Teacher Home is the modern dashboard for teachers in edge/Helix. It brings roll marking, achievement entry, class lists, communications, forms and appointments together on one page, with a side menu for notices, announcements and important dates. Teacher Home must be enabled for your school — contact support if you cannot see it.
Teacher Home is the modern dashboard for teachers in edge/Helix. It brings roll marking, achievement entry, class lists, communications, forms and appointments together on one page, with a side menu for notices, announcements and important dates. Teacher Home must be enabled for your school — contact support if you cannot see it.
Opening Teacher Home
- Log in to the staff portal in Teacher Mode and click the Home icon in the navigation, or browse to Teacher > Home.
- If you prefer the older teacher dashboard, open the More Options menu (bars icon) in the side menu and choose Classic View.
- Staff who also hold non-teaching roles (or the Group Leader / Subject Leader roles) see an Admin Mode option in the same menu to switch back to the admin view. In Admin Mode the equivalent option reads Teacher Mode and is available to relief teachers and staff with classes.
Screenshot: Teacher Home with side menu on the left and tab strip across the main area
The tabs
The main area is a strip of tabs. Which tabs you see depends on your school's settings:
| Tab | What it does |
|---|---|
| Achievement | Achievement and assessment entry for your classes |
| Attendance | Mark your rolls (the default tab) — see below |
| Communications | Send communications (shown when the Communications module is available) |
| Forms | Generate permission slips, RAMS forms and lesson plans — see the Forms article |
| Lists | Filterable student lists for your classes |
| My Dashboard | Widget dashboard (Helix schools) |
| News Feed | Create and manage news feed posts (feature-switched) |
| Result Sheets / Results | Result sheet entry — Result Sheets shows when the Progressions interface is enabled for your school, otherwise Results shows |
| Sign in Logs | Sign-in records (shown when edge Sign In is enabled) |
| Widgets | Statistic widgets |
| More | Links to My Class, and (where relevant) NCEA, Pastoral, Reports, Timetable and Assign Awards |
A Logout tab sits at the right of the strip.
Marking rolls from the Attendance tab
The Attendance tab loads your rolls for today so you can mark straight from the dashboard.
- Each student appears as a card with their photo and name. Click P to mark them present, ? to mark them absent-unknown, or open the three-dot menu on the card for L - Late, your school's other attendance codes, and Add Attendance Note.
- Use Mark All Present to set the whole roll in one click, then adjust exceptions.
- Click Submit Attendance to save the roll.
- Click Options to choose a different Date, Roll (period) and Class. At intermediate/secondary (timetabled) schools the class selector is a multi-select, so you can display and mark more than one class at once; primary schools see a single class dropdown and relief staff can use Get All Classes.
- Use Switch to Grid View / Switch to Card View to change the layout.
Cards also show helpful indicators: coloured dots for the student's attendance in other periods today, a medical icon when the student has medical notes, a dashboard-note icon, an ESOL globe icon, and a birthday animation on the student's birthday. Clicking a student's photo opens the student information popup — see the Student Information Popup article.
If you do not have the permission to manage your own class attendance, the marking buttons are hidden.
Screenshot: Attendance tab showing student cards with P and ? buttons
The side menu
The left-hand side menu contains:
- Notifications — your notification list, with Mark All Read and paging.
- Create — a quick-create menu: Create Note (Attendance, Assessment, Enrolment, Learning Support, Sensitive, Uploaded Document and, where enabled, Custom notes), Create/Manage Behaviour Records, Health and Safety Incident, Create/Manage Announcements, and — where the features are enabled — News Feed posts and Book Appointment / Manage Appointments.
- Send Emergency Notification — shown only when emergency text messaging is enabled for your school and you have the emergency text permission.
- Accordions for School Notices, Announcements, School Calendar (when a Google Calendar is configured), Appointments (when Staff Appointments is enabled), Attendance, Phonics Reminders (when phonics reminders are in use), Important Dates and Birthdays.
The side menu can be minimised with the chevron button, and the announcement options only appear if you have the communications permission.
Screenshot: side menu showing the Create menu expanded
Login redirect and preferences
You can make Teacher Home your landing page after login:
- On Teacher Home, open More Options and choose Update Preferences, or open My Profile.
- In Update Login Preferences tick Take me to the new dashboard when I login (on My Profile this reads Take me to the new Dashboard when logging in). This option only appears when Teacher Home is enabled for your school.
- Optionally set Specify which tab to open on to land on a particular tab instead of the default.
- Take me to Attendance when I login in the morning (on My Profile: Take me to Attendance AM) controls the morning attendance redirect — at primary schools, teachers with an AM roll who log in between about 8:40am and 9:20am are taken straight to attendance marking. This is on by default; untick it to opt out.
- Click Save. You should see Preferences Updated Successfully.
How the redirects combine at login:
- If the new-dashboard preference is ticked (and Teacher Home is enabled for the school), you are taken to Teacher Home. Staff who are not teacher-only are taken to the admin home dashboard instead.
- Otherwise, if the morning AM-roll conditions are met, you are taken to attendance marking. Where the school also has the Teacher Home AM redirect enabled, teacher-only users land on Teacher Home (which opens on the Attendance tab) rather than the standalone attendance page.
- Your default-tab preference is applied whenever Teacher Home opens, except during the morning attendance window when the AM redirect preference is on.
The Update Preferences window also lets you update your email address and password.
Screenshot: Update Preferences window with login preference checkboxes