Approve iT: Our Origins and Solutions
Our company is a direct result of people who tinker with technology and those who refuse to settle for what is currently available.
WHERE IT ALL BEGAN
Our founder, Mike Berago, and creator of the Approve iT Automated Approval forms and Manage iT Online Asset Management tools is a technology coordinator, an AP Computer Science educator, and a software developer. As an avid programmer whose passion is creating solutions for school districts, he developed countless web applications for his current school district and has saved them a lot of money over the last eight years. He understands the important role of funding and technology as drivers for providing equity in school systems.
OUR MISSION
Equity drives our mission and usefulness is the byproduct we seek to achieve in creating all of our solutions. We want to provide school districts with solutions that are both useful and affordable. This sounds cliché, we know--but, far too many companies develop features and not solutions. At Approve iT, every solution we develop is shaped by our stakeholders (e.g. school admins, teachers) and, as a result, they are all useful.
OUR SOLUTIONS
Manage iT Online Asset and Privacy Compliance Manager
Manage all of your online assets and resources in one place. With our powerful Manage iT Chrome extension, you can personalize access for all of your users to approved apps, resources, and contact directories.
For school districts that require compliance with student data privacy laws (e.g. Illinois SOPPA laws), we highly recommend the use of the Student Data Privacy Consortium to manage your agreements. We have made it easy for you to manage your online assets as well as your privacy agreements by integrating their data with ours so that you can easily search and add agreements to our dashboard. Everything is then centralized for management purposes. With our automated notification system, you will receive alerts when your agreements are about to expire. Finally, to meet disclosure compliance, it's a checkbox in our system that will make all of your approved apps publicly available.
With our recent implementation of Announcements, you can send notification messages to certain groups in your domain or to all of your users. The notification pops up on your users' Chrome browsers and devices increasing the likelihood that they open the message over the traditional email approach.
If you like data like we do, our Chrome extension works hard in the background collecting information for you such as student online activity, sites visited, Chrome apps and extension installs, and more. With the data collected, you will:
Receive security risk information for all installed apps and extensions
Website visits and usage insights
Determine return on investment
And more!
If you want to learn more, here is a document with additional details about the power of Manage iT.
Here's what one of our clients have to say about Manage iT:
"The first step in successful Student and Data Privacy is knowing what we are protecting. Manage iT is a key tool in the curation of that knowledge. It’s built by people who have real time knowledge of the needs of K-12 techs, teachers and administrators. I can see who is using what, how often, and how effectively. Those insights equal better security for our community as well as saved time and money for my students, staff and stakeholders." -- Butch Wilson, Director of Technology, Mt. Vernon Township High School, District 201, Illinois
Receive security risk information for all installed apps and extensions
Website visits and usage insights
Determine return on investment
And more!
"The first step in successful Student and Data Privacy is knowing what we are protecting. Manage iT is a key tool in the curation of that knowledge. It’s built by people who have real time knowledge of the needs of K-12 techs, teachers and administrators. I can see who is using what, how often, and how effectively. Those insights equal better security for our community as well as saved time and money for my students, staff and stakeholders." -- Butch Wilson, Director of Technology, Mt. Vernon Township High School, District 201, Illinois
Approve iT: Automated Approval Forms
School districts can use this service to digitize all of their forms that require approval. Wait...You're probably thinking, well, we can do all of this with Google Forms. Yes! We love Google Forms, BUT, it's not practical when it comes to forms that require multi-approval processes, tracking progress, notifying all involved parties, and other specifics like informing certain departments when a request is fully approved.
With our solution, all of your requests are in one place and you can track progress for all of the requests without sifting through spreadsheets of data. Your requesters will also be pleased because they will have the ability to check request progress and they will receive notifications when their requests have been approved and/or denied.
For simple forms, we encourage schools to use Google Forms, and with add-ons like FormMule and Autocrat, you can achieve some pretty decent workflows.
DIY TIP: We are Google App Scripters, and we always encourage school districts to save money and develop their own solutions. You can achieve, with some limitations, all of our solutions through the use of App Script. If you have a developer in your district, we highly recommend leveraging this free approach.
For a more robust system with a multi-level approval workflow--our solution gets it done.