms from their origin. The other bathrooms and water fountains aren’t even available to select. Unless you flag one as closed, in which case others do become available.

On the teacher side, teachers creating a pass will see closest rooms first, and the others are visible under All Rooms.

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We hope this feature delivers the value you need, and that by hiding non-closest rooms, students will spend less time out of class. This improved functionality also simplifies pass creation for elementary-age students.

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📱 iOS Updates

Next up, the iOS app for SmartPass has gotten some important updates so that it keeps up with the full functionality of the website.

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The previous home screen and "My Room" tabs have been merged. This allows teachers to:

• Easily see their most relevant passes, any that are coming from or to their room
• Quickly switch rooms, if they are part of multiple
• Launch Kiosk mode in just a single tap from the rooms menu

📊 Analytics

You’ve told us that you want more out of your SmartPass data. You want to know:

• Are there particular grades or students that are creating more passes than others?
• Are there any students creating passes more excessively than others?
• Which students are missing the most class time?

We’re now bringing answers to these questions directly into SmartPass. Live this week, admins will see a new Analytics tab!

We built this feature directly from your feedback. If you click on the Analytics tab, you’ll see:

• A line graph of the number of passes being created by grade
• A bar chart of the total passes by grade
• A scatter plot of the passes created by students—to better understand the distribution of the total passes created

You can filter this by time frames, so whether you like to do a weekly, monthly or quarterly audit of your pass data, we have you covered. Don’t forget, you can export & share this data.

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We’re launching Analytics in beta in order to get this out to you all right away—and we’ll continue to make improvements.

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🛎️ Data Concierge

In addition to more in-app Analytics, there’s a new add-on service that offers more robust, customized reporting for administrators ready to dig deeper. We can even support districts looking to aggregate data across multiple campuses.

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We’ve built a team of skilled analysts to be your Data Concierge! Our goal is to produce reports you can trust—to then take action on. This add-on service costs $799 per campus. If you’re interested, send us a live chat and we’ll create a quote for you.

Here’s how it works: Admin will open the Explore tab and select Data Concierge, then tell us what data you’re looking for. We will get to work pulling it and send it over for review within 3 days. Your concierge will collaborate with you on your request and be sure to return insightful, actionable data.

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🧮 Pass Limits per Week or Term

Right now in SmartPass, admins can configure a maximum number of passes per day and determine which rooms count toward this limit. But with a daily limit in place, we’ve heard that many students feel entitled to their two daily passes even when they may not really need them.

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Customers have asked for alternate time frames for these limits. Live now in SmartPass, admins can configure new pass limits by week or by term. (The "term" is based on the terms in your schedule, such as quarter, trimester, semester.)

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We hope this helps you support students in learning better time management and accountability.

• Go to the Accounts tab on the left, and click on Pass Limits near the top right.
• Turn on the Limit for All Students.
• Choose the timeframe for your limit: per day, per week, or per term.

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✅ One-Click Pass Approve

We’ve heard from teachers and other school staff that they need an easier way to review and approve (or deny!) pass requests. Live in SmartPass, teachers will see a right sidebar of any incoming requests, both for now passes and for scheduled passes.

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This new feature will help teachers:

• review NOW requests faster
• delete any missed SCHEDULED pass requests to clear the list

💡 If a message is attached to the pass request, an icon will be visible over the student’s picture and the teacher simply has to hover over it to see the full message. If the teacher wants to see a bit more info, such as how many passes the student has used today, they can click the profile photo to see the full details.

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We hope that your teachers, and especially your nurses and librarians, will appreciate this update!

🥁 Schedules

This is the biggest change to SmartPass since our digital hall pass solution launched six years ago. Before Schedules, you only knew where a student was if they had an active pass. Now, your bell schedule and classes will show up in SmartPass, giving your team a complete picture of what’s happening in your school.

Take a peek at this 6-minute walk-through to see the ✨ magic ✨ of Schedules!

To recap the highlights >>

• Students no longer have to enter their origin room—SmartPass knows based on their schedule or the kiosk location.
• Teachers can quickly create a pass from their home screen student roster—plus see that it’s a MWF day and a timer for the current period.
• Front office staff can search for any student, see their current class, any active pass, and send a pass request to the student—a faster and less disruptive way to get students where they need to be.
• Schedules is available to all customers on our Standard Plan and above.

To get Schedules ready for your new school year, go to the new Bell Schedule tab in SmartPass and follow the steps. If you already submitted your bell schedule and it’s not changing, no need to resubmit.

📊 Wrapped Reports  +  ⭐ Staff Ratings

Two new tiles are launched to your admin home with data + insights from the school year:

• Open your campus’ SmartPass Wrapped report with stats like >>
  • Recap of total passes, total pass time, and number of student/teacher users
  • Most popular bathrooms + other common locations for passes
  • Number of encounters prevented, and more!
• Check out what your staff have to say about SmartPass in the Staff Ratings and Reviews

We hope this data is valuable as you make plans for 2024–25!

iOS App Update

For our iPhone and iPad app, we made improvements to creating passes so that…

• Profile Pictures now appear when creating passes
• Closest rooms will show up
• It’s lightning fast

Download the latest version here!

Updated Pass Creation Flow

The origin (Coming from?) and destination (Going to?) are now on the same step or screen in the pass creation process.

Calendar Month & Day View

On the Calendar tab for teachers and students, they can see a list of all scheduled passes they have both for that particular day and the month—and click through different days easily.

✈️ No Fly Time

In just a few clicks, you can prevent students from creating passes during the first/last few minutes of class. Teachers can still create passes, but they’ll see a warning.

👉 Go to the Rooms tab and select Pass Options to set this up.

↕️ Organized & Sorting Pass Requests

Requests for teachers are now split by requests for “Now” and “Scheduled,” making it easier to determine which passes should be looked at right now. When they have a pending request, they’ll see a Red 🔴 notification number.

Plus — teachers can sort them by most-recent first, or oldest first.

Any requests that were “sent” but not approved yet will show on the Calendar tab.

🖌️ Small, Mighty Improvements

• Scheduling Passes is 5x Faster: It defaults to the current date and time, and you can use arrow buttons to adjust.
• First & Last Names show on all pass tiles, as long as a student’s name fits.
• A Current Date & Time line show up on the calendar.
• The calendar live updates without refreshing, except for Flex activities.
• Ended Passes are color-coded based on the room.

Switch to Teacher View

A small-but mighty feature – we made it even easier for admins to switch from admin view back to Teacher view. Learn More >

Sound

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Flex Enhancements

More than 10 enhancements to Flex, including: Bulk Upload Students into Activities, Student Search for Activities, and Levels of Control. Learn more about Flex in our Support Center!

Admin Dashboard Connects to CSM

The admin dashboard now displays a card with your Customer Success Manager’s photo, name, email, and office hours.

Share SmartPass

All staff accounts have a button that easily enables them to share SmartPass with a peer.

Have you ever wanted to know if a certain student has made passes any today? Or see how many minutes (or hours) they’ve spent out of class?

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Now in SmartPass, you’ll be able to search for that student directly from your homepage – and see their latest passes, quick stats, and more. It’s perfect if you want a quick glance at a student, and it's ideal for parent conversations.

Read more about these updates that we’ll be rolling out to schools over the next 2 weeks:

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🧑‍🎓 The Student Page

On the right, you’ll see some "Overview" statistics about how a student is using SmartPass. You’ll see their latest passes and reports – the ability to create a pass or report for them. On the left, you’ll see info about when they were last active and if they are in an Encounter Prevention group.

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Best of all, you can filter these stats, passes, and reports to any date/time range you'd like.

Shout-outs to Beth S., Mason J., Mike P., Tara S., Ryan X., Stan G., and many more teachers and staff who gave feedback and made this feature possible.

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💖 3 Enhancements for Admins

When an active pass limit is set on a room (ex. a Bathroom set to 4 passes max), teachers will now see an alert requiring them to override the limit if they want to create or approve the pass.

Room limits can now be set to an unlimited amount of time, which is great for any kind of extended pass you might like to set up. Previously, they were limited to 2 hours.

By default, all admins will now be able to access the Teacher View. Previously, admins weren’t able to switch by default.

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💌 Join the SmartPass "Wall of Love"

In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, we’ve put together a “Wall of Love” page on our website so prospective teachers and admins can see what our current customers think of SmartPass.

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You can submit your short testimonial here — and we'll send you a free SmartPass magnet.

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Flex + Attendance is Launched!

Read more about our new solution for Flex Period Setup and Management.

Closest Rooms

During room setup, you can tell SmartPass which rooms are closest. We know this is especially helpful for water fountains and bathrooms! These suggestions help control the flow of student traffic and help students spend less time out of class. Learn More >

Emergency Mode

Admins can quickly and quietly alert all staff in the building about an emergency and put a pause on student movement. Any student in the hallway is identified and can be checked in and accounted for by the closest teacher. Learn More >

New Settings: Hallway Max Capacity + Pass Cooldown

Tired of students requesting a pass every single period? Put a stop to frequent flyers with Pass Cooldown! Also set a Hallway Max Capacity so SmartPass can help you limit the number of students out of class at any given time.

Other Noteworthy Updates!

• Student & Teacher Home Screen Redesign
• Student & Teacher Calendar
• Overtime Passes now turn red
• ID Card Stickers
• Notification Sounds now available

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⏳ Wait in Line

The time has come – Wait in Line is available today. When a room’s limit is reached, students can join a virtual waiting line. Students can carry on learning without having their eyes glued to SmartPass. When it’s their turn, they’ll see a popup and have 30 seconds to start this pass and leave. In case there's an emergency, teachers can override the limit.

To turn on this feature, go to Rooms → Pass Options. Once you enable it, students and teachers can start waiting in line right away!‍

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We really appreciate your patience – we know this feature was a long-time coming, and it required some significant changes under-the-hood to make it happen.

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🧮 Pass Limits: Only for Certain Rooms

You can now make pass limits only apply to certain rooms – for example, just bathrooms and water fountains. That way, counselor appointments, nurse visits, tardies, or trips to the main office won’t have to count toward a student’s daily limit.

Special thanks to Brian T., Kenneth E., Dustin R., Christ M., Kryshelle C., Michael C., Maria M., and many more for suggesting this feature!

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🙋 New Help Center

Curious how other schools use SmartPass? We’ve redesigned our Help Center from the ground-up, making it easier for you to see guides on how to configure SmartPass, tips & tricks, live chat support, and more.

Click the “?” and it will open a new sidebar to access everything. If you’re on the Plus Plan, you’ll also see the phone number for instant support and a link to schedule optional monthly calls with us.

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🔄 ID Numbers & Grade Levels Sync

If your school uses Clever or ClassLink, you’ll now see students’ ID Numbers and Grade Levels populated automatically.

• Use ID Numbers to set up extra security on Kiosk Mode or access Digital ID Cards.
• Use Grade Levels to configure rooms to only show for certain grades, or run analytics on pass history.

⭐️ Not using Clever or ClassLink and want to switch? Simply chat with our support team. If you’ve manually uploaded ID Numbers or Grade Levels from a spreadsheet, we didn’t sync ID Numbers or Grade Levels for you. Please contact us if you want to turn on the sync.

🔁 Recurring Future Passes

At most schools, students have places they go to every day or week at the same time. Now, instead of recreating that pass every time – teachers can create future passes that will automatically repeat.

This is perfect for repeated library passes, guidance appointments, and other “permanent” passes. Students and staff will see these passes on their dashboards.

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📧 Email Notifications & More Notifications

It’s finally here! Students and teachers will get notifications from all of the important activity happening in SmartPass. Just in case it gets too noisy, staff can turn them off – but we’ve made it so students will always receive them.

Plus, we have 4 new notifications incoming:

• For Certain Students: Notifications whenever a certain “frequent flyer” has a pass start. So the instant that student has a pass, you’ll know about it.
• Weekly Summaries: Simple, actionable emails that let you know what’s happening with SmartPass in your school.
• Prevented Encounters: When an encounter prevention is triggered, you’ll get an email.
• Incoming Reports: When a staff member reports a student, admins will be able to receive a notification that the student was reported.

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🔐 Restrict Ending Passes

You’ll now have the option to restrict students from being able to end their pass themselves unless they’ve actually made it to the room. This is ideal for situations where you want verification that a student isn’t ending the pass prematurely.

How does it work? When enabled for the room, when a student tries to end their pass, they’ll be prompted to enter the room’s code. This verification code changes every 30 seconds automatically, so students can’t memorize the code and walk away. Teachers can access this code on the My Room tab.

Alternatively, teachers can end a student’s pass by entering their Teacher Pin on the student’s device – or end it on the teacher’s dashboard.

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📵 Disable Phones for Students

We know many of your schools might have zero cell phone policies for students, so now in SmartPass, admins will be able to prevent all students from signing into SmartPass on their phones— just as an additional measure to make sure they don't have a reason to use their phone in school.

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🪪 Kiosk Mode Improvements

We’re bringing three big improvements to Kiosk Mode:

1. Dedicated Login. Now, teachers and admins don’t have to use their own email and password to set up a Kiosk. This SmartPass-dedicated username and password will just sign a teacher in as a Kiosk – and nothing more.
2. ID Scanning. If you plug in an external ID scanner into Kiosk mode, students can now simply scan their ID card and tap where they want to go. When they return to class or their destination, just scan and their pass is automatically ended for them.
3. Type in ID Number. In case you don’t have third-party ID Scanners, you can still toggle Kiosk Mode to only allow students to type in their ID numbers. Learn more.

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🙈 Room Visibility Grade Levels & File Upload

We’ve heard your feedback, and we’ve integrated Grade Levels and file upload into Room Visibility. Now, you can set a room to be visible only for a certain grade level. Plus, you can import lists of students directly from a spreadsheet.

🛑 Encounter Prevention

Have you ever wanted to make sure certain students aren’t in the hallways together? Whether you’re trying to stop vaping or vandalism, or put an end to bullying or “lovebirds” from meeting up.

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Now SmartPass can help prevent these unwanted “encounters” for you, so you spend less time trying to manually monitor these students. Check it out, along with other improvements you might’ve missed.

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Just select two or more students that you don’t want to be in the hallway at the same time, and let SmartPass do the work. When a student or staff member tries to make a pass while another student has one, it’ll be prevented. Best of all, we’ll tell you when an encounter was prevented — so you can see when students tried to meet up and how many times this occurs.

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📸 Profile Pictures

Add profile pictures for your students that will show for teachers and admins on the Hall Monitor tab, on passes, and more — making it easy to identify who has a hall pass in the hallway and who doesn't.

It’s easy to set up and will take less than 10 minutes if you bulk-upload the files provided by a third-party photo vendor (e.g. Lifetouch).

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🔓 Google Instant Login

If your school uses Google, you’ll now be able to use this special link: www.smartpass.app/google to instantly take you to the Google sign-in page to login to SmartPass. It skips a step of having to type in your email address.

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This is perfect for your school’s Intranet/dashboard. Don’t fret, the current login page will still work fine.

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Student Quick Previews

We heard that teachers were looking for a way to check to see how many passes a student has had — especially before approving or creating a pass. Now you can!

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When creating a pass, click the (i) icon to see a quick preview of the student’s latest passes and some basic stats. You can also check out this info on pass card popups and pass requests.

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Full-Screen Mode

Before a student can leave the room, some schools and teachers make the student flip around their Chromebook/iPad with the created pass. Now, students can make this “full-screen” so teachers can see it more easily.

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Plus, teachers can see those same basic stats before the student creates the pass — making it easier for teachers to be aware of how many passes a student has created.

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‍Hide & filter expired passes

Directly from teacher feedback, we’ve cleaned up the Teacher dashboard so they can automatically filter expired passes that were made in the past hour, day, etc. Plus, teachers can optionally hide the section altogether!

New Android app & SmartPass for Older Devices

We’ve completely redesigned our app on Android devices from the ground-up, giving teachers and students the latest features like pass limits as well as a familiar design. Download the new app here!

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In addition, if your school has outdated iPads or other devices lying around, we’ve optimized our website so that you can use SmartPass just like a downloaded app.

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Encouraging students to end expired passes

With schools setting pass limits for Bathrooms and other common rooms, we wanted to make sure that students aren’t waiting for the room to open if another student forgot to end their pass (we found that almost ⅓ of all passes weren’t ended). We created some notifications and pop-ups to encourage students to end their passes.

Therefore, other students won’t be waiting as long for the Bathroom to open up (especially useful once our Waiting in Line feature is released next month).

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CSV Report Exporting

Admins can now export an entire pass report and have a CSV sent to their email. Previously there was a cap of 300 passes, but we optimized it so it can efficiently export as many passes as you want. We also made the passes and accounts pages 2x faster!

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Small Features

Along with under-the-hood improvements, you’ll see a refreshed app icon and sign-in page. From your feedback, we’ve also updated the design of the Teacher Pin to make it clearer.