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Guide for IT administrators

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Written by Pencil Support
Updated over 2 weeks ago

To ensure that Pencil Spaces works correctly in your school / school district, please follow the steps outlined below:

Allow *.pencilapp.com

Please attempt to visit https://my.pencilapp.com on a student device, authenticated with a test student account.

If the website doesn’t load correctly, or appears blocked, then please adjust your firewall settings by ensuring *.pencilapp.com is allow-listed (the wildcard represents all subdomains associated with pencilapp.com)

Allow Firebase authentication

Please login / create an account on https://my.pencilapp.com on a student device. If your school uses Google Classroom, we recommend you try to “Continue with Google” and use a student’s Google Classroom credentials to authenticate yourself.

If you’re not able to login:

  • If the issue is a network issue, please adjust your firewall settings as required. You may need to visit the Developer Console Network Tab to determine which exact URLs are being blocked.

  • If the issue is caused by your Google Classroom / Clever administration settings, please adjust them as needed to support 3rd party application log-in with Pencil Spaces

[If applicable] Set-up Clever or ClassLink

Follow these steps to enable Clever or ClassLink login for Pencil Spaces.

  1. Add students, teachers, and admins to your institution by following our guide here. We need each student’s full name and the email addresses associated with their Clever / ClassLink accounts to meet our COPPA and FERPA compliance requirements.
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  2. If you’re using Clever, ask your school district to submit a request to add Pencil Spaces to your district's Clever library (learn more here). Make sure all the students in Step 1 are included in the sharing permissions for your request.

    1. Once submitted, we'll typically approve your request within 24 hours.
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  3. Using a student test account, try to log-in via Clever or ClassLink (follow our guide here). The student should be able to successfully log-in and access their Spaces. If you run into any issues, contact Pencil Spaces Support.

Allow our third party service providers

We use a number of libraries / partners to ensure that educators have a great experience teaching on Pencil Spaces. As a reminder, please ensure you follow all the steps below on a student device with a student test account.

To verify that everything is working properly:

  1. Log-in to Pencil Spaces and create a Space with your test account (details here)
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  2. Attempt to start a call (details here). If you see any network errors while attempting to start a call, please allowlist all the domains detailed here.
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    If wildcard hostnames are not allowed by your firewall policy, please follow the guidance in the Minimum requirements section and use pencil when prompted for <your subdomain>.
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  3. If your institution is planning to use Web Viewers, try to import a web viewer into your Space. Click “Insert Web Viewer” on the top left of the screen, and verify that you see Google load as an app on your screen.
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    If you see any network errors, including "Your browsing session could not be loaded at this time", please make sure you allow-list the following domains:

    • *.pencilapp.com
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Additional support

If you require any additional support, reach-out to 24/7 Support by following the instructions here or email us at [email protected]

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