Orah's roll system has three main roll types: Emergency Rolls, Daily Rolls and Automatic Rolls. This guide shows you how to create an Emergency Roll type from the perspective of a school administrator.
Emergency Rolls are used to communicate a situation to staff, students and/or parents and to account for everyone to ensure their safety. Students can mark themselves Safe or In Danger during a roll, and communication can be sent at the start and end of the roll via email, push notification, in-app and text message*.
*Text messaging requires an account upgrade. Please contact Orah support if you are interested in learning more about this.
Before you start: two settings control whether a staff member can mark themselves safe during an emergency roll. Accounting for staff in the roll sends them the alert; collaborator permission is what gives them the roll screen where the mark-safe action lives. Staff who are not collaborators will receive the alert but will have no button to act on it. Please read Emergency Rolls before configuring who is notified.
Creating an Emergency Roll type
Go to the Admin Console and open Roll Types, then click the button to create a new roll type. If you cannot see the Admin Console, your Orah account does not have administrator permissions — ask another administrator at your school, or contact Orah support.
You will be offered the choice of an Emergency Roll, a Daily Roll or an Automatic Roll. Choose Emergency Roll Check.
Name your roll, then work through the options below.
Assignments
Choose who this roll applies to. Leave the toggle on if it applies to the whole school, or toggle it off to choose a specific house or group.
Default Options
Choose which groups or houses the roll should automatically use when it is started. If you would like students to be automatically signed in when they are marked as present, toggle that option on and choose the location they should be signed in to.
Set whether this is a Live Roll — a live roll allows multiple staff members to work off the same roll at the same time. If it is, set which staff should collaborate by default.
Permissions
This section controls two things:
Who can initiate this roll? — the staff members allowed to start the roll.
Who can join as collaborators? — the staff members who get the roll screen once it is running. Anyone who needs to mark people safe, including marking themselves, must be listed here.
Actions
Customise the codes available during the roll (Safe, In Danger), and the state students start in when the roll is started. You can also add new codes if applicable.
Alerts
This section lets you add a notification when the roll is started and when it is completed, and allows students to mark themselves safe during the roll check.
If you choose to send alerts when a roll is initiated and/or completed, you will see options for which groups the messaging goes to and how it is sent. Crafting your messaging here in the setup means it is ready to go the moment a roll is started.
Because emergency procedures vary, we recommend creating a separate emergency roll type for each specific situation so the messaging reflects the appropriate procedure.
If you would like students to indicate whether they are safe or in danger, toggle that option on and add the appropriate wording. Be sure to choose the state the student will show as when marking themselves — do not leave it as unmarked.
Once all settings are chosen, scroll up and save at the top right. Your new Emergency roll type will appear in your list of roll types and can be selected from your daily care view.
Running a test or training drill safely
The safest way to practise — or to check your configuration — is to build a dedicated roll type for testing so no real parent or student is notified. Follow these steps in order:
Create a new Emergency Roll type and name it clearly, for example "TEST — do not use in a real emergency".
Restrict who is notified. In the Alerts section, remove parents and students from the start and completion alerts and direct the messaging only to yourself. Leave the wording obviously marked as a test.
Restrict who takes part. Under Assignments, limit the roll to a small group or house rather than the whole school. Under Permissions, set Who can initiate this roll? to yourself, and add only the handful of staff who are taking part to Who can join as collaborators?.
Save the roll type and confirm the alert recipients one more time before you go any further.
Run it. Start the roll from your home board as you would in a real emergency, and have the participating staff join and mark people.
Complete the roll from within the app. Do not leave it open — a roll left running will sit under "Rolls in progress" and can only be closed by Orah support.
Review the result. Check that everyone appeared in the correct list, that staff who needed to respond had the option to do so, and that the alerts went only where you intended.
Delete the test result from your roll history once you have reviewed it, so the drill is not mistaken for a real event. Keep the test roll type itself for next time.
If a staff member took part but had no way to mark themselves safe, they were almost certainly not listed as a collaborator. See Emergency Rolls.
Have more questions? Click the chat icon at the bottom of this page to reach the Orah support team.