Whether you're managing attendance for a regular day or an emergency response, Orah shows you exactly who is where, without the confusion.
Over 500 schools trust Orah to keep their students safe and accounted for.
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"EASY to use - EASY for students to use - and very reliable. I personally love that the updates are automatic and can see right away when a student signs in to a location."
- Kirstin Coffman, Montverde Academy
Other school safety platforms only activate after a crisis hits. Orah helps you reach resolution faster by giving you real-time student location visibility before, during, and after—because it’s built on live attendance data, not static records.
Real-time attendance is the vehicle for real-time awareness is crisis situations. Orah's attendance tools help you identify attendance trends and concerns, automate processes, reduce admin load, and act faster when it matters most.
Using your existing Blackbaud Attendance data, you can uncover attendance trends and setup automated notifications in less than two hours.
Schools worldwide
Students worldwide
Countries
Years in Operation
Orah saves Nicole 15-20 hours each month, and helped USN significantly improve their roll call completion rate to 98%
"It was pretty seamless…within three or four weeks, we pretty much had everybody taking it [attendance] in Orah.
The number of faculty members who have not taken attendance has dropped significantly…that means I’m not sending a reminder every class period or at the end of every day."
- Nicole Jules, Assistant Head of School for Student Affairs
"The system is very easy to use.
As well as a convenient tool for knowing exactly where pupils are, it has allowed pupils to indicate easily where they are going, when they left and when they return without scrambling to a piece of paper in the house. That alongside the very important but secondary safeguarding records have all ensured great security at Eton.
The Orah app to allow remote access to check-in and check out in real-time has been very helpful in terms of usability, safeguarding and security."
- Anna Kempster, Head of IT Systems
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"The pilot period initially allowed us to achieve "buy-in" from faculty before fully transforming the system. For our fire drill, we have a preset response plan where all students assemble in the gym for a roll check. The roll is quickly taken and Dan was able to walk through and reconcile any missing kids with Orah.
This was unbelievably effective. There was one student who was unaccounted for and didn't come to campus, but because it was already in the system, we knew exactly which student was missing within minutes."
- Daniel Skoglund, Director of Diversity & Student Affairs
"We were concerned about the big change of moving from pen and paper to a very electronic system. I think we were worried about the ways that it could malfunction and how some of our faculty might be intimidated by the technology. We didn’t really have any real concerns about what the program could do, rather we were more concerned about how much of a cultural shift it would be to the whole community.
[But] it was actually incredibly smooth for us. I spent a bit of time on the front end making sure I knew how to use it and in the first couple weeks of school, I just walked around with the person on duty and asked if they had any questions or concerns. The kids didn’t even bat an eye. They love it. They think it’s easier. It’s their world. The faculty were a little intimidated at first but as soon as they got the hang of how to use it, it worked seamlessly with them."
- Ashley McDowell, Dean of Students
This is the process we take independent schools through to achieve real-time visibility.
Make attendance data actionable. Start by connecting Orah to your SIS, syncing student, staff & attendance records first.
Once you've connected Orah to your SIS, we help your school configure Attendance Concerns — these are smart rules that help you identify at-risk students who would otherwise fly under the radar.
Orah makes attendance efficient and accurate. USN achieved a 98% roll completion rate within a month. Attendance reconciliation takes an hour less, each day.
Faculty can mark the roll anywhere, which will update a student's location. Absences logged by parents instantly show up in the roll call. You can even set it up so that students can check themselves into class.
This is where the full power of Orah becomes clear. Not just as an attendance tool, but as a multi-source attendance engine that brings together teachers, students, and parents to build a live picture of student whereabouts.
Now you can account for students faster in crisis situations.
Other school safety platforms only activate after a crisis hits. Orah gives you real-time visibility before, during, and after—because it’s built on live attendance data, not static records.
"I don't think you can look a parent in the eye and say 'we are doing everything we can' if you don't have Orah on your campus."
- Andrew Wright,
Foxcroft Academy, USA
"We use [Orah] to immediately learn what has been taking place leading up to that moment - who is sick, who is off campus, who missed the breakfast roll. All of this information is in one place."
- Antxon Iturbe,
St Anne's Belfield School, USA
"The Orah app to allow remote access to check-in and check out in real-time has been very helpful in terms of usability, safeguarding and security.""
- Anna Kempster,
Eton College, UK
"Students are starting to get more engaged just because of the way we're able to communicate and share information with them"
"Orah is a clean platform that allows you to see and track any concerns with students. You can see if they're not participating, eating regularly, or leaving the building. Those are incredibly helpful pieces that facilitate meaningful conversations"
"Orah ensures that you are on the top of your game when it comes to making sure that students are safe and accounted for. After using Orah, I can’t imagine operating without it now."
"The checkpoint kiosk has provided a professional way to manage the sign in/out of the pupils and staff, which supports the safeguarding of pupils. The system is very easy to use, allowing proper management of access to Boarding Houses."
Orah’s security and privacy program is based on and aligned with industry-standard frameworks, and we maintain a comprehensive suite of certifications and attestations to further demonstrate our commitment to security and privacy.
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Orah's integration with Blackbaud enables both one-way and two-way data synchronization.
Key data points include:
One-way (Blackbaud to Orah):
- Student information (e.g., name, email, grade level)
- Student contact details
- Houses (dorms) and student assignments
- Groups (classes, teams)
- Staff information and staff-student mappings
- Guardian information and parent-student mappings
Two-way (Orah to Blackbaud):
- Attendance records: Orah can create attendance records in Blackbaud, and attendance data from Blackbaud can generate insights in Orah.
Students can check themselves into campus and/or class using NFC, ID, QR codes & kiosks for self check-ins.
We are actively exploring new ways to automate attendance with some schools.
Orah CEO Matt Varley hosted a session on this at ATLIS Conference 2025. You can read his summary here.
Yes! There is a free trial available for Attendance Insights and Alerts, which works with your existing Blackbaud Attendance data. You can request a demo if you would like us to show you through it.
Orah can update student class records and daily attendance records in Blackbaud. However, it does not change the status of the overall class roll; thus, the class may appear as 'Not Taken' in Blackbaud even after attendance is recorded in Orah. Daily attendance can be configured to update based on the first class of the day or limited to specific student groups using Orah's smart tags filter.
No. You can start with Orah using your Blackbaud attendance data before involving faculty, students or parents.
Eventually, you can set up parents with login-less excuse forms, which are a quick and easy way to inform the school if a student is not expected at school that day. There is also an Orah for Families app if you want to give parents access to their child's attendance, behavior or wellbeing data.
By default, Orah performs an automatic data sync with Blackbaud every 24 hours. Additionally, administrators can initiate a manual sync at any time to ensure immediate data updates.
Yes, schools can import and sync staff user accounts from Blackbaud into Orah. This includes creating and updating staff profiles with information such as department, email, job title, and contact numbers.
Orah allows the creation of passes (e.g., early departure, late arrival) for students, which can be synced to Veracross as absence records. These passes can be mapped to specific absence types in Blackbaud, facilitating accurate and automated attendance tracking without manual intervention.
To enable the integration:
1. Request a trial account.
2. Generate API credentials (API Username, API Password, and API Client Abbreviation) from Blackbaud.
3. In Orah, navigate to the Integrations panel and enter the Veracross API credentials.
4. Configure settings such as including day students and houses/dorms in the sync.
5. Click "Enable Integration" to initiate the first data sync.
This setup ensures that student and staff data remains consistent and up-to-date across both platforms.
