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Last Update: 20 April 2008

RISC v8 Newsletters: (view and print with Acrobat Reader)

News Headlines:


Return to the main RISC page
Find out about the features of RISC
Take a Virtual Tour of the RISC system
A list of all current schools using RISC
Read about what some RISC users think about the system
We'd love to hear what you think about RISC and our website
The Marillion Designer Newsletter
Great RISC troubleshooting advice
Everything you need to know to order RISC!
Have a specific question? E-mail us!

RISC and OASIS with ERN:

This information is relevant to any NSW Public School currently running a version of RISC for Windows, prior to v8.

With the implementation of the ERN (unique Student ID Numbers) by the NSW Education Department in all NSW Public Schools on March 17, we felt it was important to alert you to an issue your school will now have with your RISC software. If your school is currently licenced to run a version of our Register of Individual Student Contact (RISC) software for tracking welfare, discipline and merit which is older than v8, you must read this. Your current version will not be compatible with ERN and once ERN is released, as your existing RISC database will lose its connectors to the enrolment database (as exported from OASIS). This means your currently saved RISC data, as well as your archived RISC data, may be rendered inaccessible.

Marillion Designs has released RISC v8 which introduces some remarkable new features requested by schools as well as full ERN compatibility. And even though RISC has had a major upgrade, v8 still works with your old data, so no that  ERN is implemented, your RISC system will continue to function correctly.

NOTE: When you have upgraded to RISC v8, it is important to complete the RISC-ERN conversion process as detailed here. Also note that if you had student photos in RISC, you will need to re-import them using the RISC Photo Import Tool as found in the Utilities menu in the RISC Admin program.

UPGRADE to RISC v8 TODAY and get the upgrade TOMORROW. Details below.

Current Release of RISC - Quick Details:

The current release of RISC for Windows is v8.201AU, released 15 March 2008.  Existing RISC v8.0x users will be entitled to free downloadable upgrades to v8.  The Help menu in RISC v8 has an option to Find and Download Updates as they are released.  The new features included from v7 to RISC v8.200AU include:

  • The Print This Form button has been split into two separate buttons: "Print Form on A4 Page" and "Print Form on A5 Page". The first button is the same as the original button, producing the output on a single A4 page. The new button allows the user to cut A4 pages in half (to A5 size) and put them into the laser printer tray to print the form in reduced size, saving paper. This format is perfect for using RISC to produce Late Notes. The A5 pages should be inserted as if you were printing in Landscape format. Thanks to Moorebank High School for this suggestion
  • You can now Mail Merge directly from the RISC Table View and all students listed in the table view will have a user-selected customised form letter merged and printed with record of the form letter automatically added to the Contact Action field
  • The Set Date Range function can now optionally use the Actual Contact Date OR the Updated Contact Date.
  • The Print Table View function now produces a more neat Table View printout in landscape and includes the Contact Category 2 field.
  • Includes an updated OASIS Export Report to export Mother's Mobile Phone instead of Emergency Contact
  • Includes the RISC Batch Photo Import Tool
  • New View Saved Letter button wherever a contact record is displayed where a form letter was sent and a copy saved in the RISC database This button opens the letter in MS Word for viewing/editing/printing
  • Reintroduces the minimize button on the main RISC form (this has been missing since v5)
  • New "RISC Quick History" window to quickly show the last 25 records of the selected student on the screen
  • The RISC Quick History panel now shows the Type column in colour, dependent on the "Smiley" value set for each record. eg. A Negative (sad) smiley will show the Type field in RED, which a Positive (Happy) smiley will display in GREEN text. This gives the Quick History even more instant value because the user can quickly see whether most previous entries for a student were positive or negative.
  • A new "Spell Check Text Fields..." button has been introduced to the main RISC form. This uses the spelling checker from Microsoft Word to check the spelling in the two large text fields on the RISC form. It uses whatever English language dictionary you have set in Word - eg. Australian. Spell Check has not been in RISC since v5, so this is a welcome (and better) return.
  • The Student's Photo can now be merged into a Form Letter, extending the use of the form letters module for other purposes
  • If a rebuild is required by RISC, it will now perform one automatically
  • New splash screens and new Marillion Designs logo introduced
  • New Privacy Note prominently displayed on the RISC main form
  • Updated HelpDesk and Virtual Tour

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RISC v8 for Windows - 2008:

RISC v8 for Windows is now available.  Here are some ideas we have incorporated into version 8.0+:

  • RISC Quick History - As shown at the right of the screenshot below, the RISC Quick History is exactly that - a quick way to find all records associated with a student on the one screen.  With intelligent rollovers to display more information as well as a quick jump-to feature, you'll wonder how you ever worked without it. With release 8.10, the Quick History also includes "Colour-sense" - Green means a "positive" record and Red means a "negative" record - reflecting the colour "smiley" saved against each record.
  • Create up to 200 Form Letters - RISC v8 doubles the number of MS Word Form Letters it can store from 100 to 200!  You can create, store, retrieve, merge and print twice as many letters, merit certificates, late notes or anything else you can think of!  The extra form letters are perfect for...
  • Multiple Mail Merging - RISC already integrates well with MS Word 2000 and above to produce form letters.  Instead of printing one letter at a time per student, wouldn't it be great to use RISC to produce all your personal mailings to parents?  Need to send a personalised letter to every parent of a year 9 student?  How about doing it with a few clicks of the mouse?  You already know how easy it is to build a form letter in RISC? - it's actually EASIER than merging using Word alone!  Let's apply that to multiple mailings!  That's the RISC MailMerge Wizard.  There is a sneak preview screen shot of this Wizard below.  With v8.20 and later, you can also Mail Merge dirctly to the records shown in the RISC Table View!
  • Student Photos - Wouldn't it be great if you could see a small photo of each student when you call them up in RISC?  With the RISC PhotoCapture! tool, you can do exactly that in just a few seconds!  RISC PhotoCapture! lets you take your own student photos using virtually any inexpensive (less than $70) USB Web Camera.  Using one of these cameras, you could easily take two separate students' photos per minute and have them immediately attached to the RISC database and displayed whenever any student is selected in RISC.  It is very handy for putting faces to names and ensuring you are referring to the correct student.  And whenever you need to update a student's photo, you can - just retake it!  And you can take student photos whenever it's convenient to do it as the PhotoCapture! tool is available on-demand. The RISC Newsletter at this site has a useful page all about Web Cameras compatible with RISC PhotoCapture! Now you can even mail merge the student's photo into a form letter!
  • Import Student Photos - If your school receives a CD full of photos from the school photographers, you can now import those photos into RISC so that you don't have to individually take the photos yourself!  The included RISC Photo Import Tool  will not only import them, but it will automatically resize them so they take no more than about 5KB each! Quick to load and light of server space!
  • Import of Student ID Number - RISC v8 will import the school's student ID number to avoid any confusion with similar names. For NSW schools, it's completely compatible with the new ERN student enrolment numbers.
  • Import of Gender field, Parent Mobile Phone and Date of Birth - RISC v8 imports the student's gender to allow for reporting by gender.  It also now imports the Parent's Mobile Phone and date of birth.
  • Additional User-Definable Field - A New field called Contact Category 2 (defaults as "Action Type") has its own lookup table and can be renamed to whatever you like.  With four totally-definable fields, RISC 8 is the most flexible student incident tracking system available.  Now you can quickly report on Suspensions, Detentions, Parent Meetings and so on.
  • New Contact Navigation Tools - As well as the previous methods of navigating through Contact records, you can also now use simple arrow tools to jump from one contact to the next.
  • Spell Check - RISC now links directly to the MS Word spell checker to spell check the two main data entry fields at the click of a button!
  • Quick Contact Descriptor - RISC v8 uses three simple "smiley" symbols to quickly describe each contact - positive (Happy), negative (Sad) or not applicable (Middle). You can then search/sort on all positives/negatives quickly and easily
  • A Neat Facelift - RISC v8 has had a facelift.  This professional management tool for schools has just got a whole lot better.  But it still keeps its familiar structure so your existing skills will simply transfer to the new version.

The image below shows what the RISC 8 system looks like:

Here's a look at the RISC MailMerge Wizard:

RISC v8 for Windows was released at the start of February 2008.  The price for new users is $550.00 inc GST for a school-wide licence.  Upgrade pricing for users of RISC v7.xx will be $99.00 including GST for a downloadable version of RISC.  Upgrade pricing from earlier versions can be found on the How to Order RISC page.

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RISC Batch Photo Import Tool:

Almost as soon as RISC v7 was released, schools, in particular high schools, started asking whether it was possible to import existing student photo files into RISC instead of using the RISC PhotoCapture! utility.  Of course, at the time, the answer was no.  So, we went to work on developing such a tool and realised it was not such a simple thing to do because between them, schools will use various different sizes for their source photos and they will also be named in all sorts of strange ways.  So this tool needed to be quite clever.  Here's what we came up with:

This tool will not only transfer your existing photos into RISC, but it will resize them, rotate them (if required) and rename them automatically, without disturbing the original copies.  And it will do it all for your whole school in a few minutes!  For v7 users, to get your free download of this great new tool, just e-mail us and we'll point you right at it. Users of v8 have and updated version of this tool built directly into the RISC Admin program.

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New Optional OASIS Export Diskette for v7:

The standard OASIS Export Report shipped with RISC v7 includes the "Emergency Phone Number" as the second phone number displayed next to the home phone.  Many schools in NSW use the Emergency Phone Number as the parent's mobile.  But many other schools use it as a "last resort" phone number when all other available contact numbers have not been successful.  In these cases, this is clearly not the ideal number to have displayed on the RISC screen.  For these schools with v8.x of RISC, there is an alternate OASIS Export Report diskette that can be created which will export the "Mother's Mobile Phone" field instead of the Emergency Phone.

Version 7 users can download this Alternate OASIS Export Report and save it into the RISC folder on your server to overwrite the one that is there already. Then run RISC Admin and create a new OASIS Export Diskette using the Utilities menu and re-export from OASIS then re-import into RISC following the normal instructions.

PLEASE NOTE that this will not automatically change the phone numbers in already saved contact records, but will ensure all future contact records display a more suitable second phone number.

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OASIS Thin Client and RISC (NSW Schools):

OASIS Thin Client was rolled out to all New South Wales Public Schools during 2007. RISC v6 and later are compatible with OASIS Thin Client, however there is a completely new set of instructions that must be followed in order to successfully export your enrolment data from RISC for importing into Windows.  Thankfully, the days of using a floppy diskette for OASIS are over!

Full instructions for OASIS Thin Client are available in our Helpdesk section at this webpage

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New Single Page RISC Flyer!

Are you a "paper" person? Do you find it easier to read a piece of paper than a website?  Would you like a single-page flyer about RISC to hand to other school staff?  We've got just what you're looking for:

Click on either of the above links and the flyer will open in a new window with Acrobat Reader.  You can then print as many copies as you like!

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RISC Data Analysis Package - FREE Download:

One of our long-time users of RISC, Mr Peter South from Thomas Reddall High School in Sydney, has developed an excellent add-on resource for the RISC v8 software.  The RISC Data Analysis Package utilises an Excel Spreadsheet Template for analysing export data from RISC to produce additional reports and closer analysis of RISC data for schools.  The Excel spreadsheet uses coded macros to automatically import RISC data and carry out further calculations, sort, display and print data and graphs. It is generic and will work for data from any school, requiring the user only to enter their school name and to click a single button for each import (once they have exported their data from RISC). It can be used to assist schools with the analysis of trends.  Please note that the package is only designed for schools running RISC v8.x for Windows.  Open the comprehensive User Guide linked below and have a closer look at what the RISC Data Analysis Package can offer your school.  Our many thanks go to Peter South and Thomas Reddall High School for making this useful tool available to RISC users.


The Register of Individual Student Contact (RISC) is developed & distributed
by Marillion Designs.

Copyright © 1995-2008 Marillion Designs. All rights reserved.
Information in this document is subject to change without notice.
Other products and companies referred to herein are trademarks
or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

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