Ruvna Reviews

Summary: For us, Ruvna started out as a niche product that did a great job at one thing (Accountability) and then quickly grew into so many other operations of the school - communications on bus routes, health screenings during Covid, daily attendance, visitor management, and more. It's truly a pleasure working with a company where every time I have an idea, I can reach out to them and say "hey can you do this?" and the answer is always either "yes" or "let's figure it out!" Ruvna is truly one of my favorite vendors to work with and I look forward to continuing to see what comes next from them.

Positive: Years with Ruvna: 6+
SIS: Veracross
Modules: Accountability, Announcements, Attendance, Visitor Management (piloting), Health (during Covid and for tracking employee attendance during mandatory trainings)

I can go on a lot about the platform as we use basically every piece of their suite of offerings, but the greatest "pro" is the company itself. Since we first signed on with them for accountability in 2019, they have been very open to feedback, and have worked with us to find new ways to use their platform to replace other systems, and improve existing processes.

- System availability has always been strong
- Accounting for students during emergencies, especially given the integration with attendance reduced our drill times by over 50%
- Texting families regarding bus issues in the morning using predefined groups synced from Veracross greatly improved our transportation operations
- Students scanning for attendance via kiosk or app greatly improved the efficiency of our attendance office
- Served as a mission critical tool during Covid

Overall, their platform is very easy to use, integrates well with our SIS, and the level of customer support is top notch.

Negative: There are some limitations currently with the visitor management platform, but the company has been very receptive to feedback, and is actively working on ways to incorporate new features.

Full kiosk functionality being limited to iPads can be challenging, but again, I know they're continuing to explore other possibilities.

Summary: It is obvious that the developers of this platform understand the needs of an educational setting and care about doing what is within their power to ensure our children are safe. They actively seek input to improve the platform AND act on that input. Their customer support is some of the best I have encountered in any industry. Ruvna delivers, and that helps me sleep better at night.

Positive: Ruvna is intuitive. Within minutes of logging on for the first time, teachers figured out how to use the program. Setting up the system for their use was just as intuitive. In an emergency situation, you want to make things as easy as possible so you can quickly account for students and protect them from potential harm. Ruvna has delivered on this multiple times over. We can account for 1250+ students, faculty, and staff in under 6 minutes. Ruvna's ability to sync with our SIS means it is continually updated with the most recent attendance changes. The integrated chat feature enables administration to quickly share time-sensitive information among themselves or with the entire faculty. Ruvna's communication module makes mass communication with any group of constituents very simple and effective.

Negative: Any issue I have had, whether it was an issue with how Ruvna functioned or the result of wonky behavior from our SIS, Ruvna solved within a week. I would like more options when it comes to the type of "plan" available for an event.

Summary: The Ruvna team is an ideal technology partner. They work to understand your school and your context and have a product nimble enough to help many schools improve their attendance and emergency management processes.

Positive: Ruvna's ability to integrate with major LMS platforms (my school uses Blackbaud Education Management) has transformed our ability to account for students, faculty, staff and administrators on our two campuses. More stakeholders ie. deans, security, nurses and administrators are able to track student attendance from a centralized dashboard and we are able to have more productive conversations as a result. In addition, the support team is capable and responsive. It is one of the few vendors we use where we can still have complex conversations on the phone and brainstorm school specific solutions. In the age of AI assistants this is truly refreshing.

Negative: Reporting and visitor management could be a bit more robust but the team continues to invite feedback and work to make the product more useful for their clients and their communities.

Summary: From signing to contract to integrating our data to implementing the app during drills and emergencies, Ruvna has been a game changer for our school.

Positive: First, Ruvna allows our school administrators the ability to instantly notify faculty and staff regarding elevated operating procedures.
Second, Ruvna’s dashboard shows in real time accountability of all faculty and students.
Third, the chat feature allows for instant updates throughout the emergency.
Finally, Ruvna’s support team is attentive and a pleasure to work with.

Negative: The biggest challenge for our school was getting faculty & staff to use their personal cell phones for school related business

Summary: I feel very confident recommending Ruvna to anyone who has asked about these sort of products. It's easy to set up, easy for the end user and reliable. Thank you to the Ruvna team!

Positive: Ruvna has helped us solidify our safety protocols. It's the first product we have tried that gives us the confidence we need to deal with emergencies. I have to mention that our implementation was probably one of THE best I've ever had and I've been involved with so so many. We are actively working towards having Ruvna for all related tasks, such as visitor management which we do not yet have.

Negative: I have no cons at the moment. I am looking forward to how the build on their products.

Summary: Great product. Does exactly what we are looking for. Best to make sure you train your admin team and run drills regularly so when a real event occurs you don't hesitate or have to relearn certain things. Our issues are minor, but we have our business set up as 3 locations and sometimes sending messaging out we have used a template for the wrong location. But that is a training and setup issue for us specifically and we are still in learning and optimizing phase. But we highly recommend Ruvna to anyone looking for an accountability program and visitor management platform.

Positive: We needed a system to rapidly check in students during a drill or real time and this is the best product we tested. Fast, easy to use and fun, actually. Intuitive to use. Great support from the team. Open to product enhancement suggestions. Very responsive to requests and provides multiple resources to help solve issue and train staff.

Negative: Badge printing is proprietary to certain printers. We did have to buy a new printer. Tried everything to integrate our existing printer. Drivers license scanning on front facing camera on iPads is sometimes tricky.....but we are working it out.....

Summary: I want to express my appreciation for RUVNA software and the significant role it has plays in our emergency notification system.

The platform is extremely user-friendly, offering a variety of options that cater to our school needs. Most importantly, I am impressed by how RUVNA continues to adjust to the evolving security landscape, ensuring that we are always prepared for any situation.

Great overall platform.

Positive: Very user friendly. Fast response, there's no waiting for visitor results.
Very easy to account for everyone in your school or building. Easy to navigate on your mobile device or desktop.

Negative: I would like to see different tones for different notification. Currently there is one tone for every notification, emergency and non emergency.

Summary: The Ruvna team is responsive to questions and requests. Support is quick to respond and answer questions. Overall, we have had a very positive experience.

Positive: Ruvna has been a great solution for our school’s emergency management, communications, and accountability needs. The platform has an easy to use interface and is intuitive for teachers. During evacuation drills our faculty are able to check in close to 2000 students in under 10 minutes. Our students use their school issued ID cards to check in to the building each morning, and check out if they leave early, providing us with valuable information on their whereabouts. We have not experienced any issues or downtime since we have been a customer.

Negative: I do not have any cons to report about the platform. Great features and support.

Summary: As we enter our third year with Ruvna, our school community remains incredibly impressed and grateful for this system. Ruvna has become an indispensable tool for managing daily attendance, ensuring campus-wide accountability during emergencies, and streamlining our school-to-community announcements.

What truly sets Ruvna apart is its comprehensive approach to school safety. The ability to account for every student, staff member, and visitor on campus is an unparalleled asset, especially in a crisis. This feature alone provides our team with immense peace of mind. The seamless integration with our Student Information System (SIS) has also been a game-changer, making daily attendance and the onboarding of new users remarkably easy and efficient.

Beyond the technology itself, the Ruvna team's dedication to support and training has been exceptional. From the initial staff-wide training to the consistent system updates, we've found Ruvna to be a reliable and continuously improving partner. We're confident in our decision to use this platform and have no plans to change anytime soon. It’s an invaluable tool we are happy to have.

Positive: Pros
Comprehensive Accountability: The system allows you to account for every student, staff member, and visitor on campus, which is an invaluable tool during emergencies.

Seamless SIS Integration: Ruvna links directly with your Student Information System, making daily attendance and adding new users fast and easy.

Effective Communication: It's used to send announcements to the school community for delays, closings, and other important information.

Reliable Support: The Ruvna team provides exceptional support and initial training, as well as consistent system updates.

Negative: One point to note is the initial learning curve. While the system is intuitive, there is a minor adjustment period for faculty and staff to become fully proficient with all of its features. However, the comprehensive training provided by the Ruvna team made this transition smooth and efficient, ensuring everyone was confident in using the platform quickly.

Summary: RUVNA keeps our campus safe! Grateful for a tool that works well in our complex environment. As we continue to use RUVNA, we have altered how we conduct our tabletop exercises with our security team. Communication is key and RUVNA provides a good deal of flexibility.

Positive: Ease of use
Receptive team assists schools with challenging data needs
Prompt support and openness to suggestions
Documentation is up to date
API connection is solid.
Rachel Strauss is an amazing Community Manager at RUVNA!

Negative: There are no CONS!
RUVNA is such a fine product that the partnership we have developed with the team has brought us peace of mind.

Summary: We were looking for a system that would take the place of our existing phone speaker intercom when it came to making announcements that pertained to safety. Ruvna was already on our radar bc we used them during the pandemic for health screening, and we continued to use them for community announcements (super easy, btw). Using the ALICE protocol for school safety, we needed a way for anyone who might see suspicious activity to alert the entire campus community immediately, and Ruvna allows us to do that easily through the app and directly to everyone's cell phone, even overriding a phone set to silent or vibrate. Last spring, we had an incident where an escaped convict from the courthouse across the street was hiding very close to our campus, so for the first time I had to use Ruvna for a non drill situation, and it was perfect. Everyone received the alert, and was able to act accordingly in a very timely manner. It was also very quick and easy for me to send the alert, but as I mentioned, anyone on our staff could have done so. Speaking of drills, though, the app makes scheduling and carrying out drills a piece of cake, especially from an attendance perspective.

Positive: - Easy to use
- Fast, clear communication
- Comprehensive app
- Works great for safety drills and actual safety situations
-Works great for community announcements

Negative: Nothing. I mean, of course we would all love for platforms like Ruvna to be free, but that is not realistic.

Summary: Working with Ruvna has been one of the best parts of my job, and the product just keeps getting better!

Positive: Ruvna was easy to integrate with our student information system, the training was relevant and focused on our needs as a school, and it's simple to set up and flexible in the different ways that schools can use it. The vendor is incredible to work with, and they really listen to product feature requests from their clients, reaching out to ask good questions, and then they implement updates and new features regularly. Support is at the ready to take care of our team's needs.

Negative: I can't think of one con to Ruvna - not from implementation to ongoing support and development.

Summary: Using Ruvna has saved us quite a lot of time and effort. It has also made our drills and emergency procedures significantly more effective. For attendance, it's integration with Blackbaud has allowed us to replace their attendance module with Ruvna, which has resulted in more accurate and timely information. The Ruvna team is great to work with and always work quickly to solve problems or answer questions. It's also great to know that even in areas where newer features are still being developed, the team is aware and always working to improve. Ruvna has been a really useful addition to our school.

Positive: - Unified data for attendance, announcements, drills, and accountability.
- Ease of use
- Streamlines drills and emergencies
- Visitor Management option is a great addition
- Support is responsive and helpful
- Data sharing with SIS
- The Ruvna team is very responsive to feature requests and suggestions
- Flexibility
- Kiosk management is easy and intuitive.
- Apps are easy to use

Negative: - Visitor Management is not (yet) as feature-rich, but is steadily improving
- Some attendance workflows need to be done manually, depending on your school's process

Summary: Ruvna is one of those products that "just works" and doesn't take up a lot of precious tech support time. We use it monthly for fire drills so that faculty and staff stay familiar with it, and it has performed perfectly during the handful of times we've had an emergency or weather issue.

Positive: Ruvna is a solid emergency management product and is easy to train our teachers and staff to use. We use the Accountability feature for attendance and internal messaging during emergency events, as well as the Notification feature for communicating with families during emergencies or for weather alerts.

It was simple to connect to our Blackbaud SIS initially and we have since set up CAP alerts to drive our digital signage during events. Single sign on with Google makes it easy for faculty and staff to authenticate. I appreciate that we can also add users directly to the system that are not in our SIS or Google Workspace, such as our school resource officers.

We've been using it for several years now and have seen it grow with additional features and enhancements. Their support is top notch - they reply quickly and can make some changes specific to your environment, which is helpful.

Negative: None so far. We had a new admin staff member this year who had used similar products at previous schools that said "Wow Ruvna is great and easier than others I've seen".

Summary: Ruvna is a game changer for school attendance and emergencies! They keep up with the times and truly listen to your school's needs.

Positive: Ruvna has cut our attendance time down to less then half and that says a lot for a 13 acer campus school with 7 academic buildings.
We now use Ruvna for daily attendance and it has been a breeze.
I don't want to mention COVID, but I don't know what we would have done without Ruvna.
They are willing to work with you and tailer their product to your school's needs. Simply fantastic.
Whenever you need to communicate with them, their customer service is wonderful and they communicate regularly with necessary information.

Negative: I truly can't think of a negative reason not to use this company and their products.