One of the most popular sections was Chris O’Mahony’s “How To” article, so we have another one for you this edition – how to email custom groups in Maze.

We also had lots of requests about the upcoming Maze User Group meetings. We’re happy to announce that we’ve set the dates, the details are below. See you there!

As always we’d love to receive your feedback on what you’d like to read about in future editions – so please email us at mazematters@rmeducation.com.au with your suggestions.

Enjoy.

Heike Mullee
Product Manager – School Management Solutions
Civica Education

In this issue:

• How to…in Maze
• New! eMaze Parent Pay
• New! Maze Music module
• New! Maze Application Library
• Training Courses
• Message Media SMS Solution
• Support Services update

How to…in Maze: How to email custom groups.

Want to let all your parents know the term dates for next year? How about emailing a notification of an upcoming event? Did you know this can be done in 3 easy steps?

Find out how you can email custom groups in this edition’s How to…in Maze.

Read the full How To article

New! eMaze Parent Pay module

One of the big challenges facing schools today is managing fee collection. This new module for eMaze 2 provides parents with an easy mechanism for paying their fees online by credit card. This solution will improve your cash flow and save valuable admin time.

eMaze Parent Pay module is available for implementation during the October school holidays – why not trial it in term 4?

Download the flyer

To find out more about eMaze Parent Pay module, or to organise a trial contact Civica Education Sales on educationsales@civica.com.au or (02) 8668 1302.

New! Maze Music Module

Your school can now manage a chargeable music program using the new Maze Music Module.

The Music Module covers all aspects of managing a chargeable music program, including tracking of musical instruments and their hire to students, music lessons and lesson attendance, musical groups and their members, as well as automatic generation of music related fees and charges.

Learn more | Download the flyer

New! Maze Application Library

The Maze Application Library provides access to a selection of mini projects and customisations commonly requested by schools.

These customisations are packaged as “Maze updates” and include installation notes and user documentation. Most can easily be self installed.

Currently there are four products in the range:

• 3yo Program Management
• Easy Parent & Student Contact via Email / SMS
• Student & Family Notes and Attachments
• Improved Enrolment Details Transfer

Learn more

Maze Training Courses

Our full-day and half-day training courses cover a wide range of topics and provide a fantastic opportunity for your staff to keep up to date with Maze.

Western Australia Training Courses

For customers in Western Australia, we are running a number of new and popular courses including:

• MarkBook, Payroll Processing
• Data Retrieval – Report Designer and;
• Data Retrieval – SQL: Making Your Data Work For You.

Many courses are almost full; make sure you don’t miss out, download the full list of courses and enrolment form.

New South Wales and Eastern States Training

For customers in New South Wales and the Eastern States we offer training by request. Contact us to organise a course that suits your school’s needs in a suitable venue at your school or in your district.

To enquire about onsite training at your school email educationsales@civica.com.au

Online Training

Did you know that we now offer online training?

Many schools have told us that they struggle to find a full or half day to attend courses and that sometimes what they really want is an intensive one hour session to cover a specific area – e.g. split family billing. Using modern day technologies we can now deliver this on your own computer, so in addition to the benefit of targeted training, you also get to work on your own system.

How does it work?

Our new online training option involves a trainer logging in to a workstation in your school and providing instruction over the telephone – a convenient and cost-effective way of engaging in short ‘how to’ sessions without having to leave your desk!

To learn more about online training email educationsales@civica.com.au

From our partners: Message Media SMS Solutions

Now you can send text messages from a PC to parents, staff and other contacts through your Maze platform using MessageMedia, Australasia’s largest business SMS provider.

SMS is ideal for managing student absenteeism, fee payment reminders, health & safety alerts, and general communication with parents and staff.

Make an Enquiry

Support Services

Late July and August are traditionally quieter periods of the school year for the RM Education service desk. This year however, like you, we were extremely busy as preparations were made in schools to prepare reports for the national Census. In the two week period before the Census date we managed over 500 cases requesting help with Census data or reports, all of which were resolved in time for the data uploads.

Read on to find out more about the Payroll Enhancements Update, our Maze Customisation Services and an important update regarding CEOWA Cash Balance issues.

Read more…

For those of you who were unable to make it to our most recent Maze User Group meetings, we’ve included a copy of the presentations and some Q&A’s from the event.

We’d love to receive your feedback on what you’d like to read about in future editions – so please email us at mazematters@rmeducation.com.au with your suggestions.

Enjoy!

Heike Mullee
Product Manager – School Management Solutions
Civica Education

In this issue:

• Maze User Group Meetings
• New! Managed Services
• Coming Soon! HR module
• Coming Soon! eMaze 2.0
• Customisation Services
• RM Learning Platform
• Training Courses

Maze User Group Meetings

Our Maze User Group meetings are held bi-annually in Sydney and Perth and provide a great opportunity for you to stay up-to-date on all things Maze and to network with staff from other Maze schools (not to mention the complimentary lunch and coffee).

The most recent meetings were held in April and June, and had a great turnout in both Sydney and Perth. For those of you who joined us, we’ve put together a Q&A download to provide responses to your questions from the day, and for those of you who were unable to make it, you can access the presentations using the links below:

WA and NSW Maze User Group Meeting – April 2011
WA Primary School Maze User Group Meeting – June 2011

Don’t forget Maze User Group meetings are free to attend. If you didn’t receive an invitation and would like to join us at the next meeting, email us at mazematters@rmeducation.com.au and we’ll add you to the invites list.

Introducing Maze Managed Services

Managing the day-to-day running of your IT infrastructure can be time consuming and challenging. Your school might not have specialist database administrators to manage and maintain your Maze installation and as a result you may find that database maintenance tasks are taking too long and you’re struggling to keep Maze up to date. Opting to outsource the management of Maze is a smart alternative.

At Civica Education we understand that time can often be at a premium and that you may not have dedicated IT staff to manage your ICT infrastructure. To help, we are now offering the flexible Maze Remote Managed Service.

The Maze Remote Managed Service is tailored to offer you a range of service options to suit your needs, whether that’s help maintaining Maze or regular assistance from our Solutions Consultants.

The services available include:

• Regular Monitoring
• Ensuring end of year backups are made
• Upgrading Maze and eMaze as new versions become available, plus much more!

Learn more | Make an enquiry

Coming Soon: Human Resources module

The new Human Resources module has been developed in partnership with 10 existing Maze schools and will be available to your school from July 2011. It has been developed to help your school to manage its organisational structure, staff and employees more effectively.

Fully integrated with other Maze modules, the Human Resources module allows you to:

• Maintain full personnel details in Maze
• Manage your organisational structure
• Reduce your reliance on paper records maintained outside of Maze
• Reduce the need to file hard copies of certificates and other important documents
• Save time and effort maintaining accurate and up-to-date staff and employee data
• Be automatically reminded of important staff related due dates
• Streamline your staff induction processes.

Learn more | Make an enquiry

Coming Soon: eMaze 2.0

eMaze 2.0 brings a number of great improvements from your ‘wish list’ to eMaze (the module that provides easy web based access to Maze information for teachers and parents).

Some of the improvements include:

• eMaze Mobile for recording student attendance from most mobile devices
• New look desktop with configurable buttons to access commonly used processes
• User friendly Student Profile page – all important information in one place
• Automatic execution of group filters, so users immediately see a results list
• Improved grid control
• eMaze buttons at the top of the screen as well as the bottom.

Available late June 2011 | Request more information

Customisation Services

Have you ever thought to yourself “Wouldn’t it be great if Maze could….”, or perhaps your Office Manager has said “It would save me so much time if Maze could….’ Well, in most cases Maze can!

With the help of our Projects Team, your school can amend fields, add tables or create entirely new processes to customise Maze to the needs of your school or iocese. We can even build brand new modules just for your school.

With experienced Project Managers and Maze Consultants in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, this team offers the following services:

• Development and delivery of new client-specific functionality
• New installations and database setup/configuration
• Database migrations and upgrades
• Implementation of additional modules, plus much more!

Learn more | Make an enquiry

Introducing RM Learning Platform

A recent study has shown that embedding ICT into secondary school curriculum subjects can increase student attainment by 33%.

The study, carried out by the General Teaching Council for Scotland, measured attainment gains following the introduction and regular planned use of ICT delivered using Glow – the world’s first national School’s Intranet.

With over 5 million users worldwide, RM Learning Platform is our proven and multi-award winning online Learning Management System. It has been developed to provide your school with the tools that enable students, teachers, parents and administrators to work together to improve student performance.

RM Learning Platform improves communication throughout your school community and enhances collaboration by providing students with creative methods for contributing to discussions and sharing ideas. Teachers can create and share content rich courses and personalised learning plans that can be accessed by students ‘anytime, anywhere’ through any Internet-connected device.

Great news for your IT department – RM Learning Platform is easily integrated with Maze to create and manage all of your user accounts and reduce duplication.

Why not book a demonstration and see for yourself how RM Learning Platform can help you to improve student performance? It’s obligation free and guaranteed to inspire you.

Learn more | Book a Free demonstration

Support Services

Civica Education Support Services are continually updating Maze and producing articles to help you make the most of your system. All of these resources are available to your school within your annual support and maintenance contract, so make sure that you use the ones that help you.

User Documentation
To access Maze manuals simply bookmark this page or to navigate from the homepage go to Support > Maze Support > Maze User Documentation.

Online Support Portal
The online support portal allows you to view, create and modify your cases. It also contains knowledge base articles referred to as Solutions. A solution may be created where we have solved a problem for a customer or it may be a specific article that we have created to provide you with some guidance on how to use a feature or work through a common process.

Please contact the Civica Education helpdesk to organise your support portal account.

Support News

• The documentation for processing your PAYG Summaries for 2010-11 is now available on the Maze User Documentation page of our website
• The 2011-12 Tax Scales will be available for download shortly – a release notice will be issued as soon as they are available on the Maze Application Layer Updates page of our website
• We have discontinued support of SQL Server 2000 from 11 November 2010. Updates for Maze are now using new features from SQL2005\2008 which are not compatible with SQL Server 2000. This will result in your site being unable to take advantages of some the updates released for Maze. Please refer to the Support Policy on our website