Settings & Modules

Most of DRAIS adapts to your school rather than the other way round. This page is a tour of the settings that matter, and which ones to revisit at the start of each year.

School profile

Settings → School Information

Name, address, phone, email, motto and logo. These are not cosmetic — they appear on every report card, receipt and printed document, and they are frozen into report cards at the moment those are generated.

Tip

Upload the highest-quality logo you have. It is scaled down for the screen but printed at full resolution, and a blurred logo on four hundred report cards is noticed.

Academic structure

Settings → Academic Years and Classes

Academic year	Create the new year before the year begins. Terms live inside it.
Terms	Term 1, 2, 3 with their start and end dates. Dates matter — they define which days count for attendance and which term new records attach to.
Current term	The term DRAIS assumes when someone records something without saying otherwise. Set this at the start of every term. Forgetting is the most common configuration mistake schools make, and it files a whole week of records against the wrong term.
Classes and streams	Your levels and their divisions.
Subjects	What is taught, and which classes take each subject.

Start-of-term checklist

Create the term · set it as current · confirm class lists after promotion · check the attendance calendar for holidays · confirm fee structures for the term. Five minutes that prevents most of the problems schools report in week one.

Attendance rules

Settings → Attendance

School day start — when the day begins.
Late cut-off — after this time an arrival counts as late.
Absence cut-off — after this, a learner with no scan is absent, and absence notices can go out.
Working days — which days of the week count.
Holidays and closures — days excluded from attendance figures entirely.

These are applied when attendance is read rather than when it is recorded, so adjusting a cut-off re-reads history under the new rule without altering the underlying scans.

Grading

Settings → Grading

The grade scale — the bands, their labels and remarks. DRAIS ships with the standard UCE scale (D1–F9) and schools using something else can change it.

Aggregate and division thresholds are set here too, along with which subjects contribute to them.

Important

Changing the grade scale mid-year affects how existing marks are displayed. Report cards already generated keep the grades they were printed with; new ones use the new scale. Change scales between years wherever possible.

Modules

Settings → Modules

Optional areas of DRAIS, enabled per school as part of your subscription. Disabling a module hides it from everyone at your school and blocks its features entirely.

Tahfiz	Qur'an memorisation tracking for schools running a theology programme.
Payroll	Staff salaries and payslips.
Examinations	Formal examination management beyond ordinary termly marks.
Pass-outs	Gate control for learners leaving during the day, and visitation cards.
Cafeteria / pocket money	Custodial learner accounts for boarding schools.
Inventory	School assets and stock.

Note

A disabled module is unavailable to everyone, Super Admins included. Modules reflect what the school has, not who the person is. To enable one, speak to DRAIS support.

Parent portal visibility

Settings → Parent Portal

Choose what guardians can see — attendance, results, fees, announcements. Changes take effect immediately. See The Parent Portal.

Communication

Settings → Communication

Sender name, whether messages send automatically or await review, quiet hours, and which events generate messages. See SMS & Notifications.

Language

DRAIS runs in English and Arabic, including right-to-left layout. The interface language is per user, so staff can each work in the language they prefer while the school prints report cards in whichever language each design specifies.

[ Screenshot: Settings overview ]

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What to review each year

Create the new academic year and its terms.
Set the current term.
Run promotion, then verify a sample of class lists.
Confirm fee structures for the new year.
Review staff accounts — disable leavers, add new staff.
Enter the year's holidays into the attendance calendar.
Reprint one report card from the previous year to confirm nothing has shifted.