End Of Year Best Practices

Securly End of Year Best Practices

As the end of the school year approaches, it's a crucial time to ensure your Securly products are configured optimally for the next academic year. We strongly recommend scheduling a configuration review with your Customer Success (CS) Engineer. This meeting will involve a check of your current configurations against best practices, discussing your experiences with each product over the year, and exploring potential improvements for the future.

In the meantime, there are actions you can start taking right now for each product:

Securly Filter and Aware:

1. Perform Organizational Unit (OU) Syncs: Ensure that your OUs are accurately synced in both Filter and Aware. This step helps maintain correct user-group associations and prevent issues with access or filtering.

2. Map New OUs: If you anticipate adding new OUs for the upcoming year, start mapping these to their appropriate policies and staff groups. Planning ahead for these changes will allow a smoother transition when the new school year starts.

In your configuration review with the CS Engineer, you will further explore these areas, along with other critical elements of your Securly implementation. Your CS Engineer will guide you through best practices, highlight areas where misconfigurations may exist, and help you plan for the best possible user experience in the coming academic year.

Additional Areas Of Importance

Securly Filter:

• Update Whitelist/Allowlist: Review and update the allowlists to ensure students can access necessary educational resources during the summer and for the upcoming school year.

• Review Reports and Analytics: Examine the filtering reports to understand the trends of this academic year, which websites were most accessed, and which were most blocked. This data could guide your decisions for the next academic year.

Securly Aware:

• Assess Alert Data: Review the alerts received over the school year. Identify trends or recurring issues that may inform changes in policy or highlight areas for student support.
• Student Welfare Check: Based on the alerts, consider reaching out to students or their guardians if there are serious concerns about their welfare.

Securly Classroom:

• Review Student Engagement: Analyze classroom engagement data and identify any trends. This can inform teacher training for the next year and help identify areas where students might need additional support.

• Classroom Prep for Next Year: Archive the current year's classrooms and prepare for setting up new virtual classrooms for the upcoming academic year.

Securly On-Call:

• 24/7 Monitoring Evaluation: Review the effectiveness and efficiency of the 24/7 monitoring. Make necessary adjustments based on your findings.
• Feedback Gathering: Collect feedback from admins about their experiences with the On-Call system.

Securly MDM:

• Device Check-Up: Ensure all devices are updated and functioning properly. Plan for any necessary updates or replacements during the summer months.

• Inventory Management: Audit the inventory to account for all devices. Establish a check-in/check-out process for devices used over the summer or stored.
• Prepare for Next Year: Update device settings and apps for the new school year. If you are expecting new devices, plan the enrollment and deployment process.