We are excited to announce an important update for Impero Classroom and Impero Wellbeing – a new integration with Google Workspace.
For several years, Impero Backdrop (the platform that runs Impero Classroom, Impero Safeguard, and Impero Wellbeing) has included the ability to sync student and staff information from Google Classroom.
If you are happy with your current Google Classroom integration, there is no need to make any changes right now. All these changes and updates will happen naturally when your Google admin begins preparations for the next school year.
However, if you are experiencing issues with your Impero-Google-Classroom sync, OR if you want more control over how staff and students are synchronized between Google and Impero, we recommend you set some time aside and make the switch ASAP.
Why Switch to our new Google Workspace Integration?
Impero’s updated Google Workspace integration allows Google admins more control of the organizational units integrated with Backdrop. Your Google admin can now add and remove Google OU’s. We’ve made it easier to search through the Google OU’s and select only those that need to be integrated … eliminating clutter in the Backdrop admin interface.
Once your Google admin has setup the backend synchronization, Teachers can choose which Google Classroom groups they want to work with. There is no need to manage classroom groupings in multiple programs. If you want to set them up in Google Classroom, do that. If you’d prefer to create classroom groups in Impero Classroom, do that instead.
Or, do both!
With Impero Classroom, you can easily import & synchronize with the Google Classrooms you create and, if needed, create custom student groups directly within the Impero Classroom.
Making the switch from Impero’s Google Classroom integration to the more complete Google Workspace integration will require effort by your organization’s Google admin and the Teachers / Staff using Impero. Read more about how to make the switch here.
There is more to this release than Google Workspace
In addition to the new Google Workspace integration, we released some new features for Impero Classroom. You don’t need to do anything to take advantage of these new features. They are ready and waiting for customers to take advantage of them now.
- We’ve added a new permission for the Take A Screenshot feature. Backdrop administrators can now enable or disable the ability to take a screenshot based on staff user group.
- Time Blocks have been updated. Backdrop admins can now block entire days. If you are worried about student data privacy and are not familiar with our Time Block feature, take a look at this article on Time Blocks. Time Blocks allow Backdrop admins to block student monitoring for a few hours and, with this new release, for entire days.
Finally, we’ve fixed some customer-reported issues with this release. The Impero Support team will notify customers of outstanding issues and work with them on any necessary configuration changes. Read the full release notes here.