Glossary
Definitions of the terms used in Tidal PTC’s interface and in these docs, in alphabetical order.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Activity log | A record of changes and events in the current school: conferences booked, rescheduled and cancelled, time slot batches, SMTP changes, notifications sent and translator assignments. Entries are kept for 365 days. See Activity log. |
| APP_KEY | The secret key the app encrypts stored secrets and signs links with. Losing it makes tenant SIS and SMTP settings unreadable. See Rotating the app key. |
| Batch | A set of time slots created at once for one or more teachers. Editing a batch can update all of its slots together. See Time slots. |
| Booking buffer | The number of hours before a time slot that a contact cannot book it. Staff with the Time Slots Update permission can still book inside it. Set in School settings. |
| Cloud | The Archboard-hosted version of Tidal PTC (IS_CLOUD=true), where many districts share one installation. See Choosing hosting. |
| Conference | A meeting between a teacher (or other staff member) and a student’s guardian. In the app, a conference is a reserved time slot. |
| Contact/Guardian | The user type for parents and other student contacts synced from the SIS. Contacts book conferences for their own students. |
| Current school | The school a staff user is working in. Most pages and all school-scoped permissions apply to it. Staff with more than one school switch it from the sidebar or the Select school page. |
| Demo mode | A public demonstration install (DEMO_MODE=true) with one-click logins and read-only settings, reset from seed data every hour. |
| District | The organization that uses Tidal PTC, such as a school district. Each district is one tenant. |
| District admin | The role given to the first user who completes setup. It has every permission in the district. See Permissions. |
| District code | A four-character code a cloud district’s users enter on the cloud root domain to find their district’s sign-in page. See District lookup. |
| License | The UUID that identifies a cloud district’s subscription in the billing portal. The tenant API creates and renews tenants by license. See API. |
| Machine token | The single API token, created with php artisan make:token, that authenticates the cloud tenant API. |
| Notification preferences | Per-user email settings: which notification events to receive and the reminder lead time. |
| Permission | A single grant of access, such as Edit school settings or Time Slots Update. Most are granted per school. See Permissions. |
| PowerSchool plugin | The plugin a district installs in PowerSchool so Tidal PTC can sign users in and sync data. It is downloaded from Tenant settings and registers itself with the app when enabled. See PowerSchool. |
| Reminder lead time | How many hours before their first upcoming conference a user is emailed a reminder digest. Defaults to 24, from 1 to 168. |
| Reservation | A booking of a time slot for a specific student. Reservations can be booked, rescheduled and cancelled. See Reservations. |
| Reverb | The WebSocket server that pushes live updates (for example finished syncs) to the browser. See Real-time. |
| School limit | The number of active schools a cloud license covers. When a district has more active schools than its limit, staff cannot use the app until it is resolved. See School limits. |
| Section | A class taught by a teacher, synced from the SIS. A teacher with sections can own time slots, and guardians book with their students’ section teachers. |
| Self-hosted | Tidal PTC running on your own server, free under AGPL-3.0. See Installation requirements. |
| Setup link | A signed link, valid for 14 days, that lets a new cloud district create its first district admin (with a companion link to download the PowerSchool plugin). It stops working once the district has an admin. See Setup links. |
| SIS | Student information system. Tidal PTC supports PowerSchool. Schools, sections, courses, students, staff and contacts come from the SIS. |
| Staff | The user type for teachers, administrators and other school employees. What a staff user can do depends on their permissions. |
| Student | The user type for students. Students sign in only through the SIS and cannot use a password. |
| Sync | Copying schools, sections, students and contacts from the SIS into Tidal PTC. It runs on the sis_sync queue and can be started manually from School settings. |
| Tenant | The app’s term for a district. A tenant has its own users, schools, settings, SIS connection and SMTP settings. A self-hosted install has one tenant. |
| Time slot | A block of time a teacher or staff member is available for a conference. An unreserved slot can be booked; a booked slot becomes a reservation. See Time slots. |
| Translator profile | A record of a translator the school can assign to conferences. See Translators. |
| Translator request | A guardian’s request, made when booking, for a translator in a language the school offers. See Requesting a translator. |
| User type | Whether a user is Staff, Contact/Guardian or Student. It comes from the SIS and decides which parts of the app the user sees. |