What is Encounter Prevention?
Encounter Prevention is a feature that allows admins to prevent 2 or more students from being in the hallway at the same time.
To find Encounter Preventions head to the accounts tab on your Admin page and click on the tile with the Encounter Prevention label located at the top-right corner.
How to Create an Encounter Prevention Group
Start by clicking Encounter Prevention
Select +New Group.
Now add the Students you would like to be in this group.
Assign a Group Name (Optional)
Add Notes that will be useful for other teachers such as the date the Group was created and for what specific reason.
How does it work?
When an encounter prevention comes into play when 1 of the students in the prevention group has a pass and another student in the group tries to make a pass. That 2nd student's pass will not start and a message will appear on the screen that says: Sorry, you can't start your pass right now.
Encounter Prevention not only prevents 2 or more students from being in the hallway at the same time, but it also keeps a log of each prevented encounter. To view this go back to Accounts and click Encounter Prevention and you'll notice a number inside a red octagon next to the name of the Encounter Prevention group that represents how many times this group has been prevented from meeting up. Clicking on this symbol will open up the log to show details of the attempted meetups.
If you have this encounters log open, clicking on the 3-horizontal dots gives you access to the following options:
Prevention Enabled- you may toggle this option off to disable Encounter Prevention temporarily for the selected group.
Copy Private Link - a link is copied on the clipboard which you can send to other school staff to point them to the corresponding group.
Edit Group - lets you add or remove students from the group.
Delete Group- this permanently deletes the Encounter Prevention group
Overriding an Encounter Prevention
There are a few reasons you may need to override an Encounter Prevention such as allowing students to get to class on a tardy pass, or calling students down to the office for a conversation.
By default, teaching staff do not have the ability to override an Encounter Prevention to help protect the integrity of your decision to add students to these groups. As the need arises you can add or remove staff from the permissions here. Admin have the ability to override Encounter Preventions by default.
You can also review the data on which Encounters Preventions were overridden by opening the encounter prevention in question.
You can use this data to determine if conversations with staff need to happen or to direct you to determine if certain staff should no longer have permission to override.
As passes are created, if they are impacted by an Encounter Prevention, you (or any staff member making a pass) will be made aware of the Encounter Prevention and be given a clear option to Override.
FAQ
If given permission to override an Encounter Prevention, will staff know they are doing so?
Yes, staff will be prompted to override the pass before it goes active.
Will an Encounter Prevention prevent a student's Scheduled or Flex pass from starting?
No, Encounter Prevention is designed to stop students from meeting up on "Now" passes. This is done to ensure students can get to where they need to go on those scheduled passes. Make sure you have restrictions set up for your future passes to ensure a level of control on those particular passes.
Does SmartPass show the other students who they are in an Encounter Prevention with?
No, students are given a fairly generic "You cannot start a pass right now" message. This allows schools to determine if a student should know this intervention is in place or not.
Are there limits to how many groups a student can be in, or how many can be in a group?
No, there are no limits on the sizes or configurations of your groups!
Is there a way to help determine which students might be meeting up, and would need this Encounter Prevention?
Yes, this is called Detected Encounters. Learn more here.