Presto Releases

We have been cooking Presto Assistant in our magical software development oven for a little over two years. It’s ready for some real-world use to get feedback from a handful of users now. This initial release has a little something for everyone.

Don’t see a feature you need? Let us know! We have a large backlog of items we are planning and building for Presto Assistant, so you could help shape what we work on next!

All Fine Arts organizations

• Presto Assistant supports Band, Choir, Dance, Orchestra, and Theater out of the box
• Levels of education include College/University, High School, Middle School, and Elementary School

User interface

• Clean and consistent interface throughout using Google’s “Material Design”
• Data tables are sortable, searchable, and most have filters to help find the data you need quickly

User-based login

• Students/Parents/Directors/District Admin all have a single Presto Assistant login and can switch between all organizations that they belong to while signed in.
  • This means a District Administrator can sign in to pay her child’s choir trip fee, and then switch back to the “Admin” view, all in one user session (and same for the Organization Director).
• District Administrators can create a District and invite Directors and District Assistants.
• Directors can create an Organization and invite District Administrators and assistant Directors.
• Students/Parents can join an Organization using the “Organization Code” that the directors set up, and then invite other family members.
• All relationships are set up on “approve/deny” model to help ensure that the relationship is valid.
• Any user younger than 13 years old must have a parent user associated with their account.
  • We keep strict records for compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

People management

• Add and update Directors/Parents/Students
• Set up custom groups to quickly deal with a subset of users
  • E.g., send an email to all “Parent helpers” or all “9th grade All-Region” students
• Import data in CSV format using a handy template
• Export a “report” of filtered/sorted/searched data in CSV format

District Admin features

• Assign District Admin assistants with similar permissions as the Admin
• Switch inventory between schools with only a few clicks
• Adjust the permission levels for any Adult (Director or Parent) in any organization
• Invite the head teacher for any organization within the same school district to create a Presto Assistant organization

Inventory/Uniform/Library management

• Manage all physical inventory
• Ability to scan in barcodes for all items
  • Presto Assistant also automatically assigns a system barcode for all items just in case some items don’t have a barcode.
• Import data in CSV format using handy templates for each area
• Export a “report” of filtered/sorted/searched data in CSV format
• Each item’s “Details” view shows a history of all changes to the data for that item.
  • This helps with accountability at all levels.
• Items can only be seen/edited/deleted with proper permissions
  • All deleted items require a note for the reason for deletion.

Calendar

• Sync with Google Calendar
  • You can remove the sync any time
• Choose individual calendars to show to all students/parents

Financials (coming Spring 2021)

• Set up Stripe to handle payments from Parents
• Parents can see all of their students’ payments and pay for them at once
• Directors can enter payments made by students, splitting one payment across many fees

Communication

• Email works! Send as many attachments as you need, up to 25MB total size
• Format the text in the email right in the web application
• All emails sent to students automatically copy the parents.

Files

• Add files of any type for use later
• Set up folders for use within the Presto Assistant application
  • Upload once and then access whenever you need it later
• Assign groups who have access to uploaded files
• Assign the timeframe (school year or date range) when uploaded files are visible to Students/Parents

We’ve been so busy building the bedrock of the application — we are excited to see how everyone uses Presto Assistant!