Overview
Navigate to Attendance Accounting > Configurations > Flex Periods.
Flex Periods can be created with start and end times which will then be assigned to particular sections in the master schedule. Times for Flex Periods Per Bell Schedules can be modified and assigned to particular days of the year such as Minimum Days. Assigning the modified Flex Period Bell Schedules takes place on the school calendar page.
Security ↑
Table | Permission | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Flex Periods (FTF) | Read Insert Update Delete | View Flex Periods Add Flex Periods Update existing Flex Periods Delete Flex Periods |
| Flex Period Times (FTT) | Inherited from FTF table. | Hidden from Security page. |
Users with Read permission to BSD will see an information box with a link to the Bell Scheduler page at the bottom of the Bell Schedule Times section.
Note: The BEL and BST tables are not used with Flex Scheduling.
Creating Flex Periods ↑
Click on the Add New Record button to begin. An information box displays with detailing information for each field.
- Flex Periods must be assigned for each Academic Year. When a Flex Period is assigned to a section, either in SMS or MST, the Academic Year field will become read-only and cannot be changed.
- Each Flex period is assigned a sequence number Rcd ID that is used as a primary link in other tables such as MST/SMS.
- A Short Title can contain up to 6 characters and cannot be duplicated in the same academic year. A blank Short Title is not allowed and will result in a popup error when attempting to save the record. For users new to Flex, the Short Title is the equivalent of the period name (PD) used in Traditional scheduling.
- A Tiny Title is optional and can be used to shorten a flex period short title even further. This field is limited to 2 characters. This field can be queried but is not printed on reports.
- A description can be added for informational purposes.
- All Flex Periods must contain a Start Time and End Time.
- The Type field is also important for scheduling purposes in order to avoid scheduling conflicts. This allows multiple sections to be scheduled at the same time. See section Non-Conflict Flex Periods below.
NOTE: For Hourly Attendance Schools (Continuation, Community Day Schools, etc.,) per Ed Code, a Flex Period should not exceed 60 minutes. This will ensure that teachers take hourly attendance. Multiple sections may need to be created to accommodate a class with instructional times exceeding 60 minutes.
NOTE: Creating proper naming conventions of short titles will allow for an easier understanding of their meaning. Numbered short titles are also acceptable to resemble current period types, (i.e., 0, 1, 2, 3, 4A, 4B, 5, 6, 7).
Associating a Class Calendar ↑
The Associated Class Calendar field was added allowing users to associate a Flex period with a class calendar within the same school year, so that a specific calendar will automatically be selected when a flex period is added when building sections in the Scheduling Master Schedule (SMS).
NOTE: This new field was added for future development that will be used in conjunction with the Scheduling Master Schedule page.
Non-Conflict Flex Periods ↑
The Type field contains a default blank code and a fixed code of C - 'Non-Conflict Flex Period'. If a Flex Period record is saved with a Type code of 'C' and assigned to one or more sections in the Scheduling Master Schedule, the scheduling process will not check for date/time conflicts for these sections. Students will be scheduled into these sections based on available seats even if it meets at the same time as another class.
When the C - Non-Conflict Flex Period is assigned to a section, the teacher will be expected to take attendance in the class unless the Exclude (MST.ST) field is used to exclude the section from attendance. Schools should carefully consider whether to have teachers take attendance in non-conflict flex periods, as there could be confusion over when a student should actually be marked absent, considering that the student may not always be expected to attend. For this reason, it is recommended to exclude sections assigned to non-conflict periods from attendance unless there is a compelling reason to have that attendance data recorded.
Bell Schedule Times ↑
After saving the record, a new section at the bottom of the page will display Bell Schedule Times.
The Bell Schedule Times records can be edited to honor new start and end times to be honored on dates where a different bell schedule is assigned to a particular day(s) on the school calendar.
NOTE: Bell Schedule Times are stored in table FTT. The table will remain empty by default until a change is made to the default Start and End times. The page will always display the default times stored in the BSD table unless a change is made.
The Bell Schedule Title cannot be edited from this page. Follow the Create a New Bell Schedule documentation for more information on editing or adding Bell Schedule times. A link to the Bell Scheduler page is available in the Bell Schedule Times section of the Flex Periods page.
Flex Period List ↑
After all Flex Period records have been added they will display on the left side of the page listed by Academic Year and Start Time.
The search box can be used to search by Title.
References ↑
A References button is available to display any flex periods that are in use by MST or SMS. Select a flex period, then select the References button. A pop-up window labeled Associated Sections will display all section records that are associated with the flex period. Information displayed will show a section type which indicates the table where the flex period is in use, the section number and course title.
If a user has READ permissions to MST or SMS tables, selecting a section on the displayed popup window will navigate the user to the MST or SMS table depending on the Section type.
Deleting a Flex Period ↑
When flex periods are in use, the Delete button is not available and will be hidden. The References button will help with identifying how many sections are in use by the selected flex period. If a flex period needs to be deleted, they must be unlinked from the MST/SMS tables first. Using the references button will help identify records that need to be unassociated from the section.
To delete a flex period, select Delete and OK at the confirmation message.
