STEARsoft email

Why enable email
How to enable email
What to configure
Trouble-shooting
Setting teacher email addresses
Managing passwords en-mass
Letting teachers reset their own passwords
Event emails

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Why enable email

STEARsoft can be configured to automatically send emails. This can be used to:

How to enable email

You enable email in the 'STEARsoft administrator settings' program installed in the STEARsoft programs folder on the computer you've installed STEARsoft on:

In the 'Email notifications' part, click the 'Configure...' button:

What to configure

To let STEARsoft send emails, you need to let it use an email account that you own. We suggest you set up a new specific email account for STEARsoft to use. You can use an email provider like Microsoft, Google or Yahoo or almost anything else. You have probably set up your phone or an email program to access your emails in the past. The settings you need to tell STEARsoft are the same. If your email provider isn't in the 'popular providers' list, you will need to check with your email provider what the SMTP address is for sending email, and also the SMTP Port number. You will almost certainly also need to give your username and password for the email account. Finally, the Email 'from' address at the bottom of the configure email settings screen is the email address the teachers will see the emails to be coming from.

Press the OK button, and back in the administrator settings screen, after a few seconds the status will change to active:

Test email

You will also be prompted to send a test email. Click 'Yes' and on the following screen enter a valid email address to send a test email to and press 'Send':

Trouble-shooting

No news is good news, meaning that if the status still says 'Email sending is active' then all is probably well. Any error in sending an email will be reflected in a status message, with details in the Log file:

Don't forget to check your spam box and to give time for the test email to arrive. Email is not usually instant.

If you do get an error, most reported errors are standard, so if not self explanatory, can be looked up on the internet (enter the exact message into your favourite search engine). Adjust your settings in the 'Configure...' screen if necessary or maybe you'll need to change something in the settings area of your email provider - for example to allow POP/SMTP email functionality. Hopefully it will all just work, but a reminder of this with further detail is on the Help... button:

What to configure in the web interface

Teacher email addresses

At it's most simple level, click on the edit button to add an email address for a teacher:

If you import your teachers using an ODBC, then firstly tell STEARsoft which field contains their email address:

Then run an ODBC teacher import to pick up the new details:

If not using ODBC but you have your teacher data in a spreadsheet or similar format to copy and paste from, then use the 'Add teachers accounts' option to copy and paste teacher data, being careful to include username and email:


Select the column titles to tell STEARsoft which is the username and which is the email address:

There is then a 'checking 3rd screen' which you can probably just press 'Next' on followed by the final screen. This final screen will show how STEARsoft will match your existing users (based on the username) and update their email addresses. The options that STEARsoft picks by default are probably what you will want so just scan down to check before pressing the 'Finish' button:

This should enable you to fairly quickly (and more importantly, accurately) update all your teachers with email addresses.

Managing passwords

Use the 'Manage passwords' option to send out account-activation-codes en-mass. The screen has two sections: At the top there are some options and in the lower half there is a list of users with send-email options. In the top half, we suggest the options shown below to require teachers to have passwords. Note that you'll need to press the 'Save changes' button. In the lower half, use the buttons to select all teachers with no password or locked accounts, then press the circled 'Send...' button. STEARsoft will send emails to all the selected users with activation codes and other getting-started details.


Letting teachers help themselves

In the 'Customise options' screen tick the top box to allow teachers to request their own account-activation-code:

Once this option is ticked, then on the main 'Welcome' page an 'Account activation' option will appear which teachers can use either initially to get started or if they forget their password. This process results in sending a new account-activation-code automatically by email to the teacher concerned. This process doesn't stop an existing password from working, so if done in error the email can just be ignored:

If the above 'Account activation' link doesn't appear it could be because the option in 'Customise options' isn't ticked, because email isn't enabled (see top of this page), or because STEARsoft has detected a problem sending emails. You can check this last case using the administrator settings screen (as found at the top of this screen) and noting the status. Alternatively, in the web administrator area go to the 'Log files' option:

and at the bottom it will show the email sending status and the email log file:

Event emails to administrator

The other way emails are used in STEARsoft is to send important event messages to administrators. Also new in version 6.0.0 is the ability to turn a teacher into an administrator. Doing this makes the teacher a 'Power teacher' and gives access with their login username and password to the administrator pages. Additionally, if they have an email address they will also receive event messages:

You can customise which messages are sent by email with the 'Log files' area:

The middle section of the log files screen is 'Event Log Files'. There is a link to customise how events are handled here:

The Event list screen that this takes you to lists all the different kinds of events/alerts that can be generated. This screen simply assigns each event/alert to a group. Click the link at the top to customise how events in each group are handled (whether an email is sent, whether to log the event in the log file and how frequently repeat events are sent/logged):


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