Assign Class Calendar to a Section
Assign Class Calendar to a Teacher
Overview
Class Calendars are a feature that allows creating an unlimited number of calendars to later assign to applicable teachers/sections. This feature is only available at the school level. The Class Calendar records can be customized to use specific days of the week while accounting for school holidays as stored in the DAY table.
During the COVID-19 Pandemic School Year, the Class Calendars are used to populate the Weekly Instructional Minutes Certification page in the Teacher's Portal.
Security-Class Calendars ↑
Users who will be adding, modifying and deleting Class Calendars will need full rights to table CCL located in the School Options section. The Class Calendar Details (CCD) table will inherit the security assigned to CCL and will not be visible on the Security page.
Adding a Class Calendar ↑
NOTE: Prior to creating Class Calendars, the school Calendar and a "Year" Term must exist in the current year.
To access the Class Calendars page, filter by Calendar or navigate to Attendance Accounting > Configurations > Class Calendars. This is only accessible in the Admin portal, as Class Calendars are designed to be managed by office staff and then assigned to the proper teachers and/or sections. An unlimited number of Class Calendars can be created.
The following Class Calendar page will display. Existing calendars will display in the left pane, along with the year they are applicable to. Click on an existing calendar to edit or delete it.
Click on the Add New Record button and add the following fields:
- Academic Year - A drop-down selection displaying the current year, and next year.
- Short Title - Input field that will display on a section in MST and SMS for secondary schools, or TCH for elementary schools. Up to 6 characters in length. (Cannot be blank)
- Description - Input field for additional information about the calendar. (Optional)
Once the Class Calendar is created, the bottom half of the screen will display the dates from the school calendar. Non-School dates, such as Holidays, will be indicated. There is a scroll bar to allow access to all the weeks in the school calendar.
The next step is to indicate what days the class will meet during the school year. There are two ways to accomplish this task, either Edit Calendar or Mass Select Dates. Both options will be explained below.
Edit Calendar ↑
Click on Edit Calendar to activate the calendar dates, select or deselect individual dates to add or remove from the class calendar.
NOTE: When using the Edit Calendar feature, it opens up ALL the calendar dates and options. Be aware that ANY changes are saved automatically, and can't be abandoned or undone. Although there is no Print button at this time, you can right-click on the Class Calendar and choose Print from the sub-menu.
Checking the box for a date on the Class Calendar page will open the Learning Mode options for that date. These include In Person, Remote Synchronous and Remote Asynchronous which can identify the type of Distance Learning used on a date. Within each option the selection is further refined as All Day or Partial Day. If a day is unchecked, all the options are un-selected.
At least one option should be selected for each day a class meets. If All Day is selected for a date, no other selection is needed.
If a Partial Day selection is made on one of the learning mode options, at least one other learning mode should be selected and indicated as Partial Day. In this example, either Remote Synchronous or Remote Asynchronous must also be selected. If it is applicable, all three options could be indicated for the day, all with Partial Day selected. However, if a learning mode is selected as All Day, you are unable to add another learning mode for that day.
Once the selections have been made, click on Disable Editing to close all the editing boxes.
For the teachers to utilize this feature in a school with a Master Schedule, a Class Calendar needs to be attached to the Master Schedule section for secondary schools.
Note: In an Elementary with Master school using Class Calendars, there should only be one active section scheduled for a student for the Attendance Period.
For elementary schools, the class calendar needs to be attached to the Teacher's record.
Mass Select Dates ↑
The Mass Select Dates button will allow mass selecting of days of the week for a specific date range as desired, and indicate the different mode(s) of instruction to be held on those dates. This is especially helpful when creating a new Class Calendar.
- Mon-Fri: Select the pattern for the days of the week the class will meet using the options set below.
- Date range: The range of dates you want to effect with theses changes.*
- Skip no-school days: This option will ignore Holidays as defined on the school calendar.
- Apply to previous days?: This option will also apply these changes to any dates in the selected Date Range that are prior up to today's date. The default is to only apply changes to future dates.
- Remote/In Person: Selecting this option will open up the ability to describe what learning modes will be available on the selected days. When each option is checked, a selection must be made between Full Day, Partial Day, or None.
- In Person:
- Remote Synchronous
- Remote Asynchronous
In the example above, the days marked are Monday and Wednesday with the starting date of 8/24/2020 and the ending date of 06/10/2021, and will skip the school holidays. After clicking the Add Dates button, the selected calendar dates will highlight in green and be marked with the indicated choices. After adding that set of dates, you can then choose the other days (such as Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, and mark how those classes will occur and click Add Dates button again. Click on Close when finished.
The system will remember the last selections made, in case a change is desired. For example, in the screenshot below, the options needed to be reflected from the first day of school, so the option to Apply to previous days? was selected in order to apply these selections back to the beginning of school.
The Remove Dates button will deselect many dates based on the days selected and date range entered, while honoring the Skip no-school days check box.
Once the main pattern is set, individual days can be changed by clicking on the Edit Calendar button.
After the Class Calendars are set up, they can be used in conjunction with the Teacher Portal to display a Weekly Instructional Minutes page for the teachers to use to record instructional time.
Copy/Push Class Calendars ↑
NOTE: Only Admin users can Copy or Push Class Calendars.
Buttons have been added to the bottom of the page to allow Class Calendars to be copied within the same school, and to be pushed to other schools.
To copy a Class Calendar, select the Class Calendar you wish to copy from the list of available calendars on the upper left of the page. Click on the Copy Calendar button, and then add a new short title with a different name.
After naming the calendar with a new short title, select Copy Calendar. The new calendar is now saved and copied.
It will make an exact duplicate of the original. The only change will be that the word "- Copy" will be appended to the Description. Be sure to click the Change button edit the Short Title and Description to accurately differentiate it from the original Class Calendar.
A Class Calendar can also be pushed to other schools. Once you select the calendar you wish to Push, click on the Push Calendar Options button and you will see the following options:
Use the School Selector to highlight the school(s) you wish to to push the existing class calendar to. If you wish to view the schools alphabetically, click on the Sort Schools By Name option.
Once you have selected all the schools you wish to push this calendar to, you can click on the Show Selected button to confirm the School Numbers that have been selected. Please note, this school selection will be retained until you log out, or switch to another school. This will make it easier to push multiple calendars to several schools.
If there is no existing calendar with the same Short Title and Academic Year in the school(s) on the list, the calendar will be copied into each of the schools entirely. If a calendar DOES exist with the same Short Title and Academic Year, it will only replace future dates in that calendar with the contents of this calendar. However, if you select the option, Apply to previous days in pre-existing calendars?, you can modify previous days in pre-existing calendars at the selected schools.
Click on Push Calendar to complete the process.
You will receive an email when the process has been completed. Because it overwrites any calendar with the same Short Title in same Academic Year, duplicates will NOT be created if this process is performed more than once, or if you accidentally include the school you are pushing FROM in the list of the schools you are pushing TO. The Short Title will be the same, but each will have a unique Calendar ID.
Assign Class Calendar to a Section ↑
To Add a Class Calendar to a section, in
in Change mode select a Class Calendar from the dropdown list and then click on Save.
After a Class Calendar has been attached to a Section, the View Calendar link can be used to see the details of the attached Calendar. There is an option to display the Instructional Modes (Remote/In Person Details).
Assign Class Calendar to a Teacher ↑
In a school with no Master Schedule such as an Elementary school, the Class Calendar needs to be attached to the Teacher (TCH) record in order to make the Class Calendar available to the teacher in the Portal.
Clicking on the View Calendar button allows you to display the Instructional Mode Details.
Query Change Options ↑
- LIST CCL SC YR STI DE
For schools with a Master Schedule:
- CHANGE MST CSQ TO # IF CN = "xxxx"
- CHANGE MST CSQ TO # IF PD = #
To verify:
- LIST MST CSQ SE MST.PD MST.SM MST.DY MST.CN MST.TN
For schools without a Master schedule:
- CHANGE TCH CSQ TO # IF TS > 0 AND TN = #
Potential Issues ↑
- The teacher is getting the message "Class Calendar is not Defined." I did create a class calendar already, what could be causing this message?
- Make sure the Class Calendar has school days added to it. When a calendar is first created, the days are all displayed without a checkbox in each potential school day. Please review the section above on how to Mass Add Dates to add to the calendar.
- Make sure the Class Calendar has been assigned to the actual teacher in question. Please review the sections above on how to assign a Class Calendar to a teacher or section.
- The teacher is getting the message "No class" I did create a class calendar already, and assigned it to the teacher. What could be causing this message?
1. If a Class Calendar has been created, but no Instructional Mode is selected to occur on those days, the Weekly Instructional Minutes form for the teacher will display "No Class". Please choose all the instructional mode(s) that will occur on that school day.