Getting started
First week after go-live
Day-by-day checklist for the first seven days after launch - what to verify, who owns each check, and the two silent failures that only show up a week later.
Getting started guide for day and boarding schools.
Last updated August 29, 2026
The first week separates a smooth rollout from a help-desk flood. Keep the scope deliberately small: sign-in for real people, an accurate roster, one academic workflow, and one thing families can see. Everything else can wait, and adding a second module before the first is stable roughly doubles the volume of questions that arrive at the office.
Two failures in this week are quiet rather than loud, and both are worth checking explicitly. The first is the daily cron job, which nobody notices is missing until a due date passes without a reminder. The second is email: if SMTP was never proven on the live host, receipts and magic links fail one at a time rather than all at once, so the pattern takes days to become obvious.
| Day | Focus | Owner |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Admin sign-in, password resets, role smoke test, confirm the daily cron entry exists | Platform Admin |
| Day 1 | Send a live test from /settings/email-test on the production host, not staging | Platform Admin |
| Day 2 | Teacher timetable and attendance for one grade; check class teacher is set at /classes | Academic lead |
| Day 3 | Fee balances visible on /fees/me for pilot families; reconcile one class against the old sheet | Finance |
| Day 4 | Parent portal invites for the pilot class, then confirm each parent is linked at /parents | Operator |
| Day 5 | One notice to all staff, checking that both the in-app and email copies arrive | Communications |
| Day 6-7 | Review /activity-log for failed sign-ins, then the defaulter list and open questions | Admin |
Common questions
Quick answers in plain language.
Parents received their welcome email but the link no longer works. What happened?+
The welcome link sent when office staff create a parent portal account lasts 24 hours and can be used once. After that the parent requests a fresh magic link from /signin, which lasts fifteen minutes, or signs in with the password they were given.
What is the single most missed step in week one?+
Scheduling scripts/run-school-cron.sh. Nothing visibly fails without it - fee autopay, dunning, homework reminders, scheduled notices, and retention purges just never happen. Confirm it on day one rather than discovering it when the first due date passes in silence.
Teachers cannot mark the register for their class. What is wrong?+
Attendance follows classTeacherId and coClassTeacherId on the class record, edited at /classes. A subject assignment at /teachers/assignments controls grades and timetable, not the register, so a teacher can hold assignments and still see nothing at /attendance.
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