Most people I know are not interested in hassles, long waits on line, delays or any other type of complication in their lives.
Yet, as creatures of habit, we stick to the same old routines and patterns, which quite often are not the simplest or easiest way of doing things.
Sometimes, we will even turn down an opportunity to improve our lives, simply because learning new techniques or technologies seems like too much work and effort.
And so we stay stuck in our rut.
But when it comes to some things, like single sign-on (SSO), we can have our cake and eat it too!
If you are dealing with multiple student information systems for your school or district, not only will single sign-on make your work so much easier, it’s really not a big deal to integrate into your existing systems.
Life without Single Sign-On
Say you are a parent and you want to check out your child’s homework assignments or grades via the school’s online portal. Don’t forget your password!
After that pleasant experience, you want to make sure the cafeteria is doling out nutritious lunches – also via another one of the school’s online systems. Where’s that piece of paper with the list of usernames?!
Finally, you want to schedule an appointment (again online) for the upcoming parent-teacher conference so you can tell the teacher that the alfalfa sprouts served at the cafeteria are hurting your kid’s grades. Darn it! Someone cleared the cache and you need to re-enter usernames and passowords!
At this point, you probably will want to scream but will settle for complaining to the IT staff that signing-in to 3 or more student systems is a total pain.
This scenario plays itself out the same way, especially if you are on the school faculty side of things. As a teacher or principal, you don’t want to keep track of multiple usernames and passwords, let alone enter them every time you access a different system. And the list of systems is long with library, cafeteria, transportation, grades, attendance, and scheduling just some of the many SIS that schools use on a daily basis.
The Single Sign-On Life
With single sign-on, just one username and password gives you access to all the systems you need. Simply sign-in once and you can glide from attendance reports to viewing outstanding library books and more, all with just a few clicks.
Additionally, single sign significantly cuts IT costs, as people are able to remember their single username and password and as such don’t require IT help to access the system(s) after they forget their password(s).
Parent involvement is also improved by making it much easier for parents to access their children’s information and records.
In terms of security, if you only have one username and password, you will likely be able to keep it securely stored in your head – as opposed to a long list of multiple usernames you would have to store somewhere if not for SSO.
Implementation of Single Sign-On
Of course, you are probably thinking that all this is fine and good…but it will take too much work and effort to implement single sign-on.
The truth however, is that single sign-on is not only relatively straightforward to setup, all vendors should already be compatible, with minimum integration requirements.
In terms of next steps, definitely have a chat with your software providers and see what they suggest. It probably will be a piece of cake!
PTC Wizard - Parent Teacher Conference Scheduling 