Product Updates and New Releases
Recent changes to our products can be found here.
If you have any specific suggestions or recommendations on how to improve our products, we recommend posting them to ideas.goguardian.com, where other GoGuardian users can upvote your idea!
For the most recent changes to our products, please check out this blog!
Product Updates for the 2020-2021 School Year
All Products
05/14/20 Chat Desktop Notifications (GoGuardian Teacher)
This release adds desktop notifications so teachers will be notified whenever a student from any of their classes sends a message, regardless of what browser may be open.
To enable this feature, enable chat as you normally would (1). Then, click the triple-dot icon (2), and enable Desktop Notifications (3).
You may also want to check that your settings are set to always allow notifications. You can find this by clicking the lock icon at the beginning of the address bar on your GoGuardian Teacher page. If you do not see the Notifications option, then you can click Site Settings at the bottom of that dropdown window to find this option and enable it.
You can find more information about this here.
Single Sign-On With Clever and ClassLink
Method 1: From account.goguardian.com
The "Log in with..." buttons for signing in with Clever and ClassLink now live in our account sign-in page, account.goguardian.com!
As long as an admin or teacher user has either a Clever or ClassLink account, they can use either of these buttons to access their GoGuardian account. The buttons work in the same way that the "Log in with Google" button works.
Method 2: From the Clever and ClassLink Launchpads
Teachers and admins can also sign in from the application dashboards in Clever and ClassLink.
From Clever: clever.com/in/district_name/role/portal
From ClassLink: launchpad.classlink.com/home
Org Management
"Log In As" Feature
Super Users can now log into teachers' GoGuardian Teacher accounts as if they were the teacher. This gives Super Users the ability to accomplish three very important things:
- Troubleshoot in a quick, hands-on way when teachers are experiencing issues
- Perform routine maintenance
- Facilitate the on-boarding and off-boarding processes
From manage.goguardian.com (in User Management), Super Users can find a specific teacher user and click on the "Log In As" link directly to the right of the "Edit" option.
For the full article on the "Log In As" feature, click HERE.
Integrations
Clever and ClassLink are two possible integrations to sync teachers, classrooms, and students. For more information on Clever and ClassLink, please navigate to the respective articles below:
For more information on Integrations, click here.
Chromebooks Only Toggle is now in Org Management under Products > General
We recommend enabling this toggle if Chromebooks are the only devices where users should ever be monitored by GoGuardian.
Teacher Settings in Org Management are now consolidated under a single tab
With the addition of more items to the Products tab in org management, this tab was becoming crowded with too many options for users to navigate between. All Teacher related products are grouped together now.
GoGuardian Admin
Brand new to GoGuardian is the Parent App! It will be accessible from Org Management > Products > Parents. It is available for users of GoGuardian Admin.
Click here to learn more about GoGuardian Parent!
Click here to learn more about Flagged Activity!
Bypass Passwords migrated to 2.0
Bypass Passwords allow Teachers to access content that is blocked at an Admin level. We recommend this feature sparingly and to never allow students access. These passwords can be used consistently until it is deleted.
Click here to learn more about Bypass Passwords!
Dashboard now shows up-to-the minute online student information
To see this in action, log in to GoGuardian Admin and visit the Reporting Dashboard.
Under Configuration > Global Config, a customized block page can be used for your entire organization. Some popular options we have seen is adding a Google form or survey for website requests to their block page or adding a school logo.
Click here to learn more about custom block page!
GoGuardian Teacher
Calendar View
The new Calendar view in GoGuardian Teacher gives teachers access to a weekly view of all their scheduled classroom sessions. From here, teachers can go to an active session, view previous sessions, and also modify their upcoming sessions.
To view the full article on this feature, click here.
Chat Redesign
Active Session Redesign!
Exclude & Include Student Workflow
When a teacher excludes a student from an active session, they will now appear at the bottom of their list of students and will have a tile with a "re-include" button so that they can quickly include them back in the session. Teachers will be prompted with a modal prior to excluding the student (they can select the "Don't ask me again" checkbox if they do not want to see this modal in the future).
Selecting Students
There is now a dropdown with the placeholder "Select Students." This allows teachers to select the following types of students: online, offline, none. This used to be the checkbox with the text "All" next to it that only allowed teachers to select or deselect all students.
Lock/Unlock
Teachers are now able to unlock a student by clicking the "unlock" button on a student's tile.
Updated Reporting!
In order to continue to improve GoGuardian Teacher and to make your web application far more performant, we had to modernize our codebase. In doing so, we made some small UI/UX changes that greatly improve the usability of GoGuardian Teacher.
While the UI looks a little different, the functionality is generally the same. In fact, many aspects of the product are more visible and easier to use than the last version.
Display URL for Scenes and Admin Block pages
Refined Navigation
The global navigation, the menu that pops out from clicking the hamburger menu in the top left, was often very cluttered for teachers, especially if you had many classes and scenes. This required scrolling to access different parts of the nav and also hid links to student reports and email preferences if the list of classes/scenes got too long.
The new global nav is significantly less cluttered -- this was commonly reported and enjoyed by teachers the in user testing we conducted.

New Enlarged Student Screen

Commands From Student Tile

Easier to Archive and Restore Classrooms

Active Class Session Shortcut

Timeline View Improvements
The timeline view should also load faster now due to an upgrade to back-end services used to render the timeline. Timeline controls stick to the top of the page when you scroll down to see students below the fold.
Clicking Favicons Opens Up Tabs in a New Window
Teachers often click a student's screen, view the other tabs they have open, and then open one or more of those tabs in a new window to see what they're looking at. The new version makes that process much faster as they can click the favicons to open those tabs in a new window without having to enlarge the student's screen.
See Who Imported a Google Classroom and When
Many classes have co-teachers that share a Google Classroom. A Google Classroom can only be imported once, which can be confusing for the teacher that tries to import the Google Classroom after it has already been imported. Providing more information about who imported the class and when should resolve this confusion.
Consolidated Account Page
Different account settings lived in different parts of the navigation, making it hard to know where to expect account-level settings. To make for a more consistent experience, we've located them all in the same place.
District Quick Lists Created by Super User
Super Users will be able to manage Quick Lists through Org Management, and they will be available to Teachers when creating scenes. To make this process even easier, admins will be able to upload and download lists using a CSV.
Click here to learn more about Quick Lists!
GoGuardian Beacon
Alert Preferences
Turn off alerts for all suicide phases except for Active Planning, IT administrators and counselors can customize which alerts are generated and shown in the Beacon dashboard.
"Why" an Alert was Generated
We've introduced the Rationale tab to give users more visibility into understanding why an alert was generated.
When clicking into an alert, the contents of the Rationale tab will be listed including Screenshots of activity prior and after an alert, as well as a specific screenshot taken when the alert was generated.
Words on the Page will display the text found within the page, along with highlighted terms that may have been related to self-harm or suicide. Users also have the option to download a PDF of the Words on the Page from an alert.
More information on this feature can be found here: Understanding Why an Alert was Generated
Notifications by Phase
Users are now able to configure Beacon alert notifications by Phase. If you and your staff decide not to send Notifications for certain phases, such as Suicide Research, this can be toggled off under the Staff Notifications settings area of Beacon.
More information on this feature can be found here: Staff Escalation List
Filtering the Beacon Alert Dashboard
Individual users in Beacon can now sort which alerts they'd like to see on their dashboard by selecting only the Phases they'd like to see from the filtering options at the top of the dashboard.
Additionally, users can narrow down the time frame of alerts using the date range picker in the top right of their dashboard. More information on these features can be found here: Beacon Dashboard and Alert Filtering
Beacon Grouped Alerts
You will now be able to review and take action on a group of alerts rather than individually assessing each individual alert. Once an action is taken on a grouped alert, the alert group will close, and any subsequent activity on the same URL and Predicted Phase combination will form a new group of alerts. This will ensure that any subsequent activity will still produce a notification and require review.
For the full article on Beacon Grouped Alerts, click HERE.
Beacon Alert Details Drawer
An Alert Drawer is a panel that is overlaid on top of a dashboard or search results and slides in from the right side. It contains the entire alert and users can interact with the Drawer without leaving the current page or position in the dashboard.
Note: If a user is sent a link to an alert details page (via URL), they will be taken to a separate page with alert details. Upon returning to dashboard it will take them back to the most recent alerts ("top" of dashboard).
Infinite Scrolling/Lazy Loader for Beacon Alerts
As the user scrolls through alert cards, more alerts are loaded automatically. Infinite scrolling offers an efficient way to browse the ocean of alerts, without having to click or wait for pages to be loaded.
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