Working with the cloud
Bringing papers down, sending results up, and marking from home.
If your school has a cloud companion, lecturers can write papers and mark essays from home. The exam hall still runs on your own server; the cloud only holds a copy of what it needs.
Everything moves on request. Nothing syncs on its own, and the cloud can never reach into your school's network — every transfer is started from the exam server, by an administrator pressing a button on the Cloud Sync page.
The buttons, and when to press them
| Button | When |
|---|---|
| Test the connection | First time you set it up, and any time a transfer complains |
| Send people and courses | After adding staff, students or courses that the cloud should know about |
| Bring papers down | Before an exam, to fetch papers lecturers wrote online |
| Send results | After an exam day, so results can be seen and exported online |
| Send essays to the cloud | When a lecturer will mark that paper from home |
| Bring marks down | While they are marking, and again when they finish |
| Take marking back | If a lecturer would rather finish in the hall |
Each button says what it did — how many papers came down, how many marks came back — and names anything it could not do, and why.
A normal term
- Send people and courses. Do this first; the cloud needs to know who everybody is before anything else makes sense.
- Lecturers write papers online and publish them.
- Bring papers down on the exam server, a day or two before the exam. They arrive ready to sit, with their pictures.
- Sit the papers in the hall as usual, and close them.
- Send results. The cloud can now show and export them.
- Send essays to the cloud for each paper a lecturer is marking from home. Marking that paper on the school's server closes while they have it.
- Bring marks down as they work. Results at the school update with every pull.
Rules worth knowing
A paper is marked in one place. Either the school marks it or the cloud does, never both. Sending essays up moves marking to the cloud; taking marking back brings it home. Whichever side is not marking says so plainly and refuses to accept a mark.
A paper the hall has started is never overwritten. If a lecturer edits the cloud copy after you brought it down, your copy stays exactly as your students sat it. Sending results up replaces the cloud's copy with the one that was actually sat.
Students never sign in on the cloud. Their accounts are copied up so results carry names, without a usable password. Exams are sat in the hall.
Staff use the same password on both. One account, two places.
If a transfer fails
The page says why in plain words. The three common ones:
- "Could not reach the cloud" — the school's internet is down, or the address is wrong. Try again later; nothing was half-sent.
- "The cloud refused this server's key" — the shared secret does not match. Your supplier fixes this once.
- "This server's clock is about N minutes behind" — the exam server's clock has drifted. Correct the time and try again.
Every press, successful or not, is recorded in the audit trail with who pressed it.