Thursday, October 29, 2015

Printing and Viewing Object Reports, Form Letters and Mailing Labels

When you print a object report, form letter or mailing label in PowerSchool it is rendered in PDF format. It is important to remember that you should save this document to your computer before viewing it. 

This is particularly important when you are printing a report that must line up (like labels) or keep the same formatting. Left clicking on the view in your print queue opens the document in the web browser which does not render the pdf in the intended format. You will find sometimes labels will no longer line up, fonts will not print correctly or other formatting issues.

Instead, right click on the "View" in the print queue and select "save link as" in Firefox or Chrome or "save target as" in Internet Explorer to save it on your computer. Then find the file on your computer and open it with adobe reader, etc.




Friday, October 23, 2015

Half Day Bell Schedule

In the AVRSB, we have both "Regular Day" and "Half Day" Bell schedules. PowerSchool should reflect this but in many cases I am not seeing that both have been created. If you create one, it will mean your teachers don't have to take attendance for classes that actually aren't occurring that day (e.g. Homeroom Attendance PM or afternoon classes in High School). This will lead to more accurate attendance.


If you go to Startpage --> School --> Bell Schedules, this is what we should see.


The number of periods in your half day should reflect the number of periods you have before the dismissal.

For example, compare the Half Day and Regular Day bell schedules for a school.




Once created you need to go into your calendar to set it up correctly to reflect your Half Day bell schedule on the half days.

Startpage --> School --> Calendar Setup