Applause. Consulting

Browser extension

Sweet TEA.

TEA's web apps work, but some tasks in them take more effort than they should. Users memorize six-digit district numbers. EMAT's district picker loads the wrong district. Sessions sign you out while you're still working. Sweet TEA changes these things in your browser, right on the page. It doesn't change TEA's systems; it just makes your time in them less annoying.

Product
Sweet TEA — browser extension
Works with
TEA web apps (TEAL, eGrants, EMAT, Grant Opportunities, Summary of Finances)
Stores data in
Your browser only
Publisher
Applause Consulting

What it fixes

Sweet TEA only runs on tea.state.tx.us and tea.texas.gov. On every other site it does nothing. But on TEA's pages, it adds five features that make the work easier.

eGrants district search
Type a district name or CDN — no more looking up six-digit numbers
EMAT district switcher
Loads the district you asked for on the first try
Copy Link to Grant
One click copies a shareable link to the grant you are reading
Super PDF
Every Summary of Finances run as one linked, bookmarked PDF
Stay logged in
Opt-in, time-limited hold on the TEAL session while you work elsewhere

Stop memorizing county-district numbers

eGrants wants a county-district number. Usually that means typing a six-digit number from memory. Sweet TEA turns that field into a search box. Type "Victoria" or "235902" and pick the match. The list inside the extension includes every district and charter school in Texas, plus the 20 regional education service centers (you can find them by typing "Region 4" or "ESC"). The search never leaves your computer.

eGrants with 'we' typed into the CDN box and a dropdown of ten matching districts, each with its CDN number
In this screenshot, two letters bring up ten matches. When you pick one, eGrants gets the six-digit district number it wants.

A district switcher that actually switches

EMAT has had a stubborn bug for a long time. If you choose a different district on the District Start Page, the page reloads and shows the one you already had. Getting to the district you meant to pick requires clicking back through the app and clearing the old name out of the search screen. Sweet TEA replaces the District/Charter box with a picker that loads the district you chose on the first try.

We also label the district you're looking at "Currently Displayed", because EMAT doesn't. The picker only lists the districts your account is allowed to open—a service-center user sees their region, a district user sees their district. Sweet TEA gets that list from EMAT itself.

The EMAT District Start Page with Sweet TEA's district switcher open, listing districts by CDN and name, and a 'Currently Displayed' label beside the box
The switcher and the "Currently Displayed" label are Sweet TEA; the rest of the screen is EMAT. This screenshot uses a demonstration account, and the district names are made up.

A shareable link, finally

Grant Opportunities pages don't have a fixed URL you can copy and send to someone. Sweet TEA adds a "Copy Link to Grant" button next to the grant title. Click it and Sweet TEA looks up the grant in a list that's kept up to date, then copies a working link to your clipboard. Paste it into an email or a district newsletter and send it off.

All the numbers, one file

The Texas Education Agency's Summary of Finances page is a long list of runs for a district and year. Each run comes with three buttons: HTML, PDF, and Excel. Each button generates one report at a time. If you need the whole package, you're in for a long afternoon of clicking and waiting. Sweet TEA adds a fourth button under each run: "Super PDF". Click it, and a new tab opens to Howard's SOF Downloader with that district, year, and run already loaded. From there, you can build every report in the run into a single PDF—complete with working drill-down links and bookmarks. The file takes forty-five seconds or more to generate, and if you don't want to sit there, you can have it emailed to you.

The SOF Downloader is a separate website. When you click "Super PDF", Sweet TEA sends it only the district, year, and run numbers—the same public numbers TEA is already showing you on the page. You don't need to be logged in to see them.

Logged out at the worst possible moment

TEAL signs you out after nineteen minutes of inactivity. When it does, every TEA app you have open signs out with it. Sweet TEA can keep your session alive while you switch to another window to read a PDF or fill in a spreadsheet. This feature is off by default. When you turn it on, you decide how long it should last.

30 more minutes
Enough for a meeting
2 more hours
Enough for a long working session
Until you close your TEA tabs
Stops the moment the last TEA tab is gone

You can't set it and forget it. Sweet TEA doesn't offer an "always on" option. When the time you chose runs out, TEAL's normal timeout takes over again. That's intentional—it keeps a computer left alone from staying signed in indefinitely. This feature is less secure than TEA's default setting. The first time you enable it, Sweet TEA will warn you about that and ask you to confirm you understand. Don't turn this on if you're working on a shared computer, and close your TEA tabs when you're done.

If you want to keep an eye on the clock, you can turn on a countdown badge that sits in the corner of the page. It shows when TEAL would normally log you out, and when Sweet TEA will stop holding the session open.

The Sweet TEA toolbar popup: 'Active on this TEA page', the Stay logged in checkbox ticked, duration set to 'For 30 more minutes', the countdown badge enabled, and a status line reading 'Holding 1 TEA tab open'
The Sweet TEA toolbar popup: the "Stay logged in" switch, the setting for how long it lasts, and a status line that shows what the extension is doing right now.

Your browser, your data

Sweet TEA has no server, and nothing leaves your browser. Your settings and a saved copy of the grant list live only in your browser's extension storage. Sweet TEA never reads your TEA password, and it doesn't collect analytics. The only data that ever leaves a TEA page is the link you click to create a Super PDF, and that only happens when you click it. The privacy policy has the full details.

Getting it

Install Sweet TEA from the store, then open any TEA app. The toolbar icon will tell you whether the current tab is a TEA page, and it's where you'll find the "Stay logged in" switch. The extension's About page lists every feature and links directly to the TEA screen where each one works.

Add to Chrome Also runs in Firefox

Applause Consulting is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the Texas Education Agency.

Sweet TEA is built and maintained by Applause Consulting for people who spend their days inside TEA apps. If a TEA screen is costing your team time and you'd like it fixed, get in touch. And if you'd like a similar tool for a different system entirely, we'd love to hear from you.

Add to Chrome Read the case study Ask about Sweet TEA Privacy policy

Not affiliated with, or endorsed by, the Texas Education Agency. TEA, TEAL, eGrants and EMAT are names of Texas Education Agency systems.