The Book Bag : Admissions Office

Tracking Student Activities

Katie Infinger — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:22:00 GMT

School may be out, but that doesn't mean you aren't keeping up with your students' summer activities. If your students participate in community service programs such as camps and community cleanup, you may want to track this information and add it to their transcripts.

In Records, open a student and select the Activities tab. Notice the current academic year defaults in the upper right corner. You can change the default year display to either All Years, Current Year, or Next Year.

Enter the Category and the Activity. As an example, a category would be Community Service and an activity would be Key Club. You can also enter the date of the activity, comments, and ratings. To include the activity on report cards or transcripts, just mark the appropriate checkboxes. When you run the report card or transcript, you can include the activity with the Summary/Notes tab.

Run the Activities report to see the students who participated in specific activities or to get a listing of the activities on a student's record. You can also show activities on the Student Profile report.

What community programs do your students participate in over the summer? Leave a comment!

Integration Insight: New Features Part 3

Allison Davis — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:12:00 GMT

You are working in the linking grid and see a record that does not belong, such as a withdrawn student. You right-click on the student’s row and open his Education Edge record, change his status to Withdrawn, and save and close the record. This ineligible record no longer meets the criteria based on your Integration setup, but he remains in the linking grid.

In version 7.78, you can click the Remove Ineligible Records button on the linking grid toolbar to remove these records. The Remove Ineligible Records option only refreshes the grid to remove previously eligible but no longer eligible records that are not matched. Clicking this button will not refresh the data displayed in each column and will not add rows to the grid.

If data changes on matched records to make the matches no longer valid based on the matching criteria, the user will need to manually remove the matches or click Match All Records to recalculate the matches.

Admissions and Registrar's Office Distance Learning Classes

Katie Infinger — Thu, 07 May 2009 12:05:00 GMT

Our courseware developers have been hard at work creating and revamping instructor led distance learning classes for The Education Edge. Head over to the No Travel Required blog to see the list of available classes.

Tips from a Troubleshooter: Favorite Tools

Sean Long — Tue, 05 May 2009 13:11:00 GMT

Three parts of the software are invaluable to me: Query, Export, and Reports.

Query - I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you master queries, you will master the system. There's a great Query Guide you can use to help learn about queries, but here's the short version: A query is used to group records, such as people, charges, credits, courses, classes, applicants, rooms, advance deposits, payments, deposits, or a combination! You can group records by any field you can find on a record (and some fields you won't find easily, like Record Added On date). You can use saved queries in reports, global changes, report cards/transcripts, and in your default searches.
Export - Many of you know how to use export, I'm sure. But do you know that you can perform mail merges directly from Education Edge? And did you know you can export any field, and control for duplication with far more accuracy by using a query to filter records in export? Do you need a list of every student with a second cousin who has missed more than 3 days, their name, shoe size, and nationality? Create a query to find those students, and use it in export to pull that information (you'd have to track Shoe Size as an attribute, though).
Reports - There are over 50 reports in Registrar's Office and 35 in Student Billing. Each report fulfills a specific need. Do you need a list of all the immunizations your 5^th graders have received? Run the Medical Report. Do you need a tally of how many D's and F's Mr. Triangle (the math teacher) gave compared to Mr. Square, who teaches the same course? Run the Grade Analysis Report. What about when you need a list of the Products and Billing Items you're using this year, because you can't remember what 0010 means? Print out a Product and Billing Item List. If you see a report that you aren't familiar with, open it and press F1 to pull up the help file that describes the report!

That was a really high-level review of my three favorite and useful parts of The Education Edge. Have any questions about these? Check out Knowledgebase, the user guides, or post a comment below!

Integration Insight: New Features Part 2

Allison Davis — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 19:37:00 GMT

Linking records through Integration can be a time-consuming task. It can be difficult to determine if matches are correct in the linking grid because sometimes students and parents happen to have the same names (i.e., Jr. and Sr.). Without opening their respective records, it is difficult to know which record is which. You may even see Multiple EE matches or Multiple RE matches in the Matching Records field because records have similar names.

In version 7.78, you can open and even edit records from the linking grid. In the linking grid in The Raiser's Edge, right-click on a match and open The Education Edge or The Raiser's Edge record.

Here's the open record lowdown:

Once you open the record, you can also edit information on the records such as addresses, relationships, biographical information, applications, enrollments, and history of changes.
If a particular row has multiple matches, the Open option displays the Multiple Matches so you can select the record to open.
You can only open Education Edge records from the linking grid in The Education Edge. We're working on adding functionality to open both Education Edge and Raiser's Edge records from The Education Edge linking grid in a future version.

Integration Insight: New Features Part 1

Allison Davis — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:19:00 GMT

Integration maps fields and relationships between two databases. The synchronization process looks at the database with the most recent update on these linked records. If the records in both programs were updated since the last synchronization, the most recently updated record wins and overwrites the other program's record.

To keep your data accurate, you should synchronize often. We recommend synchronizing, either manually or automatically, from a single workstation every 15 minutes. When your databases have not been synchronized in more than a day, you can experience issues such as overwritten data.

In version 7.78, you will notice some new prompts appearing when you manually synchronize data. This message informs you of the last time synchronization ran and our recommendations for synchronization. This will help to ensure data changes are accurately reflected in both databases.

The longer you wait to synchronize, the more likely you will lose record changes in one or both databases. Synchronization does not keep track of changes in the order in which they were made. The issue especially occurs with the sharing of address and phone data. For example:

Let's say you run synchronization twice a day, at 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. At 9:00 a.m. you change an address from 123 King St. to 123 King Street in The Raiser's Edge. At 2:00 p.m. the Registrar changes the Zip code from 29403 to 29402 on the King St. address in The Education Edge. At the 5:00 p.m. synchronization any changes will come from the database last updated; in this case, The Education Edge. This means the synchronized address will be 123 King St. with a Zip code of 29402.

Here are some important tips to keep synchronization running smoothly:

To manually synchronize data, click Synchronize Data on the Integration page.
To automatically synchronize data, you can establish settings in your Microsoft Scheduled Task Wizard application. For more information on setting up a scheduled task, see Knowledgebase solution BB211850.
We recommend that you automatically synchronize data every 15 minutes.
All of this is explained in Knowledgebase solution BB604658.

Stay tuned for the next post on new Integration features!

New in 7.78: Opening Records from a Person Query

Katie Infinger — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:39:00 GMT

Hey ladies and gentlemen, I've got another new 7.78 feature to share! You can open records in a Person query by double-clicking on a row in the results. Now Person queries function the same as other query types. Brilliant!

All the new features are listed in The Education Edge 7.78 Update Guide.

New In 7.78: The Duplicate Phone Type Exception Report

Katie Infinger — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:59:00 GMT

Scenario: You're in version 7.77, cleaning up phone type table entries in preparation for integrating with The Raiser's Edge. After meeting with the Development Office folks, you decide to keep Cell as the phone type to describe mobile numbers. While you're scoping out the Phone Types table, you notice three entries, Cell #, Cell, and Cell phone. No worries, you can just use the Table Cleanup to combine the Cell # and Cell phone entries. Suddenly you receive the error, "Cell # could not be replaced because it would result in duplicate rows."

Oh, snap! Your day just got interesting. You're up for the investigation to find those pesky records preventing your school from proceeding with integration plans. Go, go, gadget query! Because phone numbers are linked to addresses, you must create queries for every address, and on top of that, there are multiple table entries to clean up, so you find yourself running variations of the same query. You can use the Ask operator to prevent query build-up but eventually, you wind up with a pile of queries, no results, and no mystery resolution.

Those days are over! In version 7.78, an exception report is automatically created when a phone type table entry cannot be deleted or replaced. The exception report lists the records causing the exception so you can easily fix the phone numbers and get those duplicate phone types out of your database! Wowsers! Want to learn about all the new features in version 7.78? Check out The Education Edge 7.78 Update Guide.

Ask Me About Using the Ask Operator

Katie Infinger — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 17:19:00 GMT

There's been quite a buzz about the Wild, Wild, Cards post that our friend Doug wrote in The User's Edge Blog. I encourage you to read it and try wild cards in your queries, especially when grouping students by last names.

Another time-saver is the ask operator. Ask isn't just a song from The Smiths or a village in Norway, it's also a great way to clean up your queries. If you're a long-time reader of The Book Bag, you know I like to keep queries clean.

When you use the Ask operator, you can eliminate numerous queries with the same filters but different values. The ask operator allows you to postpone the selection of specific values for your query filters until the time you actually run the query or use it in another area of the program.

For example, you need to hand out the Annual Mother-Daughter Luncheon letter during English, which meets during every period of the day. You can use the ask operator in one query to easily run the letters without creating a separate query for each English class. Here's how:

Create a new student query (BB135272).
On the Criteria tab, select:
Schedule, Academic Year equals 2006-2007
AND Schedule, Courses, Course Name equals English 101
AND Schedule, Meetings, Period ‹ask›.
Save and close the query.

Include this query on the Filters tab in your luncheon letter export. After creating the letter through the Mail Merge Wizard (BB199112), click Merge Now to generate the letters. In the Runtime Wizard enter the following:

Select the query operator and period. For example, select the operator Equals and P1 to run the mailing for students with English in first period.

Click Next to review the query criteria.
Click Run Query to continue processing the letters.
Run the letters again, selecting a different period in the runtime prompts.

You can also use this query in Mail, Export, and Reports.

To find this information in Knowledgebase, enter How to use the ask operator in query, select Registrar's Office 7 as the product, and click Search. It's BB344216. Any questions? Just ask by leaving a comment!

New Distance Learning Classes

Katie Infinger — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:24:00 GMT

Exciting News! We've added more instructor-led distance learning Education Edge classes in addition to the Scheduling and Grades, Report Cards, and Transcripts classes:

Export in Registrar's Office and Export in Admissions Office — In each four-hour class, you'll learn how to create exports and use them to create simple and conditional mail merges.

Query in Registrar's Office and Query in Admissions Office — In each three-hour class, you'll learn how to create queries and use combining operators and parentheses to define queries with multiple criteria.

Mail for Labels and Envelopes in Registrar's Office and Mail for Labels and Envelopes in Admissions Office — In each two-hour class, you'll learn how to to complete label and envelope parameter files and define the formatting for your labels and envelopes.

Reports and Dashboards in Registrar's Office — In this four-hour class, you'll learn how to design, format, and run a variety of reports and dashboards.

Stay tuned for classes on Attendance, Records, and Tracking. To learn more about all available Education Edge distance learning classes, select Training from the Services menu on our website, then select Distance Learning.

Prefer to learn on your own? Check out the e-Learning library for The Education Edge. The eLearning Library is a collection of online software lessons that take you step-by-step through key concepts and tasks in The Education Edge. The best part is you can take them whenever you want! To view a sampling of lessons, select Training from the Services menu on our website, select Distance Learning, and then click eLearning Library. Click Take a Tour on the right navigation bar under eLearning Library for The Education Edge.

Recruiter Calculations

Katie Infinger — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:49:00 GMT

Matching the right recruiter with the right applicant is invaluable to any school. In Admissions Office 7.77, you can set up recruiter calculations to automatically match recruiters and applicants.

In Configuration, click Recruiter Calculations.
Click New Recruiter Calculation on the action bar.
Enter the calculation name, such as Greenville County, and select a faculty member as the recruiter.
Select Schools Applied, Statuses, or Geographic regions that must be on the applicant record for the recruiter to be assigned.
Click Save and Close. The recruiter will be assigned to any new applicants that meet the defined criteria.

You can break down the Applicant Summary and the Applicant Status History Summary reports by current recruiter to see the number of applicants assigned to each recruiter.

Happy to Help – A new Bio 2 tab checkbox for Applicant and Student Records

Lindsey Robbins — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:37:00 GMT

After a brief absence I’m back and more than happy to help. It’s been a busy fall especially with 7.77 releasing a couple weeks ago. Not to start back on such a downer but an important feature was added to 7.77 for student and applicant records. If a student or applicant passes away, you can now mark the Deceased? checkbox. The Age field disappears and the applicant/student no longer appears in your mailings. Not only does this help in your processing but you can show sensitivity to the relations of the applicant /student and not send letters or mailings when they are already going through such a difficult time.

On the Applicant and Student records, the Deceased? checkbox appears on the Bio 2 tab.

For more information, see the Records Guide for Registrar's Office or Records Guide for Admissions Office on The Education Edge User Guides page.

7.77 Sneak Peek

Jennifer Maroney — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:30:00 GMT

There are a few posts on The Ledger blog highlighting some cool new features with the release of version 7.77 due out in Quarter 4. Check them out:

Looking for other Student Billing stuff? Click the Student Billing tag in The Ledger blog.

Talk to you soon!

Happy to Help - 7.77 Feature Preview #1

Lindsey Robbins — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 18:19:00 GMT

Wow, where has the summer gone? I know on the EE team, we’ve been feverishly working to produce our next great release – The Education Edge 7.77. Triple 7's, Lucky 7's, or whatever awesome name you want to call it has some fantastic features I’m excited to share with you. Over the coming weeks I’ll be giving you a sneak preview of our new features and enhancements.

Sneak Preview #1 – Admissions Office Academic Performance History

When you add an education record for an applicant, have you ever wanted a place to store information about an applicant’s history at a previous school?

With the academic performance history, accessed on the education record, you can enter previous academic information such as GPA, Class Rank, Diploma, and more. You can then use this performance history information in your recruiting and marketing process as well as your financial aid decision-making if the applicant enrolls.

For example, to aid in your admissions process, you could use this information to rank your candidates.

Also, when you are evaluating your admissions process success, you could review your recently graduated students and compare the success in your school to their academic performance history. Are your most successful students applicants that came in with a high GPA or high class rank? Perhaps you are successful enrolling students from a particular geographic area with a high percentile (class rank out of class size).

I'm sure you can come up with even more excellent ideas for how to use this feature in your organization. If you'd like to share your ideas with other EE users, add a comment below!

Check back soon for more sneak previews…

Happy to Help - So you’ve got a help file, now what?

Lindsey Robbins — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:59:00 GMT

Scenario. You’re working in The Education Edge and you want advice for completing a procedure, you need help with a problem, or you see a field and you’re not sure what you should enter. What do you do?

Well hopefully you're help savvy and hit F1 on your keyboard or selected Help, The Education Edge Help Topics from the menu bar.

And once you find yourself in the help file, I thought I’d share a little bit about what you can find in there.

The help file is organized by where you are in the program. For example, Configuration is different for each program so we’ll have a section for it under Admissions Office, Registrar's Office, Student Billing, etc.
Because many schools integrate EE with FE, we include the FE help file information.
There are a few areas that overlap – Query, Export, Mail, Admin, Dashboard, and Program Basics, to name a few – and you’ll find those in the Common Program Areas.
Almost every procedure you complete will have a how and a why. We provide buttons to help you go back and forth depending on which content you need.
At the top of every page (except the welcome, glossary, contacting, and copyright), we provide breadcrumbs. These can help you understand where you are in the help file.
Breadcrumbs are also great at helping you figure out which User Guide you might want to refer to for more information. The User Guides, besides having more detailed information, have screenshots. Some people may prefer to see a procedure explained in that format. Using the breadcrumbs, you can decide which guide to go to. For example:
Registrar’s Office, Registrar’s Office, Attendance, Attendance Planning = Attendance Guide
Admissions Office, Admissions Office Records, Admissions Office Individuals, Adding Relationships, Adding a personal relationship = Records Guide for Admissions Office, Individuals Chapter
If you prefer the alphabetical method, we provide an index and a glossary for your convenience.
If you find a topic you reference often, add it to your favorites. How?

With your favorite page displayed on the right, select the Favorites tab.
At the bottom, in the Current topic field, enter a name for this favorite.
Click Add. Your favorite is now added to the Topics section. You can refer back as often as you need.

Use the Search tab to scan through the help file for topics you need more information on. I recommend you use only a 1 to 2 word search. The Microsoft .chm file we use for The Education Edge can sometimes be picky about spelling, and long sentences can make finding information difficult. Try one or two words that identify what you are looking for. Also, think of similar words and search for those if your original search doesn’t find what you need.
Don't forget the power of F1. Almost every screen in The Education Edge is linked to its help content. For example, if you're on a student record, Bio 1 tab, and you hit F1, you go to the Managing Biographical Information topic to learn more about the numerous bio fields available for students.

These are just my top ten tips on getting the information you need from the help file efficiently and effectively. If you ever find a missing F1 key or you want to see a particular section of the help file improved, let us know. We'd be glad to make adjustments and improvements for you.