Be familiar with the following documentation:
Although SMS is very robust and in use by many school districts, it is important to use best practices whenever you introduce a new piece of large software into an organization. It is especially important to do this when you are not familiar with the tools in use, such as Docker. This means that you should perform a test installation before any live installation and budget appropriate time for this well before your live release date.
You should create your test installation using non-public virtual machines for both SMS and a new installation of your LMS. After your testing is complete, you can destroy both the LMS and SMS installations and restart from scratch for a live installation.
This is the best way to avoid an error-prone launch because it ensures that you know how to perform a bug-free setup, therefore the actual live installation is much more likely to be quick and predictable. It also ensures that staff/teacher users have had a chance to test all features and perform any training without concern about affecting real student data.
SMS supports the Moodle and Brightspace LMSes. SMS’s Moodle integration is well-established and very mature. SMS’s Brightspace integration is in beta and we’re currently working closely with districts to test the integration.
Each LMS’s integration must be configured in advance. Follow the guide for your LMS:
You must be using a variant of Linux that supports Docker. Windows or OSX machines are not practical for hosting SMS. While not necessary, it may be useful to install SMS on the same machine that you use to host your LMS if your LMS allows this. If you are not sure which Linux distribution to use, we recommend Ubuntu Server.
Docker is a lightweight container management daemon. Using Docker, we can install SMS and all of its required components into VM-like containers that are straightforward to version and manage. If you don't already have Docker installed, head over to the Docker installation documentation and install it using the instructions for your variant of Linux.