What's new in Tutela

[Unreleased]

Fixed

Staff see their full console again. Some staff accounts were shown only the dashboard and were blocked from the rest of the console; team members now see every area and action their role allows.
Tidier menus. The console menus now open one at a time and close when you click away or press Escape.
Searchable timezone. Choosing a timezone is now a quick type-ahead instead of a very long list to scroll.
Link a student to their school. You can now set a student's school right on the student form.
Maps now load reliably. A recent library update had left the route and driver maps blank; they now show the map and stops correctly again.
No more double-assigning a student to a route. When adding a student to a stop, the list no longer shows students who are already on that route.

Changed

A tidier menu. The console menu is now organised into clear groups (People, Operations, Fleet, Schools, Settings), so it's quicker to find what you need.

Added

A public front page. The website now opens with a proper introduction to Tutela — what it does, how it keeps children safe, how it protects their information, and how a bus operator gets in touch to come on board — instead of the technical placeholder that used to sit there. It works on phones and in both light and dark themes.
Release notes you can read. These notes now have a page of their own on the website, so you can see what's changed without signing in.
Clearer about what we do and don't track. Our front page now says plainly that Tutela tracks buses, not children. While a run is on, we record where the bus is so your operator can answer your call, and we record that a child got on and got off at their stop so nobody is left behind. We do not keep a location history of a child, and the bus's own trail is discarded within a day. The wording we had previously was vaguer than that, and we'd rather be exact.
Record and verify a driver's working-with-children clearance. There is now a screen for each team member where you can record their clearance — type, state or territory, card number, and expiry — then mark it verified once someone has checked it against the issuing register. Recording is deliberately not the same as verifying: a clearance does not count until it has been checked. Your team list now shows each driver's clearance at a glance, including one that is due to expire, so nobody is quietly blocked from driving on the morning of a run.
Add and manage your team. Company admins can now create and manage their own staff and driver accounts — set each person's role, and suspend or reactivate access. New accounts get a one-time temporary password to share, which the person changes when they first sign in.
See which devices are signed in. A new screen shows every device currently trusted to stay signed in to your children's information, so an admin can review and revoke access at any time.
Manage your company's details. Company admins can now update their operation's name, contact details, address, and timezone. Setting the correct timezone matters — every time shown across the platform is displayed in it.
The driver map now works with no signal. The map for a run is stored on the device when it's loaded, so it keeps working in areas with no mobile coverage — the driver still sees the route and their position on the bus.
Another layer of protection around your data. We've added a further safeguard at the database itself, so each operator's records stay walled off from every other's — defence in depth beneath the checks already in place.
A portal for schools. Schools you work with can be given their own secure, read-only view of which of their students are on which service today and whether each has boarded or been dropped off — nothing more. Access is governed by a formal data-sharing agreement you control: you choose exactly what each school can see, and access ends automatically when the agreement lapses.
An integration API. Connect your other systems — school roll syncing, rostering, reporting — using secure, per-integration access keys that you can scope to just what each one needs, set to expire, and revoke at any time.
Outbound notifications to your own systems. Subscribe your systems to receive a secure, signed message when key events happen, so your tools can stay in step with what's happening on the road.
A portal for parents and carers. Sign in with a link sent to your email — no password to remember — and see your children in one place: their stop, their pick-up and drop-off times, and where they are today ("On the bus 7:44am"). Your phone stays remembered, so next time you go straight in.
Tell the driver your child isn't travelling, in a few taps. Choose today, tomorrow, a date, or a range of days; morning, afternoon, or both; and apply it to brothers and sisters at the same time. The driver sees it on their run sheet, so nobody waits at the stop for a child who's staying home — and you get a clear confirmation. If a run has already started, we tell you plainly rather than pretend the change went through.
See who has looked at your child's information. Every parent can view a simple report of who in the company has seen their child's record, and when.
Daily bus safety checks that keep an unsafe bus off the road. Operators can build their own pre-start checklist for drivers to complete before a run. If a driver marks a serious item as faulty, the bus is automatically taken out of service and a fault is logged for the workshop — and a run cannot begin until the check has been completed and passed. A bus stays out of service until every open serious fault has been signed off with a note. On the bus, the check is a simple Pass/Fail screen with large buttons, built for a driver at the wheel.
A compliance home that tells you the truth at a glance. One dashboard shows how many records are overdue, how many fall due in the next 30 days, and how many buses are currently out of service — with the details a click away.
Keep every compliance record in one place. Track registrations, inspections, insurance, accreditation and driver licences with their due dates, and log each bus's service and maintenance history. Records are colour-flagged as current, due soon or overdue.
Automatic expiry reminders. As any record approaches its due date — and again once it has passed — your compliance staff are reminded by email, so nothing lapses unnoticed.
Report and clear vehicle faults. Staff and drivers can report a fault against a bus; a serious fault takes the bus off the road immediately, and only a compliance officer can sign it off to return the bus to service.
The operator console has arrived. Bus operators can now sign in and manage their students, guardians, buses, stops and schools in one place, with fast search on each. The console works across desktop, tablet and phone, and looks right in both light and dark themes. Sensitive details like a child's medical notes or home address are shown only to staff whose role allows it.
Import a route from a spreadsheet. Upload your route workbook and the morning and afternoon services are read in and set side by side, with the stops and timings laid out and a comparison to check before the route goes live. A map view of each route is being built alongside it.
Student photos and document storage. Add a photo to a student's record, and keep your compliance documents in one place. Uploaded files are scanned for viruses, and student photos are shown only to staff whose role allows it.
Build your afternoon run from the morning one. Duplicate a route to create its return service in a single step — the stops reverse and the times carry across, ready to adjust.
Assign students to stops and roster your drivers and buses. Set who rides from which stop, and put a driver and vehicle on a route — with a safety check that stops an assignment when a driver's clearance has lapsed or a bus is out of service. Link guardians to students, with sensitive custody details visible only to staff whose role allows it.
The driver app. Drivers can start their run and mark each child on, off, or absent — and it keeps working with no signal, saving every action and syncing when the bus is back in range. A run can't be finished until every child who boarded has been marked off and the driver has confirmed a walk-through of the bus. If anything doesn't add up, the office is alerted straight away.
Live dispatch view. The office can see the day's runs at a glance — who's on board, progress along the route, and anything that needs attention first.