Challenge
When Grapevine-Colleyville ISD started investing in a large number of digital resources, they recognized the need to aggregate apps and simplify access. IT staff were getting overwhelmed with manual rostering tasks, which stretched anywhere from 45 to 90 days into each school year, forcing teachers to play catch-up from day one. With the development of their Lead 2021 Plan, which prioritized relevant and resourceful technology to expand student resources, district leaders began evaluating single sign-on providers with an eye towards creating efficiency and saving money over the long term.
Solution
In 2017, Grapevine-Colleyville adopted ClassLink for its ease of setup, intuitive interface, and high-level of support. Students, teachers, and staff benefit from having one-click access to their applications and files on the cloud or school network from any location and device. Berger noted, “The value and most exciting part of ClassLink, is that it keeps evolving, so our investment keeps evolving.” The district began using ClassLink for its award-winning SSO solution, but is now taking advantage of additional features like Roster Server for swift and secure delivery of class roster to publishers using the OneRoster® open data standard, ClassLink Analytics, the Parent Portal, and its next generation account provisioning tool, OneSync.
Outcome
Only 18 months into the relationship, Grapevine-Colleyville ISD Launchpad logins continue to climb – a sure sign that the IT team made the right choice. The ability to easily aggregate and distribute their library of resources with One Click access means staff are able to focus on education, teachers recover instructional time, and students spend more time on task. District leaders use ClassLink Analytics to monitor resource usage and find it is useful for informing renewal decisions. The district is excited to leverage OneSync by summer 2019 to fully automate their account provisioning. OneSync will replace two outdated, inefficient software systems, which will save the district $25,000 per year.
“We are now able to focus on education rather than managing products.”