PTC Setup

PTC Setup:

To set up your PTC go to School >> Setup >> PTC >> PTC setup.

There you can set up your term name, the conference name, the date and time, the length of the conference, the appointment duration and the appointment interval. The total duration must be as long as the appointment duration multiplied by the maximum amount of appointments that one person could have.

PTC Break Setup:

To set up breaks for the teachers go to School >> Setup >> PTC >> Break Setup.

PTC breaks are breaks for the teacher. You can set up to have a break for x amount of time at the interval of however often you want the break to be. You can put in the start time for whatever time you want the break to begin but be aware that the break goes before and after the start time based on the interval. You might want the start time to be earlier than the conference start time so that your PTA doesn’t begin with a break.(EX: PTA is beginning at 7:30, set the breaks to begin at 7:25.)

Appointments not Needed

Once your PTC is set up, you want to remove anyone who does not need an appointment. You would go to School >> Parent Teacher Conferences >> Appointments Not Needed. There are two tabs.

Basic: First, be sure to select the correct conference.

On the top right of the screen you can select who you are removing from the conference.

• Account – No one from this account is receiving an appointment
• Student- The parents are not receiving appointments for this one student
• Course – Any student enrolled in this course will not receive an appointment with the teacher of this course.
• Teacher – This teacher is not having any appointments (all students enrolled in her courses will not receive an appointment with her)

When you hit add to list you can select any account/student/course or teacher to remove from the conference.

Advanced: Allows you to filter based on criteria and remove those accounts from the conference. You can search for divorced parents and mark one of the accounts as no appointment; otherwise students from divorced homes will each receive two appointments. You might also want to search for teachers

with students in the school and mark them as no appointment so that they don’t have to interrupt their PTA to see their children’s teachers.

Appointments Admin (Creating Appointments)

Once anyone who is not attending PTA is removed, you can go ahead and create appointments for everyone else. Appointments are created in the Appointments Admin screen. Click School >> Parent Teacher Conferences >> Appointments Admin. Click on the Create Appointments tab.

The Appointments Admin screen enables filtering. You can auto-select specific grades, teachers or subjects. If appointment duration differs, you can auto select specific grades/subjects/teachers or you can filter for a specific criteria and create their appointments before creating the rest of the appointments.

On the bottom right of the screen you can check off duration and in the text box put in a number of how long the appointments should be. (This is only necessary if the appointments are not all being the same duration. If you don’t check off the duration check box, duration will be whatever you inserted as duration by setup.)

You have an option to create appointments as gender specific. This is useful if a teacher has children in the school, but does not want to interrupt her class’s PTA. You can schedule all her children’s appointments to be gender specific male meaning that just her husband will go and it will not interfere with her class’s PTA.

Be sure that create primary individuals check box is checked off. You can then create appointments.

Account List

Once all appointments are created, you might want to schedule some appointments manually. Go to School >> Parent Teacher Conferences >> Account List. Select the correct conference and search. On this screen you can double-click on any account and you can schedule the appointment.

If teachers have children in the school, you can filter them out and manually schedule their appointments. If divorced parents are both receiving appointments, you can schedule them manually. When you are scheduling appointments manually, be sure that you are placing the appointments at the right interval so that it won’t mess up the automated schedule.

Teachers coming late or leaving early

You can create an appointment for the teacher only, so that no other appointments are scheduled with the teacher during that time.

Go to school >> Parent Teacher Conferences >> Account List >> New Appointment. Type in a subject (busy) >> right click on the gray box >> Add >> Select the individuals you want to add to this “appointment” >> Save and Reload >> Right click on the grid >> Schedule. >> You can stretch the appointment so that it lasts as long as you need it to.

EX: The 8^th grade teachers are starting PTA at 7:00. Everyone else is starting PTA at 7:30. You will set up your PTA to begin at 7:00. You will then create a busy appointment with all teachers excluding the 8^th grade teachers and schedule it from 7:00-7:30.

[Beware; this can slow down your PTC auto schedule! Anyone in this class and their siblings will not be able to be scheduled at the time of the teacher’s break.]

PTC Auto Scheduler

Once all manual scheduling is completed, you are ready to auto schedule the rest of the appointments. Go to Report Wizard >> Run Update >> PTC Auto Scheduler >> Filter for the conference >> Update.

It will prompt you for the amount of time parents should have between each appointment.

Min Break – the minimum amount of time you would like parents to have between appointments Pref Max Break- The preferred amount of time you want all parents to have between appointments Max Break – The maximum amount of time parents could have between appointments

1. Back to back appointments
2. Duration of 1 appointment interval between appointments

If your PTA appointments are 5 minutes with a 6 minute interval, by choosing 2, the parents would have a 6 minute break between each appointment.

1. Duration of two appointments intervals between appointments etc.

Once the update is completed you can go back to the account list to make sure that everyone received an appointment. Once you hit search, you can see how many appointments were not scheduled. To see which appointments did not get scheduled, in the header columns by hasApt type in 1 and by scheduled type in 0. Double click on the account to see why it was not scheduled and then make the changes necessary to schedule it. Possible reasons might be because the conference length was not long enough or that the pref max break is too small so it’s not possible for the computer to schedule the appointments with such a small amount of time between the appointments.

Reports

1. Appointment List by Course – Grouped by course, the appointment for each student in the course
2. Appointment List by Student – Grouped by student, with all the student’s appointments listed
3. Appointment Reminder Letter for PTC – Run this as a Mail Merge (NOT in the Report Wizard Screen).  It is grouped by family, listing all appointments for everyone in that family

You can change the formatting of any of the reports.