Understanding Setup

AI-generated transcript by Loom.com

0:00 For scheduling there are three options. One, you can manually drag each and every appointment in the grid one by one, which can get very tedious, of course.

0:09 Option two is to have the system auto-schedule the appointments. In a limited way, you'll be able to manually schedule a few before or after running the auto-scheduler, but you'll be limited by various factors.

0:22 Option three is to actually allow the parents to schedule the appointments themselves via the parent portal. You'll post the appointments to the portal and then upload the appointments to admire afterward.

0:33 Keep in mind that the parent portal does not update admire in real time. You need to click a few buttons to import the chosen times.

0:41 So you can't just have the appointments available on parent portal as you at the same time are busy scheduling appointments yourself or with the auto-scheduler.

0:49 And that would cause messy overlaps. So there's really three steps to standing up PTC and admire. One, you create the conference and its structure.

0:58 Two, you create the appointments. Three, you schedule them either manually or with the push of a button via our incredible auto-scheduler or by uploading them to the parent portal.

1:10 We'll discuss each part in turn. One, creating the conference. Creating the parent teacher conference night and its structure as a whole.

1:19 You'll do this a new each semester whenever you schedule a new PTC. So generally, a few times per year. Of course, often you'll be able to mostly copy whatever you entered last time or at least use it to help you decide what times you need.

1:34 You'll use these two screens for this setup stage. When you're up to the creating appointment stage, you'll use this setup screen.

1:42 First, these screens. On these screens, you'll choose a date and time to hold your PTC. You'll create the structure for the little slats of times you'll use later in the process to create and schedule appointments.

1:55 And you'll also create breaks. Now, breaks get confusing. So let me be very clear. There are really four totally separate types of breaks that can be inserted into your schedule and all are set up on different screens.

2:08 One here, one here, one here, and one here. Picture a parent teacher conference. You'll start at the start date and time.

2:25 The first appointments will take place. Then what? There are parents milling around and teachers in their classroom. Teachers are waiting for their next appointment to start and parents are moving on to their next appointment.

2:39 Should they get breaks in between their appointments? Well, let's take the teachers. The teachers need to meet many people obviously.

2:46 So a long break for them in between each meeting is not going to work. Though sometimes have a long break just because that was the only way for the auto scheduler to set things up properly or because you allowed parents to choose from a very broad range of times on the parent portal.

3:02 But you're not going to be building in a long break between every set of parents that each teacher meets. The most you'll do is give them breathing space a minute, perhaps two minutes in between each appointment.

3:15 Just a short little low. Now here's how you can visualize what teacher breathing space would mean. Would look like this.

3:22 The conference starts at its designated date and time. The various first appointments take place. Then there's a breathing space of a minute or two for everyone.

3:32 It's the teacher's breathing space really because the parents might have a much longer breathing space themselves. But it means there's a minute or two low in the entire proceedings for everyone.

3:42 And then the various appointment scheduled in the second slot take place followed by a short low and then the third appointment slot followed by a short low and so on.

3:51 Now we'll set them up in the very first set up screen that I'll show you shortly. The second type of break is a blackout time for specific teacher availability.

3:59 If let's say a teacher or a group of teachers may be a grade of teachers are all coming late or leaving early or leaving in the middle for a while.

4:07 So you'll schedule those blackout times as an appointment actually so that it grays out their schedule for the needed times.

4:14 You'll do that here. The third type of break is a break for the parents. The parents may have one or two appointments for a single elementary school child.

4:22 They may have a few more appointments if the child has many teachers as is common in older grades. And they might have a few children in the school who each have a few appointments.

4:32 So depending on your school and parent body and the general amount of time parents will be saying at the conferences, you'll want to decide whether parents and this applies whether or not you've inserted the one or two minute low for the teachers for everyone that we just spoke about earlier.

4:46 You'll want to decide whether parents should get their own low in between each appointment. The parents' low is inserted while running the auto scheduler.

4:56 Obviously their low is different from the teachers' low and that the parents' low is just for that set of parents of course.

5:02 The proceedings continue but this particular set of parents can have a low of time before their next appointment. The fourth and final break type is the actual break.

5:13 Basically if you wish you can insert extended breaks into the proceedings for the entire parent teacher conference as a whole.

5:21 The whole conference can break for let's say 15 minutes. These are scheduled in the second of the two set-up screens I'm about to show you.

5:28 So whether there's a short well in between each meeting slot or not and whether parents are getting their own private levels in between their scheduled meetings or not all attendees would take a break in the middle of the conference.

5:41 Many schools choose not to insert such a break at all. Do what works best for your school.