Search
One box for your whole school.
Press Ctrl+K on any screen. Type a name, an admission number, a class, a fee group or what you want to do, and SMS takes you there, even if you spell it wrong.
What it searches
People, classes, fees and pages, together.
One search looks through students, staff, parents, classes, fee groups and the pages of SMS, then shows the best twelve matches grouped by kind.
Students By name, admission number or class. An admission number is the strongest match, so typing one finds that child first.
Staff By name, staff ID, email address or department.
Parents By name, email address or phone number. Where it helps, a parent is listed under the family surname their children carry.
Classes and fee groups Type a class such as “JSS 2” or a fee group such as “Boarders” to go straight to it.
Forgiving
Close enough is good enough.
Names are hard to spell. When a word does not match exactly, SMS looks for one that is a letter or two off. The longer the word, the more slips it allows.
Better matches first. An exact match beats a partial one, a name that starts with what you typed beats one that only contains it, and a result matching every word you typed is lifted above the rest.
Results as you type. Search starts from the second letter and keeps up with fast typing, dropping answers to words you have already typed past.
Find a page
Say it the way you would say it.
Around 180 pages are searchable by name and by the words people actually use. Type “owing”, “debtors” or “arrears” and the fee due report comes up. “Salary” finds payroll. “Add” also means create, new and register.
Each page with its module’s icon. Page results carry the same icon as in the sidebar, so you can tell three transport pages from three attendance pages at a glance.
Next step
Go straight to what you came for.
Results carry shortcuts. A student offers their profile, invoice and attendance, and their transport or hostel allocation if they have one. A member of staff offers their profile and today’s attendance. A class offers its students, invoices, transport, hostel, timetable, class teacher and parents.
Only shortcuts you can use. Each shortcut is checked against your permissions, so it never leads to a page that turns you away.
Narrow it down
Search one kind of thing at a time.
Pick a scope above the results, or start with a prefix: stu: for students, sta: for staff, par: for parents, cls: for classes, fee: for fee groups and go: for pages. The prefix is tinted in the box so you can see it is working.
Yours to see
It only finds what you are allowed to open.
Each kind of result follows the same permission as its place in the sidebar. A teacher who cannot view parents will not find parents in search, and a page only the school owner can open is only offered to the school owner.
Pages you hid, set apart. A page you hid from your sidebar is listed under “Hidden from your sidebar” so you know it exists. Unhide it to open it.
Yes. Ctrl+K opens it, the arrow keys move through the results, Enter opens one and Esc closes search.
Search shows the twelve best matches. Add another word or use a prefix to narrow it down.
Check the spelling, try fewer letters or a surname, or switch scope. It may also be something your role does not have access to.
Shortcuts follow each person’s permissions. A bursar sees invoices on a student result; a teacher without fee access does not.
Get anywhere in Academium SMS from the keyboard.
Download Academium SMS and set up your school, try a demo, or start in free mode.