Review designer

|	Permissions required to access this module:
Section:
Reviews
Permission(s):
Add and modify student review designs

|	Permissions required to access this module:
Section:
Grading
Permission(s):
Access grading

PARS can generate reports for parents e.g. End of Term Reports, or Progress Reports, which are created by our technicians and match school design specifications. For examples of slips and reports that have been designed for other schools, see this page.

This page is used to import the designs sent to school by our programmers so that reports can be printed at a later date.

Submitting a design to be created

The process of creating a student review design will typically take approximately two weeks from the submission of the design and a valid OUTPUT.XML until a first draft is sent to you. In most cases the first draft will need several revisions to account for anomalies in your data and layout that may not be obvious until the first draft is seen. You should allow at LEAST one month from the point that all of the data requested below are sent until the report is ready to print.

Before submitting a design please add the Default slip and check that it contains the data you wish to see on the report. The Default slip will usually need to be referred to multiple times during the creation of a new review design.

Here is a checklist of what is needed when submitting a design. Work cannot commence if any part is missing or incomplete:

A mockup of how you would like the final report to look.

• This could be a Word document or Image file and should resemble the final report as closely as possible. If it is an image file then a list of fonts and font sizes is needed.
• It should include any images (logos etc) and layout.
• Each column or other grade/comment container on the mock up should show which grade element code is to appear in that column (see below).
• Where multiple columns use the same grade element code, or where the same code is reused multiple times each year, the exact Result Set, EV_INST_ID or Date range should be included. These can be found by using the Default slip.
  
  

A list of grade element codes to be used on the report

• The grade element codes are visible on the configure grading elements screen in the left hand column.
• If there are multiple grade element codes that are all used in the same column and all share a similar code (e.g. an "Effort" column should contain grades with codes EFF_EN, EFF_MA, EFF_SCI etc) then only the shared part of the code is needed (in this case "EFF_").
• If the grade element is scheduled multiple times in a year then a way to distinguish the correct grades for each time period is needed. Refer back to the Default slip to find out what should be used, it will either be the EV_INST_ID, the DATE or part of the SIMSDETAIL fields. Please include the correct information for each period in the submission. For SIMS grades the SIMSDETAIL is the one that is needed, but only the part that is common to all grades in a particular column.

There is NO NEED to include every single grade element code where multiple codes all share a common set of letters.

EFF_* means "the codes in the column all start with EFF_" so there is no need to enter every EFF_ code. You can save a LOT of time by following this particular suggestion. Any exceptions to the rule (e.g. a subject that contains two different EFF_ grade codes and only one should be used) should be mentioned.

Please always refer to each subject by the actual name as it appear in PARS, SIMS and in the output.xml. E.g. if a special rule is requested for Mathematics but this appears throughout the software as "Maths" then the rule will not work.

A list of rules required on report

Each student review design has a section at the top to hide or rename certain subjects and to select the correct grade element codes, usually a number of other rules are required. The exact details of how these work are required.

Here are some examples of rules you may need:

• Hide the effort column for pupils in year 11.
• If a student is in class 10A/En1, add an extra row for English Literature using grade element codes A, B and C.
• If a student is found to have a grade with code ABC_123 in Year 11 Science, remove the row for Science and extra rows for Bio, Chem and Phys using grade element codes (etc).
• If a subject has no grades hide the row for that subject or insert N/A for the grade.
• Colour code the grades in column X by comparing them to the grades in column Y based on these scores "A=1, B=2 etc" and these criteria for each colour (Red = X<Y, Amber = X=Y, Green = X>Y).
• If attendance is <95%, colour the cell containing the attendance red.
  
  

Images

Any images (school logos etc) to be included on the report should be hosted on a web server and be accessible via the internet from outside the school. The images should be resized to the size required on the final report. Please provide URLs to any images that are required.

An OUTPUT.XML file containing the relevant grades

This is the data file that your report will be based on. See the OUTPUT.XML page for information on how to create this file.

Importing and managing designs in PARS

The review designer page

This page is accessed via: (for grade reports)
PARS main menu > Grading > Configure > Review designer

This page will show you a list of all the review designs currently in your database.

Adding and editing slip/review designs

To import a design that you have received, first click the "Add" button from the top toolbar. This will take you to another page showing some code. Simply overwrite the code on this page with the code in the design sent to you, then give it a name and click "Save" at the top right. You can also edit existing designs by clicking to select them, and then clicking the "Edit" button.

Deleting designs

To delete a design, first click on it to select it. Then click the "Delete" button from the top toolbar - this will delete the design so that it cannot be used again. It will not delete any actual slips that have been generated.

Uploading images for the report

If any images are required on the report they will need to be uploaded using PARS. This is done using the Ancillaries button on the top toolbar. The ancillaries window is used to upload and images that will appear on the report.