Abraquest Release 2.8.7.0 - Year End / New Reports

Abraquest Release 2.8.7.0 is nearly here - it contains a big time saver for schools that can import pupils via an Excel spreadsheet. Also two new book reports. Much more coming soon.

This release of Abraquest is likely to be one of the last releases that supports Windows XP. Due to the timing of this release (beginning of school year) we would like our few Windows XP users to be able to use this release immediately, although we strongly recommend that, Microsoft having removed support for Windows XP in 2014, that these users move up to Windows 7 or later as soon as possible.

At this time of year, "Year End" should be run to move all the pupils up a year, or make the final year pupils "Leavers". This is necessary because of statistics and the fact that Abraquest asks for the class then the person when issuing a book to a pupil.

The necessary procedure would normally be:

1. Log in as system admin.
2. Ensure the classes for the coming year exist, if not create them.
3. Run Year End, which involves specifying where the pupils in each class are going to move to this year, at class level, then reviewing at pupil level before pressing Submit.
4. Enter the new intake pupils either importing from Sims or typing them in.
5. Hiding any unused classes (typically for schools with Tutor Groups).

This year, with this release, you have another option. If you have SIMs or something similar, then you can request a spreadsheet of the entire school (for the current year) rather than just the intake and replace all the steps above. Abraquest will handle all the class changes (if any) and make pupils who aren't in the spreadsheet, leavers.

Abraquest Release 2.8.7.0 also has two new reports:

1. Books By School - shows books at school level which are most used/least used/oldest.
2. Books by School Year - as above but by school year.

Both reports can be split by gender, so this is an additional way (with slightly less mouse clicks) to get the top 10 books for girls in year 5 for example.

Ongoing work on reports are part of our drive to make available as easily as possible, the information that is stored within Abraquest from the book database and from Issue/Returns.

As always, Abraquest Releases are free to our Abraquest Software Assurance customers. There is a lot more to come in the next few months because we have quite a backlog of requests we are finally going to clear. So many software assurance schools will be receiving a month free for each request made, in the coming months.

Abraquest 2.8.7.0 is coming today, 28th August 2018 or the 29th at the latest. We are just completing the help file updates so it should be available by the end of the day.

Any questions as always please contact us.

About the author

Philip Johnson

Philip Johnson has been a software developer since 1983 and has been involved with Abraquest since 2004. He is the director of Spherical Software Limited (www.sphericalsoftware.com), the company that owns Abraquest.