Over the school year, several schools have asked about intermittent dropped email notifications.  The email system built into BlueChalk’s technology and building work order systems worked well when we first started, but as spam became more of a problem and spam filters became more sophisticated, it started having trouble playing nicely with school email systems.  Also, the system depended on users keeping their email addresses up to date which also led to problems with older work orders that stayed in the system as an email address changed.  The code in the technology and building work order systems has been modified so that all emails are now sent from technology@bluechalkapps.com or building@bluechalkapps.com.  This should stop the dropped emails problems.  We will be changing the default email addresses for other systems throughout the month.

Thank you all for your patience!

It has been quite a while since we last updated our user management system.  The routing logic of adding users was definitely not the most efficient set up possible.  Ron Spicer of Affton Schools in Missouri mentioned that it was cumbersome to add multiple users and that it would be handy to have a default domain for email addresses to minimize typos. We changed the routing so that when you add a new user, it doesn't redirect to another screen but allows you to add another user (I'm not sure why it did that in the first place to be honest, I think it was just put in incorrectly in an update).  We also added a cancel button to start over when entering a new user.

On the email addresses, we also made a change.  Each organization can now set up a default email domain.  To set this up, click on Manage Default Domain in the add user screen.  Simply enter your email domain (ex. bluechalksoftware.com or bluechalk.k12.mo.us) and click submit.  Now when you enter a new user, the domain name is built in.  There is a field for the email username and a field for the email domain.  You can over-ride the default domain name simply by typing the desired domain.

Also, in regards to email, within the next month, all emails from our work order systems will be sent from technology@bluechalkapps.com or building@bluechalkapps.com.  The technology and building work order systems send out a large number of emails and allowing the system to attempt to send these notices from the technology or building administrators' addresses was causing delays and IP blocking.  We're sorry for the inconvenience and hope to have this implemented soon.  Just a quick heads up so your users will know not to delete or block emails from those addresses.