ToolingU.com Website Update

ToolingU.com has been updated with new features to improve user experience and simplify common user tasks.

On ToolingU.com

• Assessment Tests – an Excel export has been added.


• Solution Pages – new pages featuring the Administration Center and the Student Center have been added.

For Administrators:

• Student Passwords – can now be reset by Administrators.


• Subscriptions – a new feature has been added to allow Administrators to lookup Subscription numbers to view details and determine if the number is a valid Subscription.


• Student Names – in the case of misspelled student names, an easy method has been created to allow Administrators to request a correction. Once set, a student name cannot be changed. However, in the situation of a misspelling a Tooling U Customer Service representative can correct the name.


• Student Groups – a new method has been added to provide Administrators with an easy and flexible method to view and print the students that have been assigned to a group or a range of selected groups.


• Bulk Approvals/Disapprovals for Competencies – Administrators can now select competencies as being approved or disapproved in a single click. Prior to this change an administrator was forced to approve or disapprove each request one at a time.


• Student Templates – can now be applied to all students within a selected group.


• Student Permission – a new permission has been added to give the Administrator the option of requiring only that a Final Exam be completed before marking a class as being complete.


• Administrator Accounts – Administrators can now update their own account information without being required to have permissions to manage other Administrator accounts.


• Manage Administrator Accounts – a new feature has been added which allows multiple administrators to be added to a single Administrator Role. Prior to this change, it was only possible to apply an Administrator Role by opening each Administrator account and making the change.


• Competency Manager – offline tasks can now be applied to a class, creating a direct relationship between an offline task and a class. This shows a student which offline tasks they should be completing in conjunction with a specific class.


• Class Goals – can now be configured to reset on a recurring role. For example an organization may require each of their students to complete Fire Safety and Prevention 101 by July 1st every year.

If you have any questions or need assistance using any of the new features please contact support at info@toolingu.com.

Tom Torres

Web Developer

Updated Reporting Capabilities

One of the most powerful tools at a Tooling U Administrator's disposal is the Group Report. Group Reports provide Administrators with the ability to track student usage, progress, and performance within Tooling U; and for the Site Administrator there exist additional reports to review usage and progress for the entire organization.

Current Tooling U Administrators enjoy several “canned” reports (reports available to all Administrators) and the ability to create custom reports to meet their specific needs. Following the launch of the sixth version of Tooling U, one of the areas the Application Development team monitored and reviewed was the Group Reports section and identified several areas of improvement, which led to the development of several enhancements:

• The Amount of Data – Large amounts of data can be accumulated throughout years of use and several reports were generated using an organization’s entire history resulting in extremely large sets of data. To prevent this, many reports now feature several search parameters to allow the Administrator to narrow the amount of data returned in the report.

  
  

• Data Filtering – Custom reports are great when an Administrator has a specific report format they need to run on a regular basis; but they can become a bother when one of the canned reports retrieves the data the Administrator wants but requires the Administrator to page through too many results. To address this issue column filters have been added to almost all of the reports, allowing the Administrator to search for a subset of the results based on the column being filtered. For example, in the Comprehensive Report an Administrator can enter in “Smith” (last name) and modify the results to only display students with “Smith” in their last name. One filter per column can be used, allowing for a flexible and powerful method of filtering and sorting data.
  

• Data Sorting – Launched with the release of version six of Tooling U, many Administrators may not be aware the column titles (when applicable) allow the Administrator to sort the entire report by the data in the selected column. A single click sorts the data in an ascending order (a, b, c, d … etc.), a second click sorts the data in a descending order (z, y, x, w … etc.), while a third click will reset the report to its default display.
  

• Exporting Data – Many of the reports provide the capability the export their results directly to an Excel file. All of these Excel exports feature some enhanced features which went live with the release of Tooling U Version 6. However, after monitoring exceptionally large data exports it was discovered that the file size grew exponentially in size, creating difficulties downloading the report. Eventually, it would be possible to reach the limit of what Excel could handle. To compensate for this, all reports to Excel have now been capped to a specific level, which once reached will then switch the export format to CSV (a flat text file) reducing the size of the file while allowing more data to be exported.

While they are currently in the testing phase, these Group Reports enhancements will launch at the end of June.

If you are a current Tooling U Administrator and have some ideas of your own regarding the Group Reports feature please visit the Tooling U Idea Exchange at http://www.toolingu.com/community to share your idea’s with us and help us improve your Tooling U experience.

Tom Torres

Web Developer