Our users' voice is extremely important for us, so this time, we decided to do something completely out of the norm for our dear Educational Institution customers!
Our story with Prey for Education began with making Prey Chromebook ready, after hearing from our customers that the adoption of these devices in schools would only increase in the years to come.
So this year, we worked hand in hand with some of our current users to revamp Prey with a focus on helping educational institutions, and now, after weeks of work and constant feedback...Prey for Education is finally here!
Why Prey for Education?
For a long time, Prey has been partnering with schools and universities to boost the use of digital assets. Through our education partner program, we provide them with a custom and cost-efficient plan that focuses on helping schools grow their fleet, rather than cripple their resources.
The collaborations that were born due to this program resulted in co-working sessions, where we worked side by side with our schools and universities in creating new tools that solve problems previously untouched issues.
And thus, the Prey for Education release was born! It is thought to help out all of those busy IT Managers from all Educational Institutions, be it K-12, Colleges & Universities, and all other organizations dedicated to the development of knowledge.
We want to thank you for all your effort in bringing learning environments into the IoT age, and continue to help you thrive in this stage.
What is Prey for Education?
Prey for Education is a set of new feature releases that focus on improving anti-theft and device management capabilities in schools and universities.
With these new developments, we are looking to help our users in Education be more efficient in management. This features, however, will also be available for enterprises, and one of them (Control Zone Actions) will also be part of our personal paid plans.
For now, we would just like you to have a glimpse of what you can expect. Shall we take a look?
Scheduled Automations: Real Time-savers
If you ever feel that 24 hour days are not enough for you to do all that you have to do on a daily basis, and on top of that, you must still keep track and take care of that fleet of devices the school assigned for student or staff use, then this could help you out.
Scheduled Automations allow IT managers to schedule Prey's actions on their devices, such as the lock, alert, and alarm, to be executed on specific days, hours, and data ranges. For example, a curfew lock can be set from Monday to Friday at 6 pm to deter out-of-hours device usage.
However, that's not all! You can also set up trigger-based automation, in which an action is triggered when a certain event happens. Like an automatic alarm when a device is disconnected.
This feature is available for enterprise users and will continue to grow in actions, event detection, and configurations in the future.
Control Zone Actions: No More Reaction Time
Have you ever wondered what it would feel like to be alerted that a device has exited your campus without permission, and knowing that it'll be locked and tracked automatically? We thought it would feel wonderful, and that's why Control Zone Actions have arrived!
This long-requested feature integrates with current Control Zone settings, our geofencing detection tool, to precipitate reactions and eliminate reaction time in case of any eventuality.
Users can configure Prey’s alarms, alerts, locks, and the “Mark as Missing” evidence reporting feature whenever a device enters or leaves a designated area. Specific actions can be assigned to both the entry and exit detections.
This tool is available for all paid plans, both for enterprise and personal use.
Improved Inventory Management & User Contact Assignment: Your Devices, Accounted for
We have noticed how challenging it is to keep information scattered all over the place, especially relevant information regarding your device. Looking for a piece of information here and another piece of information over there is a real time-waster.
We have also noticed through our users just how challenging it is to know who has which device, especially when Windows Laptop XYZ was not returned and you need to know who had it last before it went missing.
That is why we improved our Inventory Management. With these new changes, IT staff can now assign a user or specify a contact for each device.
Plus, an Online/Offline tag has been added to provide visibility on the devices’ connection, as well as a “Last Seen Online” device sorting for quick visibility.
As for device status, IT managers can also review further inventory data, such as battery and network connection per device, together with the logged-in user.
Simplifying Device Management
Last but not least, we would like to reiterate how Prey’s Unified Management can make your device management a lot easier.
The multi-OS Prey for Education platform allows school IT managers to group devices by class, usage, or state with custom tags; view device status or hardware changes; and assign them to faculty or students.
You can learn all about it on this dedicated page, and access resources such as other school's case studies with Prey, our Student Awareness Kit for digital citizenship promotion, and more!
So there you have it! We truly hope you enjoy this new release and, most importantly, that you find it useful! For further information, visit the Help page.
Vanessa has been Prey's Research and Data Analyst, and has worked gathering insight for our current and new features.