Counselling Management Software for Schools.
Explore the features and functionalities of our software.
Our software was intentionally built with a school-specific environment in mind.
Initially developed in direct collaboration with school counsellors and ultimately driven by the needs they identified, all ongoing software improvement involves a carefully considered and curated process to ensure we continue to speak to that narrative.
Explore the features and functionalities of our software below.
Notes.
Student Profiles: Create and categorise case note entries, upload external files, and add backdated entries to build a full student history. Our ‘Export’ function allows our users to respond to legal requests for case note histories with a single click.
Track and Review: Utilise case note #hashtags to inform insights reporting, and record student appointment non-attendances and unscheduled drop-ins with a single click. Our ‘My Caseload’ tab provides our users with a summary of their own current student allocations, and a running chronological log of all case note entries made by the user.
Access and Transparency: Restrict access to and visibility of individual case note entries, and partition students and users between school campuses. Our ‘History’ function tracks as each individual case note entry is created, drafted, saved, edited or viewed to provide our users with a timestamped event log.
Time Management: Build a set of frequently used case note templates for quick append, and bulk distribute single entries to multiple student profiles. Our ‘Actions’ tab provides our users with a real time list of form submissions, form referrals, incomplete case note entries and reminders.e timestamped history as each note entry is created, edited or accessed by a user.
Schedule.
Schedule Appointments: Create and manage student appointments from within the calendar interface, and align appointments to school timetables. As each student appointment is created in FocusCS, a ‘Draft’ case note entry placeholder is automatically created in the respective student profile for our users.
Event Options: Additionally, our ‘Calendar’ function allows our users to set task-based reminders for themselves, and to apportion time blocks to indirect or whole-of-school support related ‘other’ events for reporting purposes.
Integrate Outlook Calendar: Enable a one-way (ie: read only) sync to overlay a preview of the users Outlook calendar in FocusCS, or enable a two-way (ie: writeback) sync to also overlay a preview of the users FocusCS calendar in Outlook.
Integrate.
SIS Integration: Sync student data to FocusCS via direct TASS API integration, or leverage existing Wonde API integrations with SIS platforms including Compass, Edumate, Engage, ICON, KAMAR, SIMON and Synergetic. Our school Student Information System (SIS) sync functionality enables the automatic creation and ongoing management of student profiles for our users.
Secure and Simple: Minimise risk with our secure one-way, read only sync format, with a new school onboarding process requiring minimal school ICT department assistance. Once a new school is onboarded to FocusCS, our software is intentionally designed to run independently of a schools own ICT department.
Updates.
Continuous Improvement: Live software updates enhance security and improve user experience, and planned out-of-hours large scale rollouts prevent interruption to our users. Perpetual security upgrades increase protection and provide peace of mind for our users, and our Development pipeline of planned new feature rollouts fosters ongoing improvement.
End User Focus: Our modern, intuitive software interface decreases cognitive load for users, and the introduction of new features demonstrate our teams true understanding of the end user and informed consideration of all security, privacy, operational and compliance related aspects of a working school environment.
Reports.
Track and Explore: View a snapshot of the total number of individual students seen by Counsellors, and explore a week-by-week summary of the total number of case note entries made, case note #hashtags used and form submissions received by the school account. Our sidebar modals allows our users to filter data by additional student data points, and to review and update student ‘status’ and ‘severity’ settings from directly within the reporting dashboard.
Generate and Export: export de-identified Student activity reports suitable for leadership teams, and Counsellor activity reports for internal team meetings and reviews. Our ‘NCCD’ function allows our users to export raw data to assist with the formalised NCCD documentation preparation process.
Forms.
Digitise Processes: Build and manage a set of custom form templates, distribute form links electronically and receive form submissions in real-time to the ‘Actions’ tab. Associate submitted forms to student profiles for storage, and prioritise and refer form submissions between users.
Time Management: Quickly create duplicate versions of each form to suit specific audiences, and set ‘required’ fields to ensure each form is always received fully competed upon first submission. Our ‘Forms’ functions allows users to update form templates without interruption to the process, and while preserving all past submissions.
Promote Accessibility: Distribute form links to recipients electronically via email, or embed form links into school portals, websites and media resources. Our ‘Forms’ function produces a unique URL for each individual form template, allowing our users to bookmark forms on school devices and convert links into QR codes.
Secure.
Data Protection: Our entirely cloud-based software is hosted by dedicated AWS servers located in Sydney, and geo-locked to Australia. Cutting-edge encryption technologies ensure data and privacy are maintained, and daily local data backups and storage facilitate increased data security, reliability and accessibility. Microsoft Azure SSO authentication technology strengthens digital security for our users, and RBAC governed by PoLP underpins access principles.
Software Integrity: Our Agile model security patching supports security, compliance and software efficiency. Regular penetration testing is undertaken to conduct scheduled deep scans and randomised light scans, and active load testing and diagnostic log monitoring ensures smooth operation for our users.
Strict Compliance: Policies and procedures informed by a cybersecurity qualified team ensure ongoing compliance with the highest level of Australian data security standards.
Support.
Service Desk: Secure Jira customer accounts provide each user with direct access our dedicated online Service Desk function. Hosting our full suite of knowledge base articles, helpful video guides and support ticketing desk, our Service Desk enables 24/7 monitoring and triage of user support tickets by our team of Brisbane-based FocusCS support staff.
Personal Approach: We place company-wide emphasis on timely support ticket response and status updates for users. Our independent software design incorporates an intentional, conscious minimisation of the need for school ICT department involvement by encouraging direct communication with our users for support matters, and promotes direct and personal communications with our users in lieu of AI chat bots or outsourced support hotlines.
Focus CJM Pty Ltd ABN 52 673 738 219 trading as FocusCS.
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