Preparing for September

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Things to do once the academic year has advanced

Recording a mark in a lesson register does not update the associated session mark (e.g. Period 4 = PM register)

Schools often do not have a morning or afternoon tutor period and instead take session registers during a lesson period. The mapped periods page explains how to configure this in SIMS.

How to set the Academic year to 2016-2017

This needs to be done for each user account. In SIMS .net go to:
Tools > Academic Management > Set academic year

How to apply the new timetable to the calendar year

If no timetable is showing in PARS or the wrong week is set to the current week (in the case of a two week timetable) then follow the instructions given on Applying the academic timetable.

How do I reset all behaviour points back to zero?

Behaviour incidents do not need to be deleted. The reports in PARS will only look at one year's worth of data at a time so the previous year's behaviour incidents will not be seen in behaviour reports, behaviour screens, etc. The pupil information is capable of displaying behaviour incidents from previous years. This can be prevented by going to:
PARS main menu > System management > Preferences > Pupil info > Only show this year's behaviour on Pupil information screen.

If previous incidents were entered for testing purposes only then these can be deleted by following the instructions on the edit behaviour incidents page.

Reschedule your detention/removal timeslots

Detentions and/or removals will need to be rescheduled for the academic year. This is performed via:
PARS main menu > Detentions > Configure > Configure time types

Select a timeslot and click the Calenderise button to create a new schedule. See the configure time types page for further details.

Reschedule On report grade elements

The elements for PARS On Report will need to be rescheduled for the new academic year. This is performed via:
PARS main menu > On report > Configure > Elements

Further information can be found on the Edit PARS grade element page.

Setup heads of subjects

PARS cannot determine which staff members are the heads of subjects or faculties from SIMS. Therefore this information must be manually entered into PARS. The page used to do this is:
PARS main menu > System management > Subject leaders

New staff permissions

If you have any new staff members, they will need to have their PARS permissions configured after their SIMS account has been created. The easiest way to do this is by adding them to an existing permissions template.

It is worthwhile reviewing the list of permissions periodically as service packs frequently contain new permissions that give access to useful new features.

Troubleshooting

PARS is running slowly

See the performance issues page if users are reporting that PARS is running slowly.

How do I run reports or view data from last year?

On the homepage, near the top left of the calendar click the "Academic year" dropdown option and choose the year you wish to view. There is a permission required to see and use this feature so if the dropdown is not visible you may need to review your permissions.

The permission is called "Allows user to change current attendance year" and is found in the PARS section.

Missing class on a teacher's timetable

The staff member should log in to SIMS. On the homepage, there is a My Timeline section which displays the staff member's timetable. If the class is also missing on this section in SIMS then the problem is not with PARS and must be fixed in SIMS. We cannot assist with this issue.

If the My Timeline section in SIMS is correct:
1. In SIMS.net: Focus -> Person -> Staff -> Enter the surname of a teacher with a timetable and bring up their details. Next click "Staff Timetable" under "Links" on the right hand side. Click the "Current week" button. Can you see the class here? If not, you need to update the teachers timetable. If yes, go to next step...

Timetable.jpg

2. In SIMS.net: Tools -> Academic Management -> Course Manager -> Maintain Course

Academic1.jpg

Ensure Active Status (column 8) is set as Active. If not update and save then return to In SIMS.net: Tools -> Academic Management -> Course Manager -> Maintain Course and confirm the status is Active

3. Within the same screen (Maintain Course) scroll down to Classes (option 6)

Ensure the class is listed - if not click 'new' and select from list then shown. if the class is listed, update the From and To dates.

Class2.jpg

Class3.jpg

Save.

Log out of PARS and log back in again - you should now see the class.

My individual classes are still missing or do not appear in Student Source group

If the classes are missing from their subjects when you click "Attendance -> Attendance view -> Academic class" (or on other similar selection screens)

Replace classes that are missing from this list

If academic classes are not appearing where expected on the "Student selection" window, it could be due to their component delivery information being missing from the database. Component delivery information links classes with courses and subjects.

  • From the PARS main menu select System management -> Management reports -> Subjects -> Missing component delivery.
  • A list of all active groups of type "class" will be displayed. Any that may have a problem are displayed at the top of the screen as "Missing from table: true" -or- "Missing from table: false" but with invalid dates for this academic year.

The report should give you the information you require to update the component delivery information as detailed in the previous section.

The way to fix this is in SIMS .net:

Tools -> Academic Management -> Course Manager -> Maintain course -> Click "Search" -> Choose a course -> Make sure the classes appear and have the correct date range under the section "Classes" -> Save. The Component delivery screen in PARS could be used to quickly find all of the problem classes.

My lesson periods are missing how do I add them in?

If timetables are missing from PARS despite being imported into SIMS then the timetable must first be applied, i.e. the general structure of the timetable is applied to specific calendar days.

Here's how to check if this is necessary:

In SIMS.net: Focus -> Person -> Staff -> Enter the surname of a teacher with a timetable and bring up their details. Next click "Staff Timetable" under "Links" on the right hand side. Click the "Current week" button, if the screen now shows a blank timetable (having shown a correct one previously) then here's how to fix it:

Tools -> Academic Management -> Apply Timetable. At the bottom left check the "XX/09/2011 maps to timetable day" drop-down is the correct day (in case of a two week timetable where week 2 comes first) and then click "Apply". The "Timetable day" column on the right of the window should now contain week days. Click "Save" to complete the process.

If you have done this and still see that some lessons are missing, there is a preference "Ignore component delivery dates when loading timetable" that will usually fix this when set to "Yes".

Groups I set up last year are now missing their members

Attendance user defined group members may have an end date for group membership set to the last day of last term. If they should still be members of the group this year, set the academic year in PARS back to the previous school year via the Homepage. In group manager, use shift-click to highlight all group members, click "Edit members" and select "Null end date".

I can see a message about the Automation module not running

You may see this message in the workstation version of PARS:

AutomationError.GIF

This may not be a problem if the Automation module has not been running due to the summer holidays, if you encounter a problem when restarting it then click here for more information. For instructions on how to install the Automation module click.

I can see pupils with no name on menus/registers etc or the following replaces a pupils name: person:xxxx, person:ID, ", (-)"

These are pupils who were expected to attend the school this year and had timetables etc configured. They subsequently have not been admitted but have group memberships left in the database.

Make sure your SIMS.net database has been backed up prior to the following steps!

The first thing to try is within SIMS.net... go to Tools -> Validate memberships and this should remove the unwanted pupil information

If this fails a Repair console statement is required and you will also require a password from support - 01902 824281. (We do not list passwords for statements as if incorrectly used, this could affect/delete some of your data)

System Management > Repair console

There are two statements you need to enter:

the first is TOOL DELETE BAD MEMBERSHIPS REPORT you will need your password before selecting execute

the second is TOOL DELETE BAD MEMBERSHIPS again you will need the password before selecting execute

Repair console1.jpg

Student reviews show unusual characters such as Á

This is due to the encoding on the final report being incorrect. To fix this, find the first two lines of your review design. They will look similar to this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:my="http://whatever" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" >	

Delete these and replace them with these three lines:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:my="http://whatever" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format" > 
<xsl:output method='html'  encoding='UTF-8' indent='yes'  doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd" doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" />