For the third successive year, Gateway won all awards in the Education and Training category in the recently concluded National Best Quality Software Awards (NBQSA) 2005 organized by the Sri Lankan section of the British Computer Society. This annual event is organised to honour significant technological developments and innovations of software developed in Sri Lanka. School Online is selected to represent Sri Lanka for the Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) 2005 to be held in Indonesia. SOL is a fully web-based product developed in house by Gateway Consultancy Services, the organizations ICT Consultancy Division.

The School-on-line (SOL) is a complete software suite for a school. The product vision is to bring the school’s administration, teachers, parents and students and past pupils into one working group in a paperless environment to meet the challenges of the digital age. The success of School Online has been due to the designing of the system by administrators and teachers who are actively involved in the running of schools. Further, the system is modeled on the principle of ‘anytime anywhere’ so that it supports work from multiple locations. The major modules in the system include Student Information and Promotions, Human Resource Management, Student Fees and Accounts, Employee Payroll, School Web Portal, Assessments, Reporting and Transcripts, e-Learning, Timetabling and Scheduling, Alumni Information, Punctuality and Attendance, Non academic records, Sports, Planning and communication, Library Management, Inventory Management and System Administration.

SOL has been designed as a hosted application which allows schools to start using the system by simply browsing to a site and logging in. There are no installations, maintenance or backup operations to be concerned about from the schools side. This raises the entry level usage of the system to even the smaller schools. Due to the low footprint of the web based system the client workstations are inexpensive machines that only require a browser. This has reduced the initial costs related to acquiring new machines.

The system does not require a school to purchase and implement the complete suite. Instead the system has been designed in a modular fashion so that the school could kick start the use of the system by first implementing a core module and then enable modules based on requirements in an evolutionary manner, thereby simplifying the transition to the new system.

SOL is the first Learning management system to support Sinhala and Tamil Languages. This will bring down the entry-level requirements for the product and make it available to nearly all schools in Sri Lanka. Carefully designed security features such as the ability to encrypt passwords facilitates the provision of user access levels and privileges. The product is currently being developed to have a smart client presentation layer which will see the application being migrated to the .NET Click Once technology. This will enable the product to have the broad reach of a web-based system along with the rich client functionality available in windows applications through the use of a services oriented architecture.

SOL is a continuously evolving product. One of the new features of SOL includes a payment gateway, enabling customers to make payments over the internet using credit cards. The latest development of SOL enables parents to view the child’s academic transcripts and the attendance record instantly via a mobile phone. Few more features such as Lesson Planner, Fundraising Management, Transportation Management and Hostel Management are to be introduced to SOL in the future.

Last modified: 12 September 2008