Introducing our new iPhone app for Boarding Staff

I’m proud to announce that we’ve just submitted our brand new iPhone App for boarding staff. We’ve been working on this project for a while now and are excited to finally get it out there and into your hands.When we first started Boardingware, we decided to start with an iPad App because we knew that it was the flexibility and portability of mobile devices that would revolutionise the way you manage your students. Since then we’ve also expanded into a desktop Web-App, however the mobile experience has always been a part of our core product.Now we’re adding another element of flexibility to your daily care with the new staff iPhone app. Stemming from the success of our iPad App and valuable feedback from people like yourself, the boarding experience is about to change yet again.[caption id="attachment_1066" align="aligncenter" width="770"]

Take roll calls for any occasion right from your mobile device[/caption]

Designing the App

Building a mobile app is very different to building your typical desktop application. It requires you to design specifically for a mobile environment. Successful mobile apps tend to focus on only the most important data and interactions, resulting in an experience that’s heavily optimised towards your core tasks and actions. It sounds constraining - but this concept actually fit perfectly with our product strategy.You see, we believe that the role of our mobile apps should be to facilitate you in your daily care responsibilities. They should ignore the bigger administrative tasks and focus purely on the tasks you perform on a daily basis.This way, we can remove the clutter from your mobile devices and deliver you an experience that’s simple and easy-to-use, while the heavier administrative tasks like wider school management and back-end data setup are reserved for the desktop Web-App.To help us with the design of the iPhone app, we brought in a talented UX designer to help us build a sophisticated solution capable of handling the dynamics of boarding, that's still incredibly simple and easy-to-use for anyone - No matter what your technical skill level is.[caption id="attachment_1067" align="aligncenter" width="770"]

Receive, process and approve leave requests right from your mobile device[/caption]

What can you do with the App?

Now you can take Boardingware with you, in your pocket and take advantage of the complete mobile experience without having to invest in a large amount of hardware.The Staff iPhone App enables you to complete all your responsibilities you’d normally take care of on a daily basis. Specifically you can:

• Receive, process and approve leave requests
• Record pastoral notes and view watchlist items
• View student profile information
• Get a real-time view of your student’s location and leave status (in house, out of house, leave requested, upcoming leave etc)
• And take roll checks - You can also perform leave and pastoral actions during a roll check. Super handy for quickly taking care of things as they happen.

Why Apple?

One of the key decisions we needed to make was whether to build a “native app” for a specific mobile device (Apple or Android) or a hybrid web-based version for both.We weighed up both options and concluded that the hybrid version presented too many limitations. A native application can offer a faster, more reliable and ultimately, a better long term solution for you and your school.Our decision to go with Apple was based on the popularity of Apple users (And requests for an iPhone App) in boarding schools and how it would work among the other exciting features we have planned in our product roadmap (Which includes expanding Boardingware into other platforms like Android).Please subscribe to our blog and follow us on twitter to get the latest news and updates about Boardingware.If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment in the section below. I reply to every comment :)[marketo-fat form="1107"]