School Management and Accounting Software

We like to challenge the quality of what we build to make it better. To do so, we try to make the product intuitive, beautiful, and user friendly. Innovation and hard work help to fulfill these requirements. I believe in order to innovate we need to think differently. A few months ago I discovered there was no open source free school management software that met my quality standards. I happen to know a bit of programming so I decided to make one. I also believe that working with more people can push the standard higher than working alone. So I decided to make it open source and free.

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Framework used

• Laravel 7.X
• Bootstrap 3.3.7

Server Requirements

• PHP >= 7.3
• OpenSSL PHP Extension
• PDO PHP Extension
• Mbstring PHP Extension
• Tokenizer PHP Extension
• XML PHP Extension

Table of Contents

• Features
• What's New
• Framework used
• Server Requirements
• How to Start (Installation)
  • Using Docker Container
  • Not using a Container
  • Video Tutorial
• Optional
• Testing
• Stripe setup
• Create a school and an admin
• Manage a school
• Basic Steps by Serial
• Manage Exam (In exam manage page) by Admin
• Manage GPA and Grade
• Good to know
• Screenshots

Contribute

Unifiedtransform is 100% open source and free forever!!

Community contribution can make this product better!! See Contribution guideline before making any Pull request.

When you contribute to a Github project you agree with this terms of Github Terms of Service(Contributions Under Repository License).

Since this project is under GNU General Public License v3.0, according to Github's Terms of Service all your contributions are also under the same license terms. Thus you permit the user of this software to use your contribution under the terms of GNU General Public License v3.0.

Contributors Hall of Fame

Testing

• We want testable softwares. Most parts of the software are covered by tests. You also can contribute by writing test case!
• To run Feature and Unit Tests use ./vendor/bin/phpunit.
• To run Browser Tests copy .env.dusk.example to .env.dusk.local and set APP_KEY with same token to environment variable in your .env file and run php artisan serve --env=dusk.local for execute the server then run php artisan dusk.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0

Whats New

• Certificate Upload Feature is added.
  • Admin can upload certificate to a student using student code.
  • Students can see their certificates link from Left Navigation bar.
• Now students can also go to their Notifications(Teacher's Message) from Left Navigation bar.

Features

This software has following features:

Feature	Description
Roles	Master, Admin, Teacher, Student, Librarian, Accountant.
	(You can Impersonate User Roles in Development environment) See how Impersonation works. Cool !!
Certificate	Now you can upload certificate to a student using student code.
Payment	Stripe is used. See configuration below.
	Students can pay from their accounts.
	Student can view payment receipts (history)
	View Screenshot below
Attendance	Take student attendance for each course
Mark	Can give marks to students for each course
Registration	Register students
Notice, Syllabus	Manage uploaded Notices, Syllabus, Routines
Library	Manage a library of books.
	Add new books.
	Keep track of books.
Exam	Manage Semester by Examination
Grade	Give Grades based on marks of each course.
Accounts	Manage Income, Expense Amounts
	View Graphs based on year.
Messaging	Uses CKEditor 5
Export/Import	Users (Students, Teachers) from/to Excel
	Laravel Excel package is used.
	Important: Single sheet supported in an Excel file. So delete any extra sheet in an Excel file.
	Following excel column names supported for both Teachers and Students: name, email, password, address, about, phone_number, blood_group, nationality, gender.
	Other columns:
	For Teachers: department, (class, section) if assigned as class teacher.
	For Students: class, section, session, version, group, birthday, religion, father_name, father_phone_number, father_national_id, father_occupation, father_designation, father_annual_income, mother_name, mother_phone_number, mother_national_id, mother_occupation, mother_designation, mother_annual_income
	For any number(e.g: phone_number) starts with zero, put (') before zero.
Supported Languages	English, Spanish
	To set default Language and Timezone, Edit as following in config/app.php:

'timezone' => 'Asia/Dhaka',//'UTC',
'locale' => 'en',//'es-MX' for Spanish

How to Start

Using Docker Container:

Docker is now supported and improved.

With the improved Docker setup, you will get:

• Nginx
• PHP 7.4
• MySQL 8
• PHPMyAdmin
• Composer commands: access composer commands directly without entering the container
• Artisan commands: access artisan commands directly without entering the container

In a nutshell, you only need to install Docker as well as docker-compose on your (host) machine and let Docker does the rest

Step to install:

1. Run cp .env.example .env
2. If you think the default setting are pretty well setup, you can run ./docker-install.sh right away from your terminal.
3. Otherwise, read a section below for further information about properties you may change.
4. Run ./docker-install.sh

Note

Here are .env properties you can change:

• Common Laravel .env properties
• DOCKER_WEBSERVER_HOST defines the Unifiedtransform port address. default value: 4049
• DOCKER_PHPMYADMIN_HOST defines the PHPMyAdmin port address. default value: 5051

You can also customize:

• DB_DATABASE: the database name
• DB_USERNAME: the database username. Fill it other than root otherwise you will get trouble ahead
• DB_PASSWORD: the database password

And it will be reflected on the database credentials after Docker is finished installing.

Added Utility Scripts for Working With docker-compose

Under this project, there is an executable called dev. It contains utility scripts which really comes in handy when you are working with the Docker app, especially docker-compose scripts cause it shortens some of docker-compose scripts.

Available commands:

• dev composer <commands> stands for docker-compose run --rm composer <commands>
• dev artisan <commands> stands for docker-compose run --rm artisan <commands>
• dev rebuild <service> to rebuild some services defined in the docker-compose.yml

Really saving your time, isn't it?

Not using a Container:

Here is a latest article about Manual installation in Windows 10.

Here are some basic steps to start using this application

Note: Instruction on cached data for Dashboard is given in Good to know segment below.

• Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/changeweb/Unifiedtransform

• Copy the contents of the .env.example file to create .env in the same directory

• Run composer install for developer environment and run composer install --optimize-autoloader --no-dev for production environment to install Laravel packages (Remove Laravel Debugbar, Laravel Log viewer packages from composer.json and

   //Provider
   Barryvdh\Debugbar\ServiceProvider,
   Logviewer Service provider,
   //Alias
   'Debugbar' => Barryvdh...

from config/app.php before running composer install in Production Environment)

• Generate APP_KEY using php artisan key:generate

• Edit the database connection configuration in .env file e.g.

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=unifiedtransform
DB_USERNAME=unified
DB_PASSWORD=secret

Note that this is just an example, and the values may vary depending on your database environment.

• Set the APP_ENV variable in your .env file according to your application environment (e.g. local, production) in .env file

• Migrate your Database with php artisan migrate

• Seed your Database with php artisan db:seed

• On localhost, serve your application with php artisan serve

Video Tutorial

See Video Tutorial.

(Optional)

• Laravel Page Speed Package is installed but not activated. If you want to use it to optimize your site automatically which results in a 35%+ optimization. You need to uncomment some lines from Kernel.php file and may need to run php artisan vendor:publish --provider="RenatoMarinho\LaravelPageSpeed\ServiceProvider".

  app/HTTP/Kernel.php

      //\RenatoMarinho\LaravelPageSpeed\Middleware\InlineCss::class,
      //\RenatoMarinho\LaravelPageSpeed\Middleware\ElideAttributes::class,
      //\RenatoMarinho\LaravelPageSpeed\Middleware\InsertDNSPrefetch::class,
      //\RenatoMarinho\LaravelPageSpeed\Middleware\RemoveComments::class,
      //\RenatoMarinho\LaravelPageSpeed\Middleware\TrimUrls::class,
      //\RenatoMarinho\LaravelPageSpeed\Middleware\RemoveQuotes::class,
      //\RenatoMarinho\LaravelPageSpeed\Middleware\CollapseWhitespace::class,

• To create a Master, go to the database\seeds\UsersTableSeeder.php and change the name, the email and the password settings to your likings. Leave the other settings (role, active, verified) unchanged!

• Laravel Passport package is included to support API. Key for Passport should be automatically generated by php artisan passport:keys from post-install-cmd script in composer.json or you have to run this manually and to remove this package just follow these steps

  • Remove it from composer.json require dependencies and remove command @php artisan passport:keys from post-install-cmd script
  • Run composer update and composer dump-autoload.
  • And all classes that relies on passport must be edited as well. The most common classes are:
  • app\User.php model, remove the HasApiToken trait.
  • app\Proiders\AuthServiceProvider, remove Passport::routes(); in your boot method.
  • In config/auth.php, change your driver option for api from passport to api authentication.

• To create the tables, run php artisan migrate.

  • If you don't want to use Passport package then remove the Passport Migrations in database migrations table and run command artisan migrate:refresh

• To seed the tables with fake data, use php artisan db:seed.

• If you want to run the migration and the seeding together, use php artisan migrate:refresh --seed

• You must seed database\seeds\UsersTableSeeder.php at least once in order to create the Master account (For Production: Run the seed in Development environment and then switch to production). To do so, follow these steps:

  • comment all the seeders except $this->call(UsersTableSeeder::class); in database\seeds\DatabaseSeeder.php;
  • then comment factory(App\User::class, 200)->create(); in UsersTableSeeder.php.

  So your files will look something like this:

  In database\seeds\DatabaseSeeder.php:

  ...
  //$this->call(SectionsTableSeeder::class);
  $this->call(UsersTableSeeder::class);
  //$this->call(AttendancesTableSeeder::class);
  ...

  In database\seeds\UsersTableSeeder.php:

  ...
  //factory(User::class, 10)->states('admin')->create();
  //factory(User::class, 10)->states('accountant')->create();
  //factory(User::class, 10)->states('librarian')->create();
  //factory(User::class, 30)->states('teacher')->create();
  //factory(User::class, 200)->states('student')->create();

• Make Unifiedtransform a native desktop application by using Nativefier
• Laravel 5 log viewer is used to view Logs using a UI at 'example.com/logs' while in development environment.

Stripe setup

• Add STRIPE_KEY and STRIPE_SECRET in .env file.

• For Stripe Test uncomment following test student_can_pay_amount in tests\Feature\PaymentModuleTest after editing .env.

  From

  //public function student_can_pay_amount(){
     ...
  //}

  To

  public function student_can_pay_amount(){
     ...
  }

Create a school and an admin

• Important: only a master can create a new school and its admins!
• Login at example.com/login using your Master account credentials
• Create a new school
• Create a new admin for the newly created school

Manage a school

• Important: A master CANNOT manage a school's data!
• Login as admin at example.com/login
• Now add data to the school as required.

Basic Steps by Serial

• Create Classes
• Create Sections
• Create Exam
• Add Students
• Add Department
• Add Teachers
• Add Courses
• Then teacher can take attendance, give marks

Manage Exam (In exam manage page) by Admin

1. Check Notice published checkbox for an Exam after uploading Exam Notice.

2. Check Result published checkbox for an Exam after all teachers updated their courses' marks.

   • Checking result as published sets the Exam as completed.

3. Exam is set as Active by default while created. You can deactivate the exam by checking related checkbox.

Manage GPA and Grade

1. Admin adds GPAs for respective mark ranges.

2. For giving marks, Teacher clicks on Submit Grade button and do the following:

   1. Select a GPA by name from dropdown
   2. Configure Class Test, Quiz, ...etc. count, percentage (Optional)
   3. Give marks
   4. To get Grade of students of a course for given marks, Teacher clicks the Get Total Marks button. (Usually this is done at the end of the semester)

Give Certificate or Diploma to students

Upon request in issue #258, Certification file upload system has been added.

Good to know

• Setup your Mail configuration in .env file if you want to send email. Currently registered users are notified by invitation mail if Mail is configured properly.
• This project uses Laravel Impersonate in development and staging environments, so you can view the application through another user's eyes, which is useful for testing. See the guide for using Impersonation.
• In .env, turn APP_DEBUG to false for production environment.
• Remove Route::get('logs', '\Rap2hpoutre\LaravelLogViewer\LogViewerController@index'); from routes/web.php while in Production Environment.
• Cache::remember() generates cache files. Removed To delete expired cache files LaravelCacheGarbageCollector package is used. Run php artisan cache:gc.
• You can switch to and from maintenance mode by running php artisan up and php artisan down.
• Optimizing Route Loading php artisan route:cache
• Dashboard page contents(e.g. Student count, Teacher count, Notice, etc.) are cached because these are not frequently changed. If you don't want these to be cached, just remove the cache lines in index method in app\Http\Controller\HomeController.phplike the following example. So your edit would be something like this:

From:

...
$classes = \Cache::remember('classes-'.$school_id, $minutes, function () use($school_id) {
   return \App\Myclass::where('school_id', $school_id)
                        ->pluck('id')
                        ->toArray();
});
...

To:

...
$classes = \App\Myclass::where('school_id', $school_id)
                        ->pluck('id')
                        ->toArray();
...

You can do similar for other cache lines.

Here are some screenshots:

Auto generated fake data were used.