This FAQ is based on questions commonly asked by schools new to Hero. Some answers will not apply to NSW schools, for example, those around enrolment.
Can I enter student email addresses in bulk?
If you send Helpdesk a list that contains NSN and student email addresses, they will upload these for you. Students without NSNs cannot be uploaded.
Can I enter student images in bulk?
If the photo files have been named with the Hero ID, a school can upload these themselves. If they have been named with the NSN, Helpdesk can upload these for a school. If any other naming convention (eg, legacy ID or name) has been used they may have to be loaded individually or renamed. If unsure, ask the Helpdesk for advice/support.
Importing Student Profile Images in Bulk
How can we give our Principal the correct permissions?
Contact the Helpdesk, and they will set your Principal up with the correct permissions.
How can I record and analyse behaviour?
You will already have a default Behaviour page and associated tags. Posts can be made to the page, with attachments (photos, docs, etc) and appropriate choices of tags. Tags can then be analysed through Tag Data Sheets.
Editing an Existing Set of Tags
Do you have any information about Hero that I can show to caregivers?
You can give parents the link to our Parent Guide page on the Hero website.
You can also download and send parents this poster which takes them through the signing in process: Ready, Set, Sign in Poster
How can staff be notified of posts/messages?
Teachers of students will be notified of posts to their students’ pages, and to absence messages. Other staff can be notified of posts to students’ pages by subscribing to a page, a group or a student. Staff can also subscribe to notifications of absence.
Staff can subscribe to the Staff Feed (except Duo or Suite schools).
Authors of posts will be notified of comments on those posts.
Subscriptions can’t be made to the Community or Student Feeds, or to comments.
Subscribing to Post Notifications
How do autogroups work?
Autogroups are ‘rules based’ groups where membership is based on the value of a specific field, posts to a specific page, Teams settings for a class, or system settings like attendance or enrolment status.
Students are not added to an autogroup directly. Updating the underlying field, posting to the page, or joining a class will automatically add a student to the related autogroup.
Viewing Students in Auto Groups
How can I manage bus lists?
Many schools set up a field to record a student’s bus. Autogroups can be created (by Helpdesk) from these fields to help schools manage buses. As with other groups, lists and posts can be created and filtered by these bus autogroups.
How do I manage Houses?
A field can be set up to record students’ houses. Autogroups can be created (by Helpdesk) from these fields to help schools manage houses. As with other groups, lists and posts can be created and filtered by these House autogroups. In addition, House will appear on the student profile and the pre-made ‘Table with year-level counts by House’ list can be used to view numbers.
Creating and Managing Student Information Fields
How do I add a teacher to a class or team?
You can add a teacher to a class by editing the individual class or by going through Classes in the Administration menu.
Teachers of classes will flow through to Team autogroups automatically as long as that association has been made to the class.
Editing a Class (Name, Teacher or Team)
How do I add/remove students from class or Team?
You can add/remove a student to/from a class by editing the individual class or by going through (Admin / Students /) Classes. Adding a student to a class will automatically remove that student from a prior class.
Student membership of classes will flow through to Team autogroups automatically.
Editing a Class (Name, Teacher or Team)
How do I communicate with individual caregivers/families?
You can set up a Caregiver Communication page for this purpose. You would need to make it visible to staff and caregivers, and enable caregiver posting and commenting.
How do caregivers update their details?
Caregivers can’t edit, or even view their details, or those of their children. They must let the school know of any changes to circumstances.
Schools can bulk print student and medical profiles to allow caregivers to check existing details. However, these profiles would have to be sent out to caregivers by hand or post.
How do I allow caregiver access to Finance?
Access to Finance is set through a student’s Finance ($) menu. Schools with large number of new entrants may ask Helpdesk to set access for new students in bulk.
How do I connect Hero to Xero?
In Administration > Finance you should see a ‘Xero Settings’ section. This is where you enable Xero integration by following these instructions: Enabling Xero Integration
If you don’t see the ‘Xero Settings’ section, contact the Helpdesk and they will be able to turn this on for you.
How do I make changes to our application form?
Schools are free to customise their own application forms.It is a two step process:
- Create the required field - Creating and Maintaining Student Information Fields
- Then add the field to the application form - Customising your Enrolment Form
How do applicants provide us with documents?
Documents cannot be uploaded with the online application form. The application form can be customised with an email address where applicants can send documents. These can then be attached to a post to (eg.) the student’s Administration Notes page.
How do I manage our enrolment scheme?
The Zoning Status field is found on the Ministry tab in a student’s record. We recommend that the Zoning Status field is not included in a school’s application form as it can be incorrectly completed by applicants. Zoning Status should be entered by an Administrator after the school has confirmed eligibility.
The Waitlisting status for applicants can be used for students outside the school zone. Schools might add further fields as required to help manage enrolment schemes. (eg, child of staff member, sponsorship.)
Creating and Managing Student Information Fields
How do I enrol applicants?
The application -> enrolment process involves several steps but the general flow is as follows:
- An application is made, usually online but some schools have a paper form to fill in.
- The application can be Accepted, Waitlisted or Declined.
- An accepted applicant becomes a ‘pre-enrolled’ student whose record can be edited as required. Pre-enrolleds (aka. Future Students) can be included in
Community Feed posts, groups and Events Bookings. - When a student attends school the pre-enrolled student is made current.
Office Administration Guide - Enrolment
Why do I have to contact Helpdesk when I edit some contacts' email addresses?
If an email address is used for a contact at another school or another contact at your own school, but some details (eg the name) are different, Hero asks you to contact the helpdesk so they can confirm that it is the same person before the merging occurs and changes the details on the other contact record.
Why does a returning student show a class but not appear on class rolls or lists?
When a student leaves, their last classroom still shows on their profile, even though the leaving process removes them from that room. If they return, you have to physically add the student into their current classroom.
Adding and Removing Students from Classes
Changing a Student from Not Enrolled to Pre-Enrolled (Returning Student)
Can caregivers of pre-enrolleds access Hero?
Yes, as long as the school has given them access to Hero. They won't see any learning content as none will have been generated for them yet, but they will see Community Feed posts targetted to Former students (or other groups of which they have been made are members) and other links.
How do I get the best results from List Builder?
List Builder is very powerful as nearly every staff, student and caregiver field is available for inclusion. There are many pre-made and export lists to serve MoE and other outside provider requirements, as well as standard school requirements such as attendance reporting, class lists and family details.
Creating a List of Student Information
Creating a List of Staff Information
Generating Pre-Made Lists in List Builder
Most lists can be sorted and filtered to a greater or lesser extent, and List builder allows for some complex filters to get exactly what you want.
If necessary List Builder can export to a spreadsheet, so can form the data source for a mail merge, or allow further analysis using spreadsheet formulae, etc.
How do I manage accounts for staff who are also caregivers?
As parent and staff logins access separate areas in Hero, staff members do need to use a separate email address when logging in as a caregiver. You will need to ask the user to give you a personal email address as well as their staff one.
Why can't my staff member log in?
This is generally because they either don’t have an email set up in Hero, or are entering an incorrect email address or password.
How do I remove an unwanted Pending Roll Return?
To remove a pending roll return your Principal just needs to go to Roll Returns, click View Details (the eye icon) for the return that is incorrect, click Review Now, then choose the reject option.
How do I record school closures?
School closures are set in School Dates in your administration menu. You just need to click on the date to close the school for the day. (Note: do not edit term boundaries for these closures.)
Setting your school dates and closed days
How do I set school term dates?
Term dates are set from School Dates in your Administration menu.
Help article: setting your school dates and closed days
How do I set up a school event calendar?
If you create a Google calendar for your school events, you can add this to Hero:
Adding a calendar to the family app
How do I check caregivers are receiving/viewing posts?
You can check caregiver engagement with Community Feed and student posts though Post Engagement Analysis. This shows who received notifications and how, and who has (not) read individual posts.
Analysing Community Engagement with Posts
How do I troubleshoot caregiver access issues?
There are a number of reasons why a caregiver might not have access to Hero:
-
A caregiver has or had children at two schools but only one shows.
- They have provided a different email address to each school. Check with the caregiver which address they'd like to use.
- There is a typo (often subtle) in the email address at the school that is not available.
- There's another problem with the non-available school account (see below).
-
A caregiver sees one student at the school but not a sibling
- One has access and the other does not. Turn on access to Hero
- The caregiver email addresses differ. Copy & Paste the email address from the visible student's contact to the invisible student's contact. (This will result in a merge request if they differed.)
- There's another problem with the invisible student's contact's account (see below).
-
A user can log in but sees nothing.
They have an email address but haven't been given access. Turn on access to Hero. -
A user's account appears OK but they have no access.
Reset their access to Hero (turn it off, save, on, save). -
A user is being logged out or gets an error logging in
Reset their access to Hero (turn it off, save, on, save). Check the time and timezone are correct on their device using time.is -
A caregiver cannot log in
Their email address may not have been added in Hero, or there is a typo. Enter correct email address.
Why are messages disappearing from Feeds?
When a message is deleted from the staff, community or student feed, it removes it for everyone. Most likely one of your staff doesn’t realise this and is deleting messages after they have read them. You just need to let your staff know not to delete messages. Our technical team are usually able to restore messages and can also find out who has been deleting them if necessary.
Why are my leavers still showing in lists?
Unenrolment is a two step process, and final unenrolment can’t be done until after the last attendance is taken for a leaver. It is likely you have prepared your leavers for unenrolment but not completed the final step to actually unenrol, or they have a leaving date in the future.
Why can't I see all attendance codes?
If you can’t see any attendance codes, this is because the school has not turned on attendance codes for teachers - they are just wanting you to mark a student present or absent. If you can see most codes, but not all, this indicates that the school has turned on attendance codes for teachers, but there are some codes which affect individual students and usually involve a number of days absence, such as U (stood down/suspended) or H (attending a Regional Health School). These codes can only be entered from the individual student’s attendance page.
Why can't teachers save their rolls?
This is caused by the connection being dropped after a period of inactivity on the computer (eg if the teacher has not logged out of Hero overnight)
Refreshing the Hero page (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+R) before taking the roll prevents this happening.
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