Preparing for September

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Things to do once the academic year has advanced

Mapping sessions to lessons

The Registration Preferences page is now used to configure session mappings, and is accessed via:
PARS main menu > System management > Registration preferences

See the registration preferences page for information about create session mappings.

How to set the Academic Year to 2018-2019

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

Resetting students' behaviour points 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 Detention / Removal / Extra Class 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
PARS main menu > Removals > Configure > Configure time types
PARS main menu > Extra classes > 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 / Student Review grade elements

The grading elements for PARS On Report and/or for Student Review elements will need to be rescheduled for the new academic year. This is performed via:
PARS main menu > On report > Configure > Elements
PARS main menu > Grading > Configure > Configure grading elements

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

Setup Heads of Subject

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 members

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.

Some (not all) classes missing from timetables in PARS

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.

All lessons are missing from timetables in PARS

This means that the timetable has not been applied in SIMS. Apply the timetable in SIMS then log out of PARS and back in again. The applying the academic timetable page can be used as a guide but you should also contact your SIMS support.
Warning: reapplying the timetable in SIMS can cause attendance data to be lost.

Classes are missing from a subject

If the classes are missing from their subjects in PARS, log in to SIMS and go to:
Tools > Academic Management > Course Manager > Maintain Course

Search for the course that the class should belong to. Open the course and check section 6, classes. The class must be listed in this section.

Some/all students are missing from some/all user defined groups

Students have a start and end date for their membership to a user defined group. The membership for some or all of the pupils may have expired. To check this, use the Academic Year dropdown option on the PARS homepage to change back to the previous academic year (If you do not see the Academic Year dropdown, you may need to edit your permissions. See the How do I run reports or view data from last year section, above).

Next go to:
PARS main menu > Group management > Group manager

Select the user defined group that is missing students. The list of students will be shown on the right of the page, and their membership dates will be displayed. Select all of the students whose dates need to be changed then click the Edit button. Set the End date forward, or delete the end date if you do not want the students' memberships to expire.

I can see a message about the Automation module not running

A message will appear at the top left of PARS if automation has stopped running. Automation is an important process that performs various housekeeping jobs for PARS as well as sending automated reports. See the automation page for more information is your automation has stopped running.

Pupils appear on menus/registers without a name or with person:xxxx, person:ID or ", (-)" as their name

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. You must back up your SIMS.net database before proceeding with the following steps.

Login to SIMS and go to:
Tools > Validate Memberships